The below just came from one of my mail services and I thought I'd forward
it in case it has any relevance for your concerns.
Best wishes, Gary Blanchard
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> Date: Friday, August 15, 1997 13:30:22
> From: corpls@HBSP.HARVARD.EDU
> To: hrtraining@HBSP.COM
> Subject: HR/Training Alert -- August 1997
>
>
> If at any point, you wish to remove yourself from this list, send an
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> -
>
> HR/Training Alert 8/97
>
> PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL IS DEAD. LONG LIVE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT!
>
> Next to receiving his superior's assessment of his own performance, the
> most dreaded moments in a manager's life may be those in which he delivers
> a performance appraisal to someone else. And no wonder. At its worst, a
> performance appraisal is nothing more than a report card given by a boss
to
> a subordinate, a verdict on professional adequacy or the lack of it. The
> performance appraisal's message, no matter how sliced, diced, or hidden
> under leafy garnishes, always boils down to "Here's what's wrong with
you."
> Only the most sadistic among us could enjoy serving up such fare to the
> squirming customer on the other side of the desk.
>
> So forget performance appraisal, and think—slight blare of trumpets here,
> heralding an innovation—performance management. While the former is
largely
> a one-time, one-way report card, performance management is a two-way,
> continuous process of observation, conversation, thinking, planning, and
> coaching that occurs throughout the year. The good word from the experts
is
> that by managing performance instead of just performing appraisals,
> companies can improve employee performance—and hence corporate
> performance—along with saving managers considerable time and angst.
>
> The Critical Application: Having Those Conversations.
>
>
> 1. LET YOUR MOTTO BE: ALL TALK, ALL THE TIME
> The phrase long in use by performance experts has been "continuous
> conversation." Advocates of the new performance management systems suggest
> that managers have three or four performance-related conversations with
> each direct report in the course of the year. Minimally, performance
> "appraisal"—i.e., a review of progress toward previously defined,
> measurable goals—should be part of each of these discussions, rather than
> being accumulated for one dreaded session at year-end.
>
> Continuous feedback gives the employee the opportunity to adjust behavior
> as he or she goes along. Says Thomas Wester, vice president of operations
> for Peoples Natural Gas in Pittsburgh, "Performance appraisal is not an
> event. It's not discrete, and it's not confined to the formal procedure
> required by my company. The real work is what comes in between."
>
> 2. COMMUNICATE EXPECTATIONS.
> "A lack of communication means that employees will fill in the blanks on
> their own," observes Wester. But there's a lot of ground between the
> reasonable expectation that an employee act like a mature member of the
> team and the expectation that he or she will read your mind. Accordingly,
> says Wester, "The role of the supervisor is to communicate the
expectations
> and the reasons for them."
>
> In this regard, there is an important distinction between feedback and
real
> communication. Feedback is most often practiced as a one-way data dump and
> will likely engender defensiveness. Says David Peterson of Personnel
> Decisions, a human resource consulting firm in Minneapolis, "Feedback may
> communicate information on past performance, but it doesn't traditionally
> include information about expectations. And so it doesn't contribute to
> insight."
>
> 3. POSITIVE FEEDBACK IS A NECESSARY EMOLUMENT.
> Industrial psychologists (as well as marriage counselors) say people
handle
> criticism best when it is delivered in a ratio of one to three—one
> criticism for every three compliments.
>
> 4. LINK COMMENTS ABOUT PAST PERFORMANCE TO FUTURE GOALS.
> Employees can't change the past. They can influence what they do from now
> on. So the most effective stance in a conversation with an employee is a
> focus on the constructive action that can be taken in the future. "If we
> didn't achieve X, let's look at why. Were the goals unrealistic? Were
there
> additional skills lacking that we can build into your developmental plan
> for the year ahead?"
>
> 5. STOP BEING THE BOSS.
> Start being the coach. Notice the use of the inclusive "we" in the example
> above. The best way to ensure that an employee will not be defensive or
> resistant to your comments, says Peterson of Personnel Decisions, is to
> "forge a partnership" that makes coaching an unremarkable element of the
> manager's relationship with the employee.
>
> Personnel Decisions consultants train their clients to be alert to
> "coachable moments," those events that give the manager an opportunity to
> lay a little wisdom on the employee.
>
> 6. FOCUS ON BEHAVIOR, NOT PERSONALITY.
> Say, for example, that one of your reports is hypothetical Sally, a
> technical wizard who is a bit insecure, needs to feel superior, and tries
> to demonstrate superiority by showing the world that she's smarter than
her
> colleagues. In a recent meeting, she interrupted Joe and corrected him.
> In the first "coachable moment" after the meeting, the manager can draw
> Sally's attention to the exchange. Rather than observe that she is
> obnoxious, arrogant, or irritating—or simply shun her—Sally's manager
> should simply ask her: "Were you aware that you interrupted Joe and
> corrected him?"
>
> 7. HELP THE EMPLOYEE FOCUS ON THE DESIRABLE, OR UNDESIRABLE, RESULT
OF A
> BEHAVIOR.
> Continuous feedback includes reinforcing employees who exhibit the
> behaviors the company believes will help it achieve its business goals.
And
> so the manager is charged with saying to an employee, "You showed
> initiative in the way you handled a customer complaint by arranging for
the
> product to be shipped back to us at no charge to the customer."
>
> 8. SEPARATE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT DEVELOPMENT FROM CONVERSATIONS ABOUT
> COMPENSATION.
> One conversation looks forward; the other looks back. One is about future
> value to the company; one about current. "There's too much information to
> digest in each one," says Bob Myers, vice president of organizational and
> leadership development, of The Limited. Moreover, it's tough for employees
> to concentrate on next year's developmental goals when they're thinking
> about the size of their raise—or the absence of one.
>
> 9. EXAMINE YOUR OWN BIASES AND ELIMINATE THEM FROM PERFORMANCE
> CONVERSATIONS.
> Wester likes to use anecdotes to communicate with employees, and one
> involving himself might be most instructive here. He was having a
> performance conversation with an employee in which he outlined his
> expectations. The employee, says Wester, "implied those standards might be
> a little high. I gave him the standard supervisor's response: 'I'm not
> asking you do to anything I wouldn't do.' And the employee said, 'You're
> right. But you drive yourself like a son of a bitch.'"
>
> Wester learned from the exchange to challenge himself on his expectations
> for other people. "The expectations for performance have to be based on
the
> company's business
> needs and the scope of the job description." Period.
>
> So What's a Manager For?
> Companies achieve results not by poring over numbers, but by poring over
> the people who do the things that make the numbers what they are. That
> means a manager must get closer to his employees—and take more
> responsibility for the performance of each one—than ever before.
>
> Article excerpt (Performance Appraisal Is Dead. Long Live Performance
> Management! by Monci J. Williams) taken from the February 1997 issue of
> Harvard Management Update.
>
>
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> Managing Conflict in a Diverse Workplace
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>
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