Oh no… it’s annual-performance-review-time again!
We have all been there: it’s the end of the year and you are getting ready for your performance review. You have spent time preparing your arguments. You have done your self-assessment and you have gathered facts and metrics to support your views. And while meeting with your manager, you are blindsided…
In one of my previous jobs, I remember that one year my boss told me that I was showing too much empathy. This really hurt because we were not talking about my performance and the tasks I had or had not done well during the year, but we were talking about my personality and who I really am.
This statement came from a VP of HR, which made it even harder for me to understand how someone could be too empathetic. I mean, just open any LinkedIn blog post from 2017 and you will see that empathy was all that mattered at the time, and I believe still does. So I was left wondering… empathy is good, but not too much? What is too much? And what can I do about it if it’s just who I am?
This was an Ah-ha moment for me that we had to change the performance process to make it more human. As HR professionals, it’s our duty to make our people leaders and managers better at providing valuable feedback and it should be continuous. And I’m not talking about training them on the overall process and on how to use the performance management system. We should spend more time developing them on understanding people, their personality types and on linking behavioral profiles with actions and emotions. We need to make them aware that there is not one single good profile but instead helping them to know how to best work with all kinds of personalities — that our differences are our strengths. Moving to a behavioral approach for performance management means that instead of focusing solely on the results of the employee works, we work all year long on demonstrating what are the desirable behaviors.
A few years before I remember another performance review with another boss. She was telling me a lot of stuff she heard from my co-workers or other managers I have been working with during the year. The feedback was positive. But she didn’t say much about her own feelings and about what she thought herself about my performance. I could see that she was happy that I was managing an important project for her and that according to others I was doing fine so she didn’t have to spend too much time worrying about this.
Which meant that she also didn’t have to spend too much time worrying about me. I was so frustrated after this discussion and I quickly decided that it was time for me to move to another team with a boss who wanted to work with me and coach me.
A few months later though I realized that my former boss had always thought that I would not stay very long in the company. My behavior during the year made it worse as I was often showing her how frustrated I was that she was not paying attention to my project. By doing so I was actually giving her the feeling that I was not happy with the job and not to be trusted, and this reinforced her opinion that as soon as I would be done or would get a call from a recruiter, I would leave. Hence she didn’t feel like it was worth to spend too much of her time coaching me and helping me improve.
This is a classic story about blind spots in full effect. The traits we have but are unaware of; and the impact of those traits that others see, but we miss. My blind spot in the scenario above was that I was not inspiring trust, even though I was 100% sure that I was doing all I could to make the project a success. Instead of showing that the project was on track, I should have spent more time showing how excited I was with the project.
We have all been there. The way we see ourselves at work and the way others do is sometimes very different. And unfortunately it all culminates during the annual performance review.
This is also a story about why performance management is under fire in so many organizations. We don’t have enough conversations during the year to make sure that we are aligned on the right priorities. We don’t spend enough time during the year to have regular check-ins and feedback sessions.
How to improve the discussion?
We are at a time now where technology can help us to put people at the center of the performance management process.
Having regular touch-points or continuous feedback can help employees to maintain open discussions with their managers so that there’s no surprise at the end of the year and both can re-align throughout the year. It’s also important to have long-term objectives in mind and not to talk only about the last presentation or project.
I’m convinced that blending newer continuous feedback touch-points with a more formal performance review can bring together the best of both worlds.
But those benefits will only be achievable if we also help our managers understand their team members better. Having more regular and informed employee communication that focuses on people’s feelings would also bring a whole new perspective to a true People First performance management process.
Article first published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/oh-its-annual-performance-review-time-again-r%C3%A9mi-malenfant/
