Success Secrets and Stories
To share management leadership concepts that actually work.
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Success Secrets and Stories
Cultivating Growth-Oriented Leadership with Advanced Appraisal Methods
Unlock the secrets to enhancing your leadership through the transformative power of performance appraisals as Greg Powell and I dissect the evolution of this pivotal management tool. Get ready to learn how comparison scales have made way for today's dynamic, participative methods, promising you a roadmap to foster genuine engagement and master realistic goal-setting for your team. We'll guide you through the five levels of management philosophy, from unconscious to responsible, and show you how to apply these insights for a thriving workforce.
Tune in and absorb the tactics behind successful performance reviews, like the empowering 360 reviews and introspective self-assessments, and how they craft a comprehensive feedback loop that's critical for growth. We reveal the art of ongoing development conversations and authentic interactions, illuminating the path for both seasoned leaders and management hopefuls. With our deep-dive into the strategies and philosophies that shape effective leadership, we provide a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone aiming to elevate their approach to performance appraisals and carve out a legacy of influential management.
Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell
Well, hello everyone and welcome to our podcast Success Secrets and Stories. I'm your host, John Manolowski, and I'm here with my co-host and friend, Greg Powell. Greg, hey, everybody. Yeah, so today this podcast is going to be covering the basic management philosophy, concepts on career evaluation methods, better known as performance reviews, and just a little tidbit in my little world and I hate the word performance reviews, I love career reviews, but we're going to talk about that in a little bit more detail. And this is actually a category that's going to affect our next podcast, because it talks about leadership and it talks about how you communicate as leadership to employees, to coworkers. How is it that you're actually doing your job and how is it being evaluated?
Speaker 2:Now we've talked a lot about the levels that I learned originally with the very first concepts of MBR Back in basically 2000,. It was responsible, achievement, conformist, self-protective and the unconscious Understand. The next time we talk about in terms of leadership styles, I'm going to kind of do a little bit of a twist. I'm going to talk about the management responsibility approach in 2024. And that list changes from what I've just described to dictator, expert, hero, conductor and developer, and I'll make more sense on our next podcast. But in terms of the psychology of leadership, in terms of performance evaluations, the unconscious, which is one of those categories one out of five is management by default. Performance evaluation methods don't exist. They avoid all feedback. Somebody who's managing at this level. If forced by the organization, the manager will have to make out their own evaluation and prefers an objective checklist rather than actually having any fill in the blank. They really don't want input, they want to make it go away as fast as they can.
Speaker 2:The next level is the self-protective, and that nickname or or another name for that group, is called the management by dictatorship. Yeah, so the performance methods for those folks it's kind of interesting. It's infrequent, used to display authority. A positive review is seldom given. Negative or punitive reviews are given to define fault and blame and is basically a vehicle to try to get someone fired. Fault and blame and is basically a vehicle to try to get someone fired. The last thing you want to try to do if you're trying to lead a team is only have a performance review when it's bad. I can't imagine a worse approach.
Speaker 2:The conformance level of management is what Dr Durst calls the status quo, and their performance review approach is more infrequent. It's used to build morale. It is positive and it's cliche, riddled with things that try to sound more like a cheerleading exercise than an actual performance review. Negative is avoided because the staff are very fragile. They really can't handle the drama. I think it's more specific the manager can't handle the drama. So the next level is the achievement level, which Dr Durst defines as management by crisis.
Speaker 2:So performance evaluation methods frequently are based on positive and negative performance used to increase performance. Negative, based on performance failures and due dates are really a tool for someone who's in that category to push their agenda and how you're going to make them look better if you can get the things that are holding the team back and they're very crafty because they're selling. They're selling all the time. Somebody who's at the responsible level, which Dr Durst defines as management by responsibility. The performance evaluations are frequent and on a regular basis, used as a learning experience positive and realistic, genuine feedback.
Speaker 2:If there is negative reviews, it is constructive and candid. Now I will also add that if you're only having a performance review, a little bit more of what Dr Durst talks about in 2024 is developer and that's why we're going to talk about it in our next podcast, but it is an important element of being able to do it on a frequent basis, not a yearly basis, and trying to do that engagement with your staff on a very frequent approach is, I think, where they find out if you're, if you're honest, if you're candid and you're realistic in terms of goals that you're giving people and you give them the opportunity to basically push back, you're doing a better job. So it isn't, it isn't once a year, and I guess that's the reason why performance reviews are a tricky business. Now, Greg, you being a human resource professional for the majority of your career, I think you'd do a better job of explaining what a performance review really means and what it's really trying to accomplish, and maybe give us a little background on where performance reviews really came from.
Speaker 1:Thanks, john. Yeah, let me give you a little bit of the evolution of performance management for performance appraisals. So back in the 1900s it's been referred to as the dawn of performance appraisals. Performance appraisal system was invented by a gentleman by the name of Walter D Scott who introduced the concept of man-to-man comparison scale. In the 1950s there was something called the flawed formal system Formal performance appraisals were common during this time which was flawed because it monitored a person's inherent personality for measuring performance. And then in the 1960s, the infamous annual confidential reports. Right, maybe they called them IACRs Probably was an acronym for them. No remarks from those reports were ever shared in the 60s, but they were there, they were recorded.
Speaker 2:They had secret, secret appraisals Awesome.
Speaker 1:Secret appraisal probably double secret access to get to see those appraisals. So in the 1970s, we call that a key hallmark. During this era, for the first time, employees were communicated the adverse, negative remarks from performance reports. I guess you call that a good start, but at least there was some honest feedback started to come back, but the turning point was in the 1980s. Multi-person rating became popular during the 1980s and 90s as it was the forefront of 360-degree feedback.
