Providing Specific Examples

Before we walk through a few steps we can take to remove every bit of ambiguity we possibly can from the core values our organization operates on, let’s tackle an issue every leader faces at one point or another: even when we detail exactly what “doing good” looks like for each of our team members, it can still be tough to address performance that just isn’t meeting expectations. In many cases, a minor issue is completely avoided, over and over and over again, simply because addressing it directly seems more difficult than working around the issue. While I know I’ve been guilty of this too, choosing this path only reinforces the less than desirable behavior, compounding any issue we’ll inevitably need to deal with down the road.

Not long after I started what turned out to be my last full time position before transitioning to self employment, I worked directly with the owner of that company (who was my immediate supervisor) to implement a more concise performance evaluation process. While the one page sheet I had suggested was streamlined from the five page report the company had in place - but rarely used - leading up to that point, the key to it providing any measurable value was based on the specific detail provided for each topic it addressed. Since I was somewhere between 60 and 90 days into my role with the company, I suggested he use me as his guinea pig. The first section addressed “Job Knowledge” and he rated me as “Meets Requirements.” Before he could even provide any details, I told him that I didn’t approve of that score. He looked a little puzzled but quickly offered to change it to “Exceeds Requirements.” For perspective, I had been in safety and human resources for around fifteen years at that point and had dealt with close to ten times the number of employees in other roles. That said, the bulk of my experience was in a very different industry and I felt like I had a ton to learn to perform at the level I wanted to for his organization. I explained that I thought “Needs Improvement” was a much more realistic rating and detailed the areas I knew I needed to grow in.

I share that story, not to criticize the owner of that company (I truly enjoyed working with him), but as an example of how daunting it can be to provide what the other person may receive as criticism. In Know What You’re FOR, Jeff Henderson quotes Dr. Tim Irwin as providing an alternative approach: “Alliance Feedback is where a manager aligns herself with the employee, helping them live out who they truly want to become.” Henderson goes on to compare the two seemingly similar ideas by saying, “Constructive criticism is top-down. Alliance Feedback is peer-to-peer.”

I realize performance reviews are, indeed, top-down, but there’s no requirement for a supervisor or manager to treat their team members as minions; we most certainly can build strong relationships and work with them as peers. Having different responsibilities or job titles doesn’t mean either role is any more important than the other.

When I pushed back on the “Meets Requirements” rating, I knew enough about the position I was in to have a clear understanding of the gaps I still needed to fill to provide what he needed from me in that organization, and that’s why it made sense for me to be the guinea pig for that new evaluation approach. The tweak we were able to make from then on was to provide specific details for each team member being reviewed, covering exactly how their performance exceeded requirements, met requirement, or needed improvement based on where they were in the pay scale for their current role AND we were able to provide Alliance Feedback (although we didn’t call it that because I’d hadn’t met Jeff Henderson yet then) on what they needed to work on to reach their next goal.

When we only give general feedback, be that as approval or constructive criticism, we leave our team members to fill in the blanks with how each particular action they’re taking ties in. The same thing happens when we’ve only listed our values in the policy manual (that nobody ever actually looks at anyway) or somewhere on the wall in our office. Even the most articulate definition can be very difficult to connect with each individual role. Just like specifics matter in the performance review process, this same kind of clarity about how each value ties to the work each of us do can prevent things from going wrong like in the scenario we looked at earlier! We’ll dive into how simple that can be soon.