It’s about that time of the year to have staff/self-evaluations. If you are like 90%+ of organizations this process goes something like this: fill out self-evaluation, supervisor reads it and fills out their part, you both have the formal meeting (where nothing major happens), you both sign off that the meeting happened, human resources get the document stating the meeting happened, and then you wait a year to do it all over again. Sounds like a waste of time, right? That’s because, the above-mentioned process IS a waste of time; filling out vague documents that do not serve the employee, supervisor, or team. Imagine a world where staff evaluations can be used to help improve your staff’s pay, personal life, career progress, and greater sense of purpose (Keir’s 4 P’s), in addition to driving home the standards of performance for the team?
How can it look?
WWJD? There are many people who ask themselves this – nope, not the guy with the long hair who turned water into wine – the other holy man. The guy who tells you to wake up at 4am every day. Yes, Jocko. Why am I bringing his holiness up? One of his books, it’s called The Code. The Evaluation. The Protocols. Do I think Jocko is over the top? Yup. Do I think there is something to be learned from this book on how to exactly measure performance in an area? Yup. Here’s an example:
Category: Professional Development
Attribute: Advancement/Qualifications
Description: Identifying and accomplishing the required steps and professional education to increase responsibility and value to the organization
Score: 0. Did nothing to move down the path for increased growth and responsibility.
Score: 1. Pursued information regarding useful qualifications for my professional. Sought out guidance and advice from others to determine how best to engage in the future.
Score: 2-4. Actively pursued professional certs and credentials. Sought out and implemented expert advice regarding additional higher-level certs.
Score: 5. Took a most significant step towards achieving professional certs and credentials. Deeply involved with mentors regarding additional higher-level certs and optimized path to achieving them.
Again, it may be a little over the top but in a world of vague staff evaluations, more detail is welcomed.
Why does it matter?
You might be wondering, why does this matter? I have had these vague performance meetings with my staff before and it has worked. You might have even had these vague meetings when you were an assistant and look at you now, in charge of a high-performance team. However, what got you here, won’t get you there. Much like you’re programming, it needs to evolve. When you waste your staff’s time with these documents and meetings, you are undermining them as people. This doesn’t make their personal life any better when working for you. Not to mention, you are not doing your staff any justice for their career progression with vague outcomes and measurements of their success (there those 4 P’s are again).
Rather than the vague format that is used by 90%+ of performance teams, having more detailed examples of scoring for staff evaluations can help your staff obtain a better financial situation (4 P’s yet again). When you take information up the chain of command stating that your staff “Took significant steps towards achieving professional certs and credentials. Deeply involved with mentors regarding additional higher-level certs and optimized path to achieving them” with respect to continuing education, versus exceeded expectations. Which type of information will your chain of command likely allocate more resources (money) towards? Apply this detail across multiple areas of evaluation, and it becomes quite easy for you to advocate for a raise, promotion, or an improved title for your staff.
Additionally, having clear definitions and standards within your review helps protect the employee. For confidentiality purposes I will keep all examples anonymous during this article – I have heard and seen evaluations where vagueness hurts the employee. This happens when the high-performance manager has an issue with a subordinate and takes it out on them during the performance review. This results in “sub-optimal” and “below expectation” ratings because the high-performance manager didn’t like the fact that the subordinate applied for another job or misunderstood what the HPM said. The issues of these types of managers are outside the scope of this article. The point remains, because of the vague performance review, the high-performance director can assign these negative marks because there isn’t a defined measure of each grade.
On the flip side, as the high-performance manager, when you don’t have detail and simply brush these reviews off and score your employees on the high end (because after all they are your staff, so why wouldn’t they be doing a great job) it’s hard to get rid of someone. Year after year when you give high marks, there is a track record of excellent work from your subordinates. Well, when it comes time to remove someone from a job, you now must fight against all your prior years of documents high marks. Think I am joking? This situation and thought process came from an employee where this is current practice RIGHT NOW. This lack of attention and simple “checking the box” for performance review currently happens for a top 25 FBS football team – and has happened for multiple years.
Who’s doing it wrong?
To me, 90%+ colleges/universities are doing it wrong. The reason is their evals look just like this:
Category: Communication
Areas:
- Effectively communicates with staff
- Effectively communicates with student-athletes (if applicable)
- Good listening skills
- Responds in a timely manner
Grade options in each area
- Unacceptable
- Needs improvement
- Meets expectations
- Exceeds expectations
What is the expectation? What is a timely manner? What is effective communication with staff and athletes? The staffs who use this are simply having the review to check a box. At no point is there enough evidence to advance the employees pay or progress their careers.
Another program doing it wrong is the top 25 FBS staff that I mentioned prior. This program has the entire staff sit in one office, put all the staff’s performance reviews up on a tv, fill it out together, laugh about how stupid the process is, and repeat in 365 days.
The final group of people failing miserably at this is the group who takes their insecurities out on their staff through staff evaluations because their staff applied for a new job to help their career progress and the HPM took that as an attack on their ego – so they grade the staff member negatively. Remember, THESE TYPE OF REVIEWS ARE ACTUALLY HAPPENING. I am purposefully keeping information as vague as possible so no staffs can be identified, but this type of review is the norm and does happen.
Who’s doing it right?
Now that we know about the programs that are doing an awful job, which do it right? Keeping these programs anonymous as well – two stood out to me. One program uses specific questions from the book ‘Ideal Team Player’ by Patrick Lencioni, to evaluate their staff. Each specific question helps identify the strength of the staff member based on their hunger, humility, and their ability to work with others. Once complete, this staff can identity their staff members from the 9 different types and see who is an ideal team player or who might be a wrong fit. Additionally, this staff will look at specific KPI’s from the strength coach’s team to track measurable progress.
The second staff who does evaluations the right way has a specific measurement for each area/criterion and displays it for the staff to know how they are being graded. Additionally, this staff has an area where the staff can specifically grade and comment on how the department as a whole is operating – thus helping the subordinates lead up the chain of command. An example from this staff:
Question: As a staff, what were we great, good, and bad at this last semester?
Great:
Good:
Bad:
This staff also has specific on-field and weight room KPI’s that the HPM looks at, to measure the success of the training program from the strength coach.
Underlying principles
At the end of the day, the qualities that separate the good staff evaluations from the bad ones, are the clarity and reinforcement of staff standards by organizations. The best staff evaluations, come from the best staffs who know exactly who they are, can write it down, and specifically measure their staff on their ability to operate within the standards. Bad evaluations and bad teams are vague and simply view the performance review as something to get done for HR. When you use these staff evaluations right, you can help your staff improve their pay, personal life, career progression, and sense of purpose within the organization.
Next Steps
Now what? It’s time to take a look in the mirror at your staff and the evaluations you have for them.
Do you even have them?
How defined are they?
Rewrite them with examples for each score and category. Take time with this process, yes it will be time-consuming at first since you don’t have them set in stone. Reviewing your staff is like hiring them all over, you want to hire slowly, making sure you have the right staff, you want to do the same now. Make sure each individual is still the right fit for the high-performance team. If not, use this as the starting point to help guide exactly how to groom them. How to do that?
Define what success looks like in each area
Scale it how you like
What is ___ number look like in each category for your team and each member
Pass this out to everyone so they know what the standards of performance are
Once you have done that you are ahead of 90% of the high-performance staffs out there.
