Social Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing--and Focus on What Really Matters by Samuel A. Culbert, Lawrence Rout
Excerpt: Average employee: Not too bright. Exceptionally well qualified: Made major blunders yet. Character above reproach:Still one step ahead of the law. Zealous attitude: Opinionated. Quick-thinking:Offers plausible excuses. Careful thinker: Won't make a decision. Takes pride in work: Conceited. Forceful: Argumentative. Aggressive: Obnoxious. A keen analyst: Thoroughly confused. Conscientious: Scared. Meticulous attention to detail: A nitpicker. Has leadership qualities: Is tall or has a loud voice. Strong principles: Stubborn. Career-minded: Backstabber Coming along well: About to be let go. Independent worker: Nobody knows what he/she does. Forward-thinking: Procrastinator. Loyal: Can't get a job anywhere else. on page 74.
The Path to growth p110 1. Make subordinates see that you understand their perspective. 2. Show subordinates that change is important for the company. 3. Be willing to make exceptions to the rules. 4. Show subordinates how their making a change can make a difference in their own future. 5. Consider your subordinates' entire lives, understanding doing well at works takes a backseat to ding well in life more generally. 6. Be specific, don't be universal. 7. Avoid comparisons. 8. Use I-speak. Speaking this way leaves others room to express their different views. It avoids win-lose, right-wrong, who-is-objective-correct arguments when people pursuing different self-interesting clash. It implies a relationship of equality and a commitment to a fair play. 9. For your eyes only. It never goes in any file.
An astute manager, who sent this letter: p125 We have to decide whether managers can pick their employees like team captains in gym class, or if they should be trained to coach whichever students they get into playing well as a team. In the traditional "captain picks" model that I grew up with, captains always sharpen their selection skills with each game played until they pick only teammates who either play well independently under the captain's coaching style.
That teaches kids that success is all about picking the right people for the team and weeding out others, which is exactly the process behind the traditional performance appraisal. We reward bosses who are good at identifying and pulling out the low performers, as though their low performance beyond the capabilities of the boss to mend.
If, however, kids are randomly broken into teams and captains are then elected by the students, the captains who win are the ones who can recognize the abilities and skills of each player and engineer a team process that encourages them to play well together. The boss's role is then focused on skill identification and team development, not player selection.
I love this letter for so many reasons. For one thing, it correctly identifies the way most managers go about trying to create teamwork: by not create a team. Managers don't work with each player, trying to figure out how to get them work with each player, to create a unified force that grows the company. They simply use the performance review to get rid of some players. And who do they keep? The ones who make things better for boss- as if the goal was to make the boss's life easier.
Even better this letter writer captures the fact that most managers understand human motivation about as well as a grade schooled does, It reminds me of another New Yorker cartoon, titled" Everything He Needed to Learn, He Learned in Elementary School." It shows a man coming into an office - apparently his office- and see another man has taken his spot. The man at the desk says, "Tough noogies, chief- you forgot to call 'Reserve when you left your desk."
Telling, when l go into companies as a consultant, and ask employees to describe the times in which they felt the greatest sense of empowerment at work, the overwhelming response I get is when they were on a cross discipline team working on a project of utmost importance to their company, up against a deadline, without a boss on the project. There may be a leader but he or she is not a boss. That person coordinate, communicates with higher executives, and procures resources, But he or she does Rot tell the others what to do.
Generally everybody on the team gets the credit, and people feel free to talk straight because they are there for their functional expertise. No one doubts the other person's motivation, They each need one another and realize that the other guy's success helps the project and will lead to their success. People on the team work hard, tolerate one another's eccentricities, and when there's conflict someone naturally intervenes to help sort it out. People have a sense of being able to go outside the box because things need to get done, and quickly. When the project is completed, usually successfully, there's camaraderie forever, as one might feel being on a sports team that made it to the championship game. You feel close to the other teammates for the rest of your life.
Are you hearing this, bosses? People are happiest and get the most done when there is no boss. Doesn't this tell you something? No, it isn't that people simply hate bosses. It's that they don't like the bosses that haunt most companies today. As it's often said, people don't leave companies, they leave managers.
