Like everything else in life, doing Performance Management the right way is a war of attrition. My goal as a HR Pro with a Performance Management system? Real objectives that can be measured, AND real feedback as to what is "meets" performance and what is "exceeds" performance (which hopefully drives real "exceeds" performance, which drives business results)
Which is hard. Like "shooting a music video while running on the treadmill" hard. It’s that hard, mostly due to the "real feedback" component.
Why is real feedback hard? Because it is confrontation, my friend.
Let’s say you have a good performer. At the end of the day, are they truly exceeding in their role? Unless they are innovating and bringing things you can’t get elsewhere, probably not. And that’s OK, because "meets" performance is good!
But most employees are conditioned to view a "meets" rating as average. Because like the current generation of children, they’re used to getting a trophy every rating period, either with an "exceeds" rating or my personal favorite, the "sometimes exceeds".
The result? Most managers give up and want to keep that cycle of "everyone’s exceeds" going. Unless you get involved and challenge the norm. Unless that manager cares enough to face the angry employee and explain the difference between "meets" and "exceeds".
It’s called coaching for performance. If you see a manager doing it, give them the props. It’s harder than getting the steps down to the video below…
Congratulations! This post was selected as one of the five best business blog posts of the week in my Three Star Leadership Midweek Review of the Business Blogs.
http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2008/04/09/4908-a-midweek-look-at-the-business-blogs.aspx
Wally Bock
I am having a disagreement with my (recently new)manager regarding what constitutes “meets” vs. “exceeds”. He agrees I have done an outstanding job during a time when our department was at half its usual staffing. I trained younger staff, did sections of the job generally done by my former boss, and came up with innovative solutions that enabled us to meet all deadlines despite what all agree was a difficult period. In my review he interpreted this as “meets expectations” because at my level it is expected I would do an exceptional job. I interpret this to mean that because it is expected I will exceed expectations, I will only be “meeting” that expectation. To me this pretty much makes objectives meaningless, and so I am struggling to come up with my objectives for next year. I don’t want to create objectives that are impossible to exceed. Any ideas how I should approach this?
Hey Killian -
Thanks for checking in. I’ve got some thoughts to share, but they’re probably to lengthy for the comments sections of the site. I’m going to get my notes going and do a post later this week to give you some fodder, OK?
Thanks for checking in, and be on the lookout for the post on Wed or Thursday….
Thanks – KD