Performance Reviews Poo-Pooed by High Performers

Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 by Frank Roche

I was talking to a friend last night about her performance appraisal. She’s a superstar, one of those people that companies drool over. Big talent. Dedicated. Gets up in the middle of the night to work on extra projects. That type.

So what happened during her performance review? Nothing bad. She got a good rating, but not the top rating. Plus she heard the “seven good things and three things we can work on” approach to performance management. No good.

Here’s what I know from empirical evidence: Great performers don’t need performance reviews. Especially the yucky and typical kind. They have a great distaste for ratings that can’t adequately capture what it means to be up at two in the morning working on a project while the rest of the company sleeps. On top of that, they really resent getting a rating that’s anywhere near what Joe Average gets.

It’s pretty simple: If you want to understand real employee engagement, look at your top performers. And get rid of the performance management system you’re using. Maybe that works for the broader population, but it’s terrible for high performers. How about a dual system, one for high performers and one for everyone else? Kind of like an Honors College for high performers?

User Comments

Jimmy CraicHead

Apr 16th, 2008

This post covers my profile 100 percent. 10 years no call outs, works days off, takes call and gets to work less than an hour in the middle of the night. As a matter of fact, I just check the boxes, leave no comments and hand in any performance reviews only after being hounded for weeks from supervisors.
Joanne Bintliff-Ritchie

Apr 17th, 2008

I agree that most performance management programs could use significant improvement. And certainly one weakness is the approach to superstars; another, strangely is the low average group who supervisors can never get rid of but are holding a spot the company might be able to fill with a superstar, or even a high average performer. However, you should consider the possibility that your superstar’s boss disagrees with your assessment. Certainly they have more first hand knowledge of this person’s performance in the workplace than you do. And extremely hard work, dedication, and commitment, while desirable, do not guarantee great outcomes, which is what we should be measuring people on. It’s results not effort that count.
rick

Apr 17th, 2008

I am in agreement with the concept of something different for superstars. However, I believe that even superstars need constructive and developmental feedback now and again. Perhaps not the 7 good three bad approach.
Teresa Day

Apr 19th, 2008

The current rating system is also dependent on the quality of the manager doing the reviewing, and his/her personal goals and agenda.

For the manager whose strength is budget management, he might let this objective drive the types of reviews he’ll give. Nobody gets a “1″ or “highest”, not because they don’t deserve it, but because in his budget management, he never gives “1″s. Like the college professor who prides himself on never giving anyone an “A” in class.

I know a stellar employee now at a Fortune 50 who received just such a review as a budget control. Because he’s stellar, he’s at the top of his pay range. In order to maintain his budget, the boss gave him a “3″– the first time in his 18 year career he’s ever received the “average” rating.

But the budget remains intact!!

Sad, but true.

Teresa

http://www.TeresaDay.com
Dick Grote

Apr 19th, 2008

I’ll fess up to an obvious fact: Most managers do hate conducting performance reviews. If they thought they could get away with it, they’d probably skip the whole annoyance completely. And lots of employees loathe them. So what?

In too many places, performance evaluations are sloppily done and not taken very seriously. A lot of supervisors would rather endure a root canal than write and deliver a performance review, particularly if there are some hard, cold truths that they can’t avoid discussing.

But in spite of all the problems and resistance, I‘m a solid believer in performance appraisal. I think performance appraisal is critically important for any organization that’s more sophisticated than a mom-and-pop store—or that wants to be.

As hard as performance appraisal may be—and done right, it is hard—I’m convinced that we do it because it’s an ethical obligation of leadership. Every person on the team wants the answers to two questions. First: What do you expect of me? Second: How am I doing at meeting your expectations? The performance-evaluation process answers those two questions. So why do we do performance appraisal? Because as leaders we have a moral obligation to do so.

And we also have an obligation to put the time into performance appraisal that it deserves. Goodness gracious! Managers don’t spend a tenth as many hours assessing and developing and appraising people as they spend in the restroom. But they’ve got the gall to whine about appraisal taking too much time. That’s nonsense.