Speaker 1:In the 2000s, holistic measures appraisal processes became more development-driven, target-based, participative and open instead of being considered a closed-room confidential affair. And we're calling 2010 to 2020 a promising time. Companies started stripping down traditional hierarchies and ditching the annual performance reviews in favor of continuous feedback. What John's talking about? Not an annual performance review, career feedback in 2030,. Artificial intelligence will transform all future HR operations and performance focus will shift from the number of feedback check-ins to the quality of the feedback. I can't promise you that, but that's what one prediction is, and I want to thank the Darwin box they do a lot of HR software for coming up with this model.
Speaker 1:So let me share with you some performance appraisal approaches you've probably heard of before Good old MBO, management by objectives, and that's a method and philosophy of managerial practice that involves planning, organizing, communicating, et cetera. Some of you have heard of BARS behavioral anchored rating scales. So all the qualitative advantages of narrative critical incidents with the quantitative benefits of rating scales. And also moving into the assessment center method, imagine employees getting together at a specified center and get assessed by their manager of their tasks, whether it's by group or individual. Psychological appraisals is just what the name implies. Qualified psychologists conduct different types of tests on employees to indicate the employee's future performance and leadership qualities and capabilities. Graphic rating scale the old-fashioned one is low, five is high. Numerical scale that gives you know is actually the label for an employee's performance. Critical incident method yes, that's how it sounds. Critical incidents are kept in a file. Negative examples of the employee's work-related behavior the old-fashioned checklist method and then 360-degree appraisals, which we'll talk a little bit more about here shortly.
Speaker 1:So when you think about what are the top two today, the first one I would suggest would be 360 review. Now, this is something you do not do every year. It might be a couple of years because after you do the review, you need time to assess what the material was. What do you need to do to change and then put a plan in place and then actually put that plan into effect to break the change. And then you need a body of time to make the change 360 feedback is great because you get multifaceted feedback, so not just from your boss, not just from your employees, but key customers, some of your peers, and you need enough to have representation so that you can see, you know what areas are you working really well, what parties you're working well with, others that you can work better with. But can be a very powerful tool if taken in the spirit of feedback.
Speaker 1:The self-assessment Now. This is interesting as well for a couple of reasons. I can think of some people that have horror stories. Some managers just say, oh my gosh, this was before self-assessment. I got my review with my person. Tomorrow I'm going to do a creative writing experiment tonight because I can't remember half of what happened the last year and they just doctor something up and put it on a piece of paper and hope that they got it right and the employee took it well.
Speaker 1:Well, with the advent of self-assessments, the employee does get a chance to write down record. I should say what they thought went well, what could have been better development opportunities, et cetera, and they share that with their boss, who in turn takes a management review so their review and puts those together. So now you've got the employee self-assessment, you've got the manager review, and I like to believe that with a discussion you can make sure there's clarity on all fronts what's going well, what can be better, how to help things be better, and so it's a really participative way to get feedback and then give that feedback to employees. So, john, talk to us a little bit about development assessment, career development assessment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, before we go there, though, the self-assessment and the management assessment piece of it is really where you're seeing that scale that you were talking about before, where people are getting engaged in the process. There is a give and take in compromises and also, I think, a better way of communicating. So that's what I think people are trying to recommend, rather than a lot of the other formats. That's probably the best appraisal system. As long as it isn't done quarterly. That's almost something that you can talk about on a weekly basis. That when you have that annual requirement. It's a combination of a lot of different conversations, basically from usually last year's assessment. So all this, for what it's worth, is the history of how it's applied in a technical sense, that Greg has done in his career. But if you were a manager or a director or a regional director, whatever you're doing in terms of the job, how you actually apply yourself to doing a assessment or doing a review is probably the most critical part, and I always found it one of the hardest things for me to do in terms of my career is the time and the effort that you put behind. That is something that that person is really looking for. What do you think of me and you don't take that time lightly. I always struggled because I wanted to make sure it was genuine, it was fair and it was as candid as possible so that they're getting an honest assessment of where they're at and if you're doing it right. One of the best things is you're getting an opportunity to look into what the employee wants to do with their career, and that's really when you're really combining your performance and your training and your career all in the same conversation. When you're doing it once a year if you're doing a 360, you can't combine them, but if you're really working with the people, you're trying to basically mesh that together, month after month, quarter after quarter, so that that assessment piece of it kind of crescendos to what you're trying to accomplish and you're giving it to executive management so that they can see progress or they can see the needs of the department.
Speaker 2:The other part that I think is really important is goal setting is an exercise for both management and for the employee, but it's coaching opportunities and things that they need in terms of training or equipment that they need that they don't have. I also believe that one of the most important roles of a manager is to develop their staff for advancement if that's what they want to do and anybody who's really engaged in the process and is interested in trying to improve themselves technical training, or maybe they want to go for a degree and they're looking for formal education. But it's that element of how do you strive to get to that next level, how do you actually participate in helping them with that advancement. And I have found that the advantages of engaging in this process, of really trying to be active with the employee, is that you're not blindsiding them with an annual review. They have an opportunity to grow throughout the year on where their assessment is at the 360, I think is a very good format to say well in our department we think we're really doing well, but our customers, the people we support, aren't quite as happy with what we're doing, aren't quite as happy with what we're doing, and that sometimes is technically correct or it's the impression of us not giving the right kind of support and they need a little bit more background, not excuses, on what we're delivering as far as a service. Now, the other advantage of going through this format is career discussions make a difference If you understand the employee's goals, asking about their progress in terms of what they've done in training, what they've done in terms of tools and the needs that they have to try to look at their next step.
Speaker 2:That's