#68: Part III: Finding Love IN Work (Performance Reviews - Chuck 'Em or Change 'Em)

This is PART III in a series on finding meaning, purpose, and love in work. The research is based on the principles of Positive Organizational Psychology (POP) which explores how positive organizations can foster growth and excellence.

In Part II of this series, I asked you to look for opportunities to use your strengths on a daily basis. Individuals who have the opportunity to use their strengths at work every single day are happier and more productive.

As we approach Spring Break and the school year begins to wind down, it is time to start reflecting on what we have accomplished and how we have grown. For many educators, this also means that it is time for end of year conferences or performance reviews. So far, I have yet to meet a teacher who is excited about these meetings. Therefore, for my last post in this series, I would like to address the performance review process and identify concrete ways to change this process to one that is more growth-oriented. Let's take a look at what we can chuck and what we should change to make this process more meaningful and less painful.

Chuck 'Em: More Data, More Problems
There are a number of well-documented problems with traditional performance reviews (Buckingham & Goodall, 2019):

• Forcing the Curve: Many organizations use a performance ranking system that ranks employees in a bell-shaped curve. Some employers feel that these are necessary to differentiate between the performance of employees across divisions. Unfortunately, if a division is full of "high-fliers" this system can inaccurately rank an employee's performance lower than it should be.
• Idiosyncratic Rating Effect: Research shows that people cannot reliably rate other people. An experiment conducted by Scullen and Mount, found that 54% of variance between performance scores could be explained by one factor - the uniqueness of the rater (p.141). In other words, the performance rating tells more about the reviewers and what they find to be important than the actual performance of the employee.
• Bad or Insufficient Data: It is hard to define and quantify many items on a performance review. For example, take the word "charismatic." There are a number of different definitions with characteristics like "outgoing," "energetic", "magnetic," and "people are naturally drawn to them." Each rater has a different definition as to what this looks like which undermines the reliability of the data.
• Negativity Bias: We tend to focus more on what's wrong than right. For example, when I receive my student surveys I focus on (maybe ruminate is a better word) on the one negative comment and ignore all of the positive ones. The same is true for performance evaluations. They might tell us what we are doing right, but we focus most on what we did "wrong."

Change 'Em: Isolate Performance
This information threw me for a loop when I learned it. Last year, I transitioned to an administrative role at my school. What is one of my new responsibilities? You guessed it, performance reviews! One thing that I learned that really resonated with me was that I need to examine how I react to each person rather than trying to measure them based on a specific quantity.

The book Nine Lies About Work suggests using the following four questions to isolate performance during the evaluation process process:

1. Do you turn to this team member when you want extraordinary results?
2. Do you choose to work with this team member as much as you possibly can?
3. Would you promote this person today if you could?
4. Do you think this person has a performance problem that you need to address immediately?(p. 155-157)

These are not perfect by any means but I found that they helped me identify high-fliers within my entire organization. So, change 'em or chuck 'em? I am going to go with change 'em. We still need a way to evaluate people but we need to be aware of our limitations.

Change 'Em: Future-Focused
One way to make these meetings more productive (and positive!) is to use this time as a way to preview goals for the upcoming year. There are a number of advantages to being future-focused during the review process: it leads to positive feelings about the future, increases the employee's self-efficacy, and can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies (Greenberg and Maymin, 2013, p.135). In addition, previewing goals allow teachers in particular to focus their summer professional development on where they want to go.

One way to accomplish this is to ask the following question as part of the review process:

"Imagine that it is a year from now and you are writing your performance review. What would you have to say about what you accomplished? Describe what you have done to achieve such a positive outcome." (Greenberg and Maymin, 2013, pp. 135).

The key here is that employees are not just visualizing where they want to be, they are describing how they are going to get there.

Change 'Em: More Feedback, Not Less
Feedback should be on-going, not just once a year. The amount of feedback should be based on how much experience the employee has and how challenging their goal is. Frequent feedback allows for a conversation to occur in which the focus is on growth, not a rating. In the end, what employees need is attention, especially positive attention. Positive attention is thirty times more powerful than negative attention in creating high-fliers. It is twelve-hundred times more powerful than ignoring people and providing no feedback. People crave attention. To make the biggest impact, pay attention to what they are doing right.

Change 'Em: Focus on Strengths
As you learned in the last post, one of the most powerful predictors of team performance and employee engagement is giving people the opportunity to use their strengths at work every single day. When we measure a person's performance, what we are really measuring is their growth and development during a period of time. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on an employee's strengths because developing one's strengths is what leads to growth! Fixing mistakes is a tool to prevent failure. In order to create excellence we must focus on what we are doing right. Looking for a temperature check? What's your reaction to the following statement: I receive more praise than criticism. Now, ask the same question to your team.

There is a time and a place for performance reviews - but we need to take a closer look at the processes we have in place and evaluate if they are accomplishing what we want them to accomplish. In the past, I have dreaded performance reviews. My work is part of my identity so I take negative feedback really personally and I know many other teachers feel the same way. My hope is that through shifting my process to one that is more strength-based and future-focused that I can make this process a little less painful and a little more meaningful for my teachers.

Other Posts in this Series

PartI: Finding Love IN Work (Love it or Loathe It)
Part II: Finding Love IN Work (What's Love Got to Do with It?)

Resources:

Buckingham, M. (2015, February 11). Most HR data is Bad Data. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved March 9, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2015/02/most-hr-data-is-bad-data#:~:text=The%20effect%20that%20ruins%20our,a%20rater%20I%20usually%20am.

Buckingham, M., & Goodall, A. (2019). Nine lies about work: A freethinking leader's guide to the real world. Harvard Business Review Press. Greenberg, M., & Maymin, S. (2013). Profit from the positive: Proven leadership strategies to boost productivity and Transform Your Business. McGraw-Hill.

Greenberg, M., & Maymin, S. (2013). Profit from the positive: Proven leadership strategies to boost productivity and Transform Your Business. McGraw-Hill.