Three Questions for Performance Management
Ask any manager about their least favorite tasks, and more than likely they’ll put ‘performance evaluations’ at or near the top of the list. Why? Lots of reasons – not the least of which is the “Gotcha!”: an assumption that you need to find something deficient in each staff member, and come up with a prescription to fix it, thereby improving performance. All too often, you’re going to find something that the person thinks they are doing very well (and they may be right), or something they have no interest in doing better. At worst, you’re expected to assign tasks or reassign job responsibilities to develop one person’s undesired ‘something’, which may well be a task or a job that someone else on your team really enjoys (or would enjoy) doing!
Here’s a better approach. Just ask these three questions:
- Are you doing enough of what you like?
- Are you doing too much of what you don’t like?
- What can we do to change these things and make them better?
If someone isn’t doing enough of what they really like, they are probably:
(a) in the wrong job,
(b) looking for another job,
(c) not very productive, or
(d) all of the above!
If someone on your team is doing too much of what they don’t like, the problem may not reside in the individual, but rather, in the team. The causes: a team that is missing people with key needed Roles; the team’s Vision, mission, or goals have not been communicated clearly enough; or, there is a less-than-optimal Coherence Ratio on the team.
The good news is that you can change these conditions and make the team work better for everyone.
Start with Role-Based Assessments for the whole team, yourself included. Then compare who you have (the Roles) with what you need (the right Roles for the team’s mission). Finally, look at what needs to be done, figure out who the right person is to achieve each need, and confirm with people that they have the right tools – and teammates – to do their job better.
The whole point of performance evaluation is to improve performance. Try this approach and the improvement will be obvious to management, to your staff, and to you!
In addition to being CEO of The Gabriel Institute and one of the creators of Role-Based Assessment, Dr. Janice Presser is actively involved in helping
young people with internship, career, and entrepreneurial activities. She is a frequent speaker and panelist in programs at Temple University and other
schools in the mid-Atlantic region. Find Dr. Janice at http://Twitter.com/DrJanice, http://drjanice.wordpress.com, and http://Tools4Careers.wordpress.com
