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Humanocracy

Conversations, Not Evaluations

christopher-d-lee's picture

Conversations, Not Evaluations

Description 

We need a Performance IMPROVEMENT system, not a performance RATING System.  Most traditional systems are designed to look backwards and document and rate PAST performance.  Since we cannot change the past, our focus should be on taking actions to optimize current and future performance.  In 2006, I authored a book called PERFORMANCE CONVERSATIONS: An Alternative To Appraisals.  The idea of this work is that dialogue is the foundation to good performance management through the use of feedback and coaching.  The methodology I propose is to schedule periodic feedback sessions where the manager and employee come together like coach and athlete to partner toward great performance.  These meetings are non-evaluative.  The focus is on addressing three questions: 1) "What is going WELL?," with the goal of REPLICATING good performance; 2) "What is NOT going WELL?," with the goal of adjusting or CORRECTING issues; and 3) What ELSE is going on?," is designed to SHARE information as to uncover trends, patterns, potential issues and opportunities as to LEARN from the status quo and take appropriate actions.  The magic of the process comes from the collaboration, communication, and cooperation of two people working toward common objectives by discussing the most important things about work and agreeing upon the actions necessary to reach success.  Feedback, not appraisal; conversations, not evaluations is the way to performance improvement.     

First Steps (extra credit) 

The only things that are necessary to put the methodology into practice is to schedule periodic feedback sessions--every 4-10 weeks--depending upon the level of the employee and the type work being performed, and start engaging in earnest two-way dialogue that focuses on the most important and pressing challenges of work.  Then ask one another a series of questions about what are we going to do together to address them.  Accountability is built into the system as we both know we will have to disclose our relative successes and failures to one another in a few weeks and then ask for help, or ask what we can do to help the employee to succeed. 

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christopher-d-lee's picture

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bjarte-bogsnes's picture

Christopher,

I really like your forward looking and developement oriented approach, as opposed to the traditional backward oriented evaluation. There is actually a serious conflict between the two. Backward is typically about evaluation and consequences, while forward is about development. As mentioned in a comment to an earlier post, the two should not be mixed. Who would talk about development needs when "I am great" is a much better strategy for a good evaluation and nice consequences (i.e. rewards).

Thanks,
Bjarte

chris-grams's picture

We are definitely seeing the idea of two-way conversations come up regularly as a key thread in understanding how to replace performance management during the first sprint. The idea of them being non-evaluative is also a fantastic point here--by taking out the evaluation piece, it ensures that this really can be a true collaborative conversation instead of a critique disguised as a conversation. Great ideas, Christopher.