Performance Appraisals - striking the right notes

Leadership can bring with it many challenges, none more so than those potentially brought with performance appraisal time. If you look forward to performance appraisals and enjoy the process chances are you are a leader who knows their people well, have invested time and effort in good relationships, regular communication and have a team that work well together.

For many, performance appraisal time brings anxiety, disagreement, disappointment and frustration, perhaps even real conflict. If your process is an annual or biannual exercise in getting the task completed ahead of the business deadlines and making sure you don't overstretch the next budget (assuming you have one), perhaps you have an opportunity worth exploring, perhaps there is another way.

My experience, bar the odd exception, is that people don't generally turn up to intentionally do a bad job, so when they do, it is worth exploring how the situation has arisen, what the full circumstances are, but this needs to start 12 month ago .... back to the start of expectations.

How do we set objectives to start with?

We will all have been through the many acronyms for S.M.A.R.T objective settings, with strategic cascades, business deliverables, perhaps lean goal deployment (Hoshin Kanri). While it is critical to ensure objectives are measurable, timely, aligned to the function, business unit or organisation, they must also resonate with the individual. People don't naturally deliver well if they don't feel capable, resourced, motivated or energised to do so, or if they can't identify personal contribution or benefits to the success.

Now enter the 'Personal Development Objective', a means to capture the business intent to develop an individual, manage their expectations, help them grow and improve and to download the latest HR courses. If these are the last objectives to be set, they will always be an afterthought and often the sacrificial lamb when the business needs an extra 10% or the HR budget is trimmed towards the end of the year.

Here's a thought.... How about we START with a team members development opportunities, what they would like to develop in themselves, how they (and you) believe they could improve, what they are good at, enjoy, deliver well. If, as a leader, you know your team as well as you should, you can agree with them what their competencies and capabilities look like in 12-18 months and then set a roadmap to get there. This can, of course include internal & external training, but it must also be based on practical exposure.

• Here's an example - Imagine a team member wants to 'be better at presentations' (which actually means they want to build their confidence in group situations), you can send them away on a 2 day presentation skills course. Job done!
• You could also choose to give them a key responsibility for the year.... to deliver a 2-3 minute verbal daily report to the team, that then evolves into a weekly 10 min table top presentation, that evolves into a 15 minute monthly standing presentation, with a stretch target to deliver presentations to other teams on your behalf - Perhaps even a board report. If you coach them and feedback what they did well every time, confidence soon builds and barriers to personal success tumble.

The principle is simple, agree and establish how a member of your team member wants to develop, then build objectives around that need which gives them practical and sustainable exposure to that development, such that it becomes a routine.

Once the development principle is established, the functional, business and organisational objectives can be built around both the development and the motivational and energy needs of the team member. People will deliver well, even above and beyond expectations IF a leader puts the time and effort into understanding development needs, motivation, personal energy and sets the key objectives in a manner which plays to those strengths. It is also important to remember that an objective is not a target. Objectives should describe the overall outcome to be achieved and perhaps the sub steps to get there, with targets being the time bound or numerical elements of measurement.

• Personal Development Need - Team member currently develops safety reports from data collected and would like to understanding better the relationships between the safety data collected and reported, and the impact the data has on the reduction of risk in the workplace - Turning Data into decisions.
• Business Objective - Reduce the overall risk of accidents across the business by improving behaviours and awareness about safety in key areas.
• Sub Objective - Establish inspection protocols to ensure every supervisor conducts a weekly 30min shop floor assessment with the team to identify and remove hazards likely to give rise to an unsafe working environment. Target - 80% compliance to weekly checks by all supervisors by Q2 (Stretch Target 85% compliance) . Target - 500 safety hazards identified and removed by Q4 (Stretch Target 600 hazards).
• Sub Objective - Review previous years reportable accidents and prepare a one page briefing talk for each one, explaining how the accidents happened, what the hazard was and what could have prevented the accident in each case. Deliver accident one pager briefings to all supervisors and engineers, asking them to look for similar hazards as part of their weekly inspections. Target - Produce all one pagers by end Q1 (Stretch Target by Wk10). Target - Deliver 50% of accident briefings by Q2, 100% by Q3 (Stretch Target 60% by Q2).

It is also important to including specific references to attributes - collaborative, positive, purposeful etc, so the way we expect team members to deliver performance through the year, is consistent with team and business values.

Finally, it is a V.U.C.A. world out there, things change, resources eb and flow and pandemics happen, so ensure regular communication enables shifting of time plans and deliverables either by extending or retarding targets.

How do we then review performance?

Review time is here, if you have not looked at your teams objectives for 12 months, you will need to spend time going through them, hopefully not realising they bear little resemblance to the current work or activities. You should have good idea of how each of your team are performing even without the detail. Ideally, you will have had regular contact and catch ups to ensure projects and activities are on track.

Leadership is about coaching, supporting and recognising good performance. The characteristics of good leadership are to focus on the good performance and build on that, with little nudges best delivered by a question, when corse corrections are needed.

Once prepared for the review, your agenda should include a summary of the highlights of the team members performance in terms of the objectives met, the manner of the performance and the growth in personal competence and capability. Situations that need challenge are always best extracted by questions.

• The energy of the review session must be based on curiosity, never judgement.
• Remember the outcome of the review should be the focus, not just the review itself, so be prepared to learn, understand and adapt your expectations, including appraisal ratings if these are applicable.

The agenda must always open with a 'Check In' .... "how are you, are you ready for the session, any distractions or concerns, is now a good time? Even if you have made a diary commitment, performance reviews are So Important (sometimes the only one to one time some team members ever get) that rescheduling is preferable to driving though for diary convenience, even though your team member is distracted for personal reasons.

Make the first connection a personal one - "How have the last 3/6/12 months been? we have all been so busy we have not really spoken as much as we should have, are you well? Once you have settled nerves then get into the detail of the performance review, remembering questions are key to understanding and be just as interested in how Success was achieved as you might be to learn how disruption occurred. Always ensure you have some important messages to deliver, with the inclusion of positive recognition, however you determine the final outcome to be.You might choose to summarise your thoughts on the year, always with questions and check for alignment... "My sense is that Project 3 was an overwhelming success, is that your view?" Alternatively you may want to open up a debate... "We agreed Objective 3 timings were more than achievable, what do you think caused such disruption to delivery?"

The best form of appraisal review is continuous coaching through out the year, and there are leadership strategies available to support that. One final message, reviews are 2 way things, so ALWAYS ask what more you can do or be, to help your team members development, performance or sense of value - Every day is a school day.

If you enjoyed this short article and want to know more, see my Culture Compass Website.

Good luck for this year.