When Performance Reviews Underperform

Many people suffer from performance anxiety when it comes to giving or receiving employee performance reviews. By inadvertently colluding to get through the process as quickly and painlessly as possible, managers and subordinates squander a great opportunity to positively affect performance, productivity, and results for their company, as well as help both the manager and the subordinate succeed individually.

These observations come as no surprise to either manager or subordinate. So why the avoidance?

There are a number of reasons:

1. Performance reviews seem like a distraction from actually getting work done. Giving and receiving performance reviews is so far removed from the daily tasks of both managers and subordinates, that neither have much comfort or confidence that they will be done well or in a useful manner.
2. For performance reviews to work, subordinates need to be willing to be held accountable and managers need to be willing to hold them accountable. This indicates to both that even more effort outside of each person's area of competence will need to be expended.
3. Prior experience with the uselessness of performance reviews from prior jobs causes each to believe that this occasion will be no different.
4. Managers who have had bad experiences receiving performance reviews don't want to do the same to their subordinates.
5. Subordinates who take things too personally and are too easily upset make managers want to avoid the emotional fallout that can come from a critical review.
6. Managers may be reluctant to criticize a subordinate if the manager feels culpable in having not articulated a clear understandable goal, assigned tasks clearly, or provided necessary training.

The biggest problem for both managers and subordinates when performance reviews are done poorly is that in the end, both people will nod agreeing to some course of action going forward that is not clear to either. When subordinates do not have a clear picture of their manager's expectations of what success looks like, they will make up their own definitions of success.

In the vast majority of cases, what that subordinate defines as success will differ significantly from his manager's. This could potentially encourage the subordinate to work very hard towards the wrong goals. The subordinate is likely to focus on a narrow portion of what is important to his manager and his company, or he may set goals that are completely out of alignment with those of his employer.

Stephen Covey has said that too many people spend their careers climbing a ladder to what they think will bring them success, only to discover that their ladder has been on the wrong wall.

What is the solution?

There is an old saying, "Where there is a will there is a way." In truth, its converse, "Where there is a way, there is a will," is perhaps more to the point. Too often subordinates that can't clearly see a way, do not have the will to move. This is especially true when in the past they have taken initiative, done things the best way they knew how, only to be dinged "Monday morning quarterback style", by a manager who had not been as clear in his direction beforehand as he is in his criticism later.

Alternatively, when the way is clear, people find the will to act. That may explain the trend in executive coaching (especially the model developed by Marshall Goldsmith) to make any prescriptions for professional-development specific, observable, and measurable to both the coach and his/her stakeholders who have provided input.

By this logic, the manager has a responsibility to provide the subordinate with specific, observable, and measurable guidelines for performance. Although managers and subordinates may look at a goal through different eyes, they need to eventually agree upon it in a manner that leaves very little to the imagination.

Hands-on experience with performance reviews

At one point, Billy Pittard -- media architect; President, Pittard Inc.; Founder and past CEO, Pittard Sullivan -- found himself responsible for over 70 employees' performance reviews. It was a daunting task and he confesses that his performance at conducting those reviews was not very good. As pointed out above, both he and the employees had plenty of reasons to avoid them.

But Pittard realized that he had a wonderful opportunity to turn a daunting task into a valuable process that would make my company better. Doing so many performance reviews gave him the opportunity to study how performance reviews really worked, and to figure out how to make them better.