As much damage as performance reviews do in setting colleagues against colleagues, and departments against departments, the most damage is done to the team that is most crucial to the success of any organization: the one-on-one relationship between a boss and each of his or her subordinates. There is no more powerful force in any organization. The only question is: Will this force be used for good-Or evil?
I first began looking at this issue because I was puzzled about a common busines situation that struck me as wacky. I asked myself: Given all that's known about the benefits of teamwork, empowerment, and participatory decision making, how is it possible that we still have subordinates telling bosses what they think the boss wants to hear, while bosses, who unabashedly blow smoke in their own bosss eyes, walk around believing their subordinates have fully and honestly told them the truth?
I wrote a book on this topic, and I found my answer in the one-sided, boss-dominated relationship that rules at work and is so perfectly illustrated by the performance review. Bosses come to the performance review thinking of themselves as the evaluators, as critics on a fault-finding mission. It isn't, "How are we going to work together as a team?" It's, "How are you performing for me?" It's not our joint performance that's at issue. It's the employee's performance that's a problem.
The core mistake, as I see it, is that people tend to misapply the notion of hierarchy. Most see no difference between a hierarchical approach to organizational structure and hierarchical approach to relationships.
But there's a big difference. Hierarchical structure, it the form of an organization chart, serves many constructive purposes. By showing the chain of command, it allows everyone to see who is responsible for what, how organization units are being deployed, and, most importantly, who should be accountable for bottom-line results. In contrast, In contrast, I can't think of a single constructive purpose served by hierarchical relationships - that is, those in which the boss gets dominate all conversations.
In fact, because the hierarchical structure designates who, at the end of a conversation, gets to make the decision, most bosses should have no reason to be defensive. They're the boss, and their final word is final. So they have everything to gain by practice active, open-minded inquiry in soliciting all viewpoints and facts their subordinates might choose to relate.
To do otherwise does untold damage to the boss/subordinate team. It effectively kills it. Skeptical? Well, take a look at a performance review scenario contrived by management theorist Peter Block in his foreword to Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins's Abolishing Performance Appraisals (San Prancisco: Berrett-Kochler, 2000).
Dear, it's time for your annual performance appraisal. For the sake of our relationship and the well-being of the of family unit. I want you to prepare for a discussion of your strengths and weaknesses and the ways you have fallen of your goals for the year. Also, honey, I would like for you to define some stretch goals for the coming year.
The words will lead to inauthentic behavior, daily deception, and a need for subordinates to spin all facts and viewpoints in directions they believe the boss will find pleasing. It defeats any chance that the boss will hear what subordinates actually think. It defeats any chance that the two will work together to solve problems and advance the interests of the company (while in case you forgot, is the goal here).
Shut up for his own good. What would have happened if the boss really was trying to work as a team, it she was truly interested in finding out what was wrong here and how together they might find a solution? Perhaps the boss could have helped the salesman cut back the presentations, or gotten a better laptop, or moved him into a role of helping other sales people. But she wasn't interested in hearing the issue or working together what problem was. She was only interested in telling the subordinate what he was doing wrong.
No teamwork, no straight talk, No positive results.
So when managers applaud employees for being team players" on performance reviews, what the hell are they talking about, anyway? I'll tell you. They have something very different in mind than people pulling together for the betterment of the company. Sometimes they're just giving high marks to a "yes man," whose job is to smooth hurt feelings or coerce others to go along with the boss's wishes. Sometimes it's the person who has been assigned the crappy jobs that some favored employee is supposed to do, but doesn't. Sometimes, it's the "flak catcher," the fall guy who takes the hits for the things that don't get done.
Do you see how distorted this is! There's no team here. A "team player"in this upside-down world is simply the the employee who signs up for the boss's agenda, the employees whose primary goal is to make the boss happy. "Loyalty" to these bosses isn't "loyal enough to candidly say what I think." No, "loyalty" means "supporting whatever the boss says."
That kind of team player may make the boss happy. But I can tell you one things: It isn't the kind of team player who make the company happy.