So managers hate performance appraisal. Big deal. They also hate budgeting. Grow up, get over it, and start doing it right. You’re getting paid to be a leader — start earning your pay.

Dick Grote
Frank Roche

Apr 20th, 2008

Hi all, I’m a little slow on the draw with this one. I thought the conversation was making the big points, and I needed to say very little else.

Dick Grote makes the point that managers need to step up and be managers. That is just fantastic. True…and I agree as long as the system is right.

Teresa’s story almost made me cry. How crazy is it that a review would be predicated on a budget. What do those two have to do…but that exposes the raw underbelly of the system. Wow…I never thought of that before.

Jimmi is in the boat of a lot of superstars. How crazy is that?

Rick, I’m all about feedback. I just think treating people like adults instead of like pupils works. We don’t give performance ratings to our friends or family.

Joanne, I agree about results. I should have made that more clear. The person I was referring to both stays up until 2am…and delivers. Bigtime. I’m about the results, too.
Jon Ingham

Apr 25th, 2008

I’m even later – I’ve just been catching up on all my feeds. But across them all it was this post that caught my attention – partly because I’ve been posting on performance management myself.

Here’s my take on the issue: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2008/04/innovation-in-performance-management.html

Jon Ingham
Dave Polacheck

Apr 26th, 2008

Let’s face it review time is almost no manager’s favorite time of year, but their resistance and/or resentment comes for so many different reasons. For some, they struggle to lead and communicate, so offering thoughtful feedback to their people is a real pain. For others who maintain an ongoing performance conversation throughout the year, it feels redundant and arbitrary to choose 1 time of the year to formalize their feedback. Regardless I think judging the whole process based on the individual appraisal event is missing the full breadth and value of a performance management process.

In our organization we talk about the 3 “D”s: Direction, Dialog and Discovery. The 1-on-1 performance discussion is just the middle D. Direction is about defining the vision (both the “what” and the “how”), so we know what results to measure and what behaviors to assess for. I’m not a big fan of standard competency libraries or forcing x positives and y negatives for this reason — what we assess should tie directly to our vision. Plus a top performer is only a top performer in the context of this vision. “A rose is a weed in a cornfield” as a wise mentor once told me.

Discovery is whole the roll-up process that follows the individual review, where managers discuss their teams with their business leaders — who’s ready for bigger challenges, who’s struggling, re-org plans, etc. So much gets uncovered in these sessions, as much about how our people are being led as how individuals are performing.

Sorry for evangelizing… There’s so much credibility to be lost by letting it atrophy into standardized form with no context, but much to be gained by a thoughtful, challenging process!
360 feedback

Jun 16th, 2008

In an ideal world you could model your whole organisation on your top performers but in reality that could never happen as not all employees can develop in that way, forcing all your employees to think and work in one way stifles creativeness and is counter constructive.
jimbo

Feb 12th, 2009

Frank – you are spot on. I find the thought of them to be truly demotivating. As an employee I don't expect a big pat on the back for doing what I'm paid to do but when I consistently deliver above and beyond the call, I expect some recognition and I don't mean that it should come once a year. Why shouldn't managers offer praise when it's due rather than hope they remember it by performance review time. Equally, if things are not right, they should be addressed straight away – by either party. Again, as an employee I would expect to receive, as well as provide, immediate feedback, perhaps even more so when it is negative so that it can be put right. As a manager, I would rather stay on top of issues than have to remember everything until that magic day.

This would be far more constructive than the annual dreaming-up of supposedly SMART objectives just so that both parties can get the whole annoying process over and done with. Put it this way – have you ever heard anyone say – “Yipee, it's performance review time”?
Frank

Feb 14th, 2009

Hi Jimbo,

I'm with you, immediate feedback is the key. We can make course corrections easily that way…waiting until the end of the year for the gotcha talk is just no good. And no, I've never known anyone who celebrated performance review time. Ick.