I once worked with a manager who never gave his staff realistic annual performance reviews. Everyone was apparently performing equally well. Eventually problems began to surface, so the director of HR sat down with him to find out why he hadn’t flagged up issues in good time. He claimed that he found it hard to find the right words – “I don’t find these conversations easy”. The company invited him and several others to a communications workshop, so that they could ...
If you are a regular reader of the CommsMasters blog, you’ll already know that I have a strong negative reaction to overly-structured, form-focussed performance review processes. Instead, the critical focus should be on the conversation that takes place between the leader and the direct report. The most effective performance reviews get the direct report talking a lot, with the leader encouraging useful reflection through the questions asked and adding their own feedback and views where these can add value. The ...
Hands up all you leaders out there who look forward to the annual round of formal performance reviews. And hands up everyone in Human Resources who enjoys the annual game of chase-up-the-leaders-who-haven’t-done their-performance-reviews. No one? Really? It’s  surprising how this most innocuous of leadership practices can turn fully-grown professionals into sulky, rebellious children at least once every twelve months. (For all those businesses where there are also formal reviews every six months or even every quarter, this resistance/chase-up spectacle can ...
Mercer’s 2013 Global Performance Management Survey reports that only 7% of managers were felt to be “highly skilled at having candid dialogue with their direct reports about performance”. The same survey found that approximately one in three organisations worldwide said that “improving managers’ ability to have candid dialogue with employees has the greatest impact on overall company performance”. So, one-third of companies recognise the crucial role of “candid dialogue” in improving organisational performance, while less than one in ten managers ...