Whether children or adults, people will live up to others' expectations of them. What are your employee evaluations telling your employees? How are these appraisals affecting their performance? In this document, Don Phin examines how employees react to performance evaluations, personally and professionally.
A famous experiment many years ago involved telling a group of blue-eyed students in front of their class that they were smarter than brown-eyed students. Not surprisingly, the blue-eyed children performed better during the next few months. Then one day the teacher told the class that she'd made a mistake, and in fact brown-eyed students were smarter than blue-eyed ones. Predictably, the scores of the brown-eyed children improved while those of the blue-eyed students deteriorated. The moral: Whether children or adults, people will live up to others' expectations of them.
Traditional job performance appraisals can have a negative impact on employees' self esteem. If you rate workers on a traditional 1-5 scale, an employee with a low rating might be motivated to improve out of fear for losing their job. But the long-term effect can be disastrous: Once the fear subsides, the worker will probably end up performing at the low level of the appraisal — p robably because they don't have an affinity for the job they're supposed to be doing. If this employee then confuses a poor performance rating with their self-identity, rather than their job performance, the effect on their productivity will be even worse.
To solve this problem, start by hiring people who have a natural affinity for the work they're doing. Assessment tools and skill tests will help you to do this. Then help employees feel good about themselves. Everyone who works for you should view themselves as a “5.” Focus on acknowledging what employees are doing right. Spend less than 20% of your time and energy focusing on their weaknesses. If you're certain that an employee — despite their skills, and your training — just “doesn't get it,” document the fact. Then focus on their conduct (don't use “you” phrases) and provide them the opportunity and resources needed to improve over the next 30 days. If the employee still isn't meeting their job expectations after that time, do everyone a favor and let them go.