Performance Reviews: The Uncharted Wilderness
As the end of the year approaches, managers and employees approach the season (no, not that season) with dread. It’s performance review time.
At worst, performance reviews can be an exercise in frustration, tension, fruitless efforts to retrieve memories of untracked goals, and sometimes evasion and whitewashing. But at its best, the performance review can be an opportunity for reward, development and retargeting for the coming year.
Mark Goulston of Fast Company magazine offers some wise words.
It’s important for the manager to keep in mind the purpose of performance reviews in the first place. If you’re not careful, performance reviews can be taken as a look at past performance for which the employee expects to be either castigated for doing poorly or rewarded with a raise. But looking back is not what a performance review should be about. Instead, the right perspective would be to ask “what information can I provide this employee that will help him or her reach a higher level of performance in the future?”
Read the whole article here.