The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
According to SHRM, managers spend 210 hours or about 5 weeks a year doing performance management, and yet few people find value in it. That number may be surprising, but we think it’s insufficient. Performance management, assessing and developing people to perform at their best within your mission, is the work of leadership. Shouldn’t leaders spend more than a tenth of their available work time developing the capacity and capability of their people to perform? A McKinsey study found when companies focus on quality performance management they are four times as likely to outperform their peers and drive 30% higher revenue growth. So why don’t we spend more time perfecting these skills and systems?
For starters, people hate performance management. Giving feedback is uncomfortable at baseline, and can be difficult when managers lack training in the skill. Performance reviews or evaluations quickly become a hotbed of political jockeying instead of a meritocratic and growth-focused endeavor. Sprinkle in the ever-present stress of determining job security and pay, and it’s no wonder that most people would prefer to get through them as quickly (and ineffectively) as possible. But, the most successful companies tend to lean into this discomfort, so here are five ways your organization can easily improve its system.
Make it growth-oriented
Historically, the U.S. military created performance appraisals to weed out low performers. As organizational research began to highlight the benefits of developing people instead of simply managing them, systems increasingly focused on growth. Still, a yearly appraisal does not encourage growth. A good system ties an employee’s goals into the conversation. Understanding where they want to go professionally helps a manager tailor the conversation and offer opportunities to move them forward. This dramatically increases talent retention, especially in younger generations who tend to focus more on learning than compensation. A great system also incorporates some conversations about personal development. Helping employees navigate thresholds like parenthood and graduate school creates an important bond from person to organization.
Increase touchpoint frequency to a weekly basis
When performance really matters, performance management is almost continuous. As a Navy helicopter pilot, every flight was graded and I received ongoing feedback down to the minute. I needed to learn a complex skill quickly in order to keep people safe. Leonie Campbell has the same experience as a resident orthopedic surgeon and a pharmacist I spoke with shared a similar experience. Businesses often settle for once a quarter or once a year. If you are not checking in with direct reports and your boss weekly, you are absolutely missing out on growth opportunities. Note that these check-ins have to be structured. One thing you did well and one thing you like to improve is sufficient, but without that structure, the conversation quickly becomes: “All good?” “Yep.” “Me too, have a good weekend!”
Steep it in data
Nothing frustrated me more as a junior officer than my boss asking me to write my own performance evaluation. It felt like as my boss they should know what I did. As a more senior leader, I learned how difficult it is to know what everyone is doing. In The Digital Mindset, Leonardi and Neely advocate for a weekly report to a virtual boss to highlight accomplishments, roadblocks, and growth opportunities. That would be great for in-person work too. Even better would be a quick conversation to clarify the report, address the roadblocks, and celebrate the successes. That in a nutshell is a quality performance management system.
Disentangle growth and pay
In Thanks for the Feedback, Heen and Stone outline three types of feedback: evaluation, praise, and coaching. In a well-run system, weekly check-ins should collect the data required for evaluation but the conversation should focus almost exclusively on praise and coaching. People are smart. They will know if they are not meeting the standards. You can even give them nudges along the way. By making an appraisal conversation every 6 or 12 months the one clear moment you talk about pay and evaluation, you can allow people room to grow without inhibiting them with anxiety.
Set clear expectations
A friend in the Marine Corps once told me that good expectations included a task, standard, and time. That has stuck with me for the last two decades. If you intend to evaluate someone on their performance, you owe them crystal clear expectations. Tell them what they need to do, how well it should be done, and when you need it completed. Napoleon used to check with a low-ranking soldier to see if they could understand his intent before sending directives to his generals to ensure his expectations were clear. Try running your job descriptions and expectations by an outsider to check for yourself. Clear expectations allow people to focus on the work instead of deciphering what you want. More importantly, they make appraisals feel fair, which addresses one of the primary concerns of employees in all workplaces.
Solid systems + quality leadership
Performance management is a primary role of a leader in any strong organization. Few leaders are disciplined enough to keep all of the balls in the air, pay attention to all of their people, and fairly appraise performance over time without a good system to support. Good systems can become bureaucratic red tape in a flash, so keep it simple. Have your direct reports send you a quick weekly email including:
- what they accomplished
- current roadblocks
- what they want to learn/ current goals
- a bit of critical self-feedback
Follow up on the emails with a five-minute conversation including coaching and addressing roadblocks. Remember radical candor in these conversations and refuse to let them devolve into routine, surface-level exchanges. Keep all those emails and read over them before performance appraisals. Your people will love that you give consistent guidance and seem to know exactly what they have done over the last year (because you actually do). You will love not cramming 210 hours of work in once a year when evaluations pop up.
