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The Effectiveness of Positive Employee Performance Appraisals

The Effectiveness of Positive Employee Performance Appraisals February 25, 2015

Each year in corporations around the world, managers go through the ritual of providing feedback to members of their team through the performance appraisal process. This process usually consists of the manager writing a review of the employee’s annual performance, based on predefined goals that were discussed and agreed upon at the onset of the year. In many cases, the employee is required to write a self-assessment so that both the employee’s and manager’s assessments are considered. Typically, for the manager’s assessment of the employee, the manager provides feedback in three key areas:

  • Status of whether or not employees achieved their annual goals
  • Areas where employees did well
  • Areas where employees need improvement

Most corporations advocate that performance appraisals include both what the employee did well, and areas where the employee needs to improve. Managers are trained to believe that everyone always has something to improve, no matter what. As one manager I know said to me a few years ago, “Nobody is perfect. Everyone always has something to improve. In order to encourage employees to continually do better, we must equally focus on areas where the employee needs to improve.” Interestingly, this is erroneously the prevailing sentiment of many managers.

In addition, even though performance appraisals are between the manager and the employee, managers predominantly write appraisals in third person. For example, let’s assume that I’m writing a performance appraisal for an employee named John. In third person, the performance appraisal would read something like, “John has done well in achieving all his goals this year.” Even though John is the recipient of the performance appraisal, it is as though he is reading about someone else. This is possibly a carryover from years ago when employee performance appraisals were written about the employee and addressed to the manager’s manager or to someone in human resources.

If managers are willing, they can use the performance appraisal as a vehicle to improve employee performance well beyond what is normally expected. After all, the primary goals of the performance appraisal are to provide feedback and help improve performance year over year. Specifically, there are two ways managers can use the performance appraisal to encourage their team members to achieve exceptional, improved performance year over year.

The first way is for the manager to focus on the positive things the employee did well all year. Instead of focusing on what the employee needs to improve, the manager should focus on all the things the employee did well. In other words, the manager accentuates the positives while minimizing the negatives. This does not mean that managers should not let their team members know when they are performing poorly. If an employee is performing poorly, the manager should definitely let the employee know well in advance of writing the performance appraisal, and then work with the employee to correct the poor performance. If employees are still performing poorly after the manager provides clearly defined and measurable ways to improve their performance, then the manager is obligated to document the poor performance in the appraisal. However, this discussion is about those team members who are generally doing well. In cases like these, managers should not go out of their way to find something for the employee to improve just because the general management dogma says that everyone has something to improve.

Here is a case in point. About twenty years ago I was managing a team of customer support engineers at a small company in the Silicon Valley in Northern California. One of the new members of my team did an outstanding job during the first year in her role with the company. In her performance appraisal, I highlighted the outstanding job that she did and I really focused on the positive things she did throughout the year. I did not provide a list of things for her to improve upon because frankly, she had done an extraordinary job. So I accentuated the positives and I encouraged her to take on very specific new challenges in the coming year that were designed to help her continue reaching new heights in her role and career. She not only continued to do well, she became one of the top performers on our team and within the company in general.

Years later, I noticed this same employee’s profile on LinkedIn, one of the social networking sites for business professionals. She had received several advanced degrees and achieved incredible accomplishments throughout her career. I wrote her a note to let her know how proud I am of all the things she has accomplished over the past 20 years. She replied and mentioned the performance appraisals I wrote for her when we worked together years before. She said that she still has copies of the appraisals and she has used them as a source of inspiration throughout her career. She thanked me for having the courage to write such positive appraisals.

Like most people, she worked very hard to match or surpass her performance the next year. Most high-performing employees are very competitive, and they inherently want to do even better in the coming year. In my experience, when managers focus on things the employee needs to improve, the employee invariably perceives this feedback as negative. Of course, this does not imply that a list of things to improve is negative feedback at all; however, some employees perceive this type of feedback as negative. When they perceive the feedback as negative, they sometimes become defensive. Therefore, instead of focusing on how to improve their performance, they focus on why their manager provided the negative feedback. In addition, many times they wonder why the manager waited until writing the performance appraisal to provide such feedback.

The second way managers can spur on incredible employee performance is by writing their performance appraisals in second person instead of third person. This is a subtle, but powerful technique at every manager’s disposal. When managers write performance appraisals in second person, the recipient tends to internalize the feedback more so than they would otherwise. In second person, the performance appraisal might read as follows, “John, you have done an outstanding job achieving all of your goals this year.” In this case, the performance appraisal is used as a written conversation between the manager and employee, as opposed to a conversation with someone else about the employee. Managers, imagine how you would feel if your manager accentuated all the positive things you achieved throughout the year and wrote the appraisal to you, rather than to someone else about you. Now imagine how your team members would feel if you did this for them.

In summary, the following things can help managers use performance appraisals to improve overall employee performance:

  • Accentuate the positive when writing performance appraisals.
  • Write performance appraisals in second person rather than third person.
  • If an employee is not performing well, clearly define measurable ways for the employee to address the issue well in advance of writing the performance appraisal. (If negative feedback is required, employees should never be surprised by it when reading their performance appraisal.)

By keeping these items in mind, you too can help your team members achieve incredible performance goals via the feedback they receive in their performance appraisal.

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Dr. Milton Mattox is a senior-level business executive, leader, and technologist who has worked with some of the world’s most acclaimed companies. An expert in software engineering, information technology, and quality process management, he continues to practice the leadership techniques and methodologies outlined in his books and articles to successfully increase return on investment for organizations and companies.

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