Mention the phrase “performance review” in almost any office, and you’ll probably hear a collective groan. That’s because – to be brutally honest – the yearly performance measurement approach is a pain for everyone involved.
- Employees don’t like them because the appraisals can involve unpleasant surprises and often lack valuable feedback.
- Managers dread them because they add hours and hours of paperwork to already busy schedules.
- Executives see them as a necessary evil – a drain on resource, an inadequate gauge of past performance and a failure at motivating future performance.
Now, I’m not saying that yearly performance reviews are a total bust. Holding employees accountable for their yearly objectives is absolutely imperative. What I am saying is that annual reviews reveal only a portion of the actual value that employees deliver.
Think outside the checkbox.
Try to recall the last performance review form you came into contact with. I’m willing to bet it had at least a few checkboxes… something like this:
- Exceeded expectations – Met expectations – Failed to meet expectations
- Excellent – Good – Fair – Poor
- Recommended for pay increase – Not recommended for pay increase
- Succeeded – Tried hard – Made halfhearted attempt – Did not accomplish a darn thing
These checkboxes serve a function: to signify the basic responsibilities to which we hold our employees. Makes sense. We should make our basic expectations clear, and our employees should live up to them. But this is only one small aspect of fostering a successful workforce. There are at least two other areas in which employees must excel. One is their future potential. The other is their emotional expensiveness. And I argue that the initiative and the responsibility for these two essential elements should be shifted to the employee himself.
Yesterday is ancient history. What value can I add tomorrow?
Future potential is such an important part of the value equation, yet we pay it so little attention. Instead, we focus on last year’s achievements and shortcomings. The best employees take up this slack and keep a vigilant eye on future potential by:
- Focusing on personal and professional development inside and outside the organization, with reimbursed training and self-funded opportunities, both required and voluntary.
- Maintaining a large professional network to understand how they stack up to the highest performers in the industry – instead of relying on a manager to assess their worth once each year.
- Tracking trends in the industry and anticipating changes to remain prepared for an unknown future.
I’m a great worker, but do I bring too much drama?
Emotional expensiveness can be a big problem, even for some high performers. I encourage employees to increase their overall value by taking responsibility for the drama they bring to an organization. The best employees choose to minimize that drama and refuse to waste their energy on:
- Judging the actions of their boss or peers. Instead, they find out how to help – whether it involves providing feedback or clarifying goals, roles or procedures.
- Waiting for someone to change the circumstances. Instead, they accept the circumstances and ask, “What do I need to do to succeed anyway?”
- Being right all the time (rather than happy). Instead, they ask themselves, “What is the next thing I can do to add value?”
The new employee value equation
Employee value is simply a combination of current performance and future potential minus emotional expensiveness. I encourage employees to balance this equation themselves. And yes, it will require a new mindset for many. Employees need to initiate conversations about their objectives (instead of waiting for their leaders to do so), request feedback regularly (to avoid unpleasant surprises at annual review time) and make course adjustments as necessary (to keep themselves on track). And the payoff will be huge!
The results will be a reflection of their own hard work rather than a measurement of the manager’s skills in performance management. That’s the reality-based way to measure value – an approach that’s good for everyone involved.
Has your leader given you a development plan? If not, create your own using this template from Cy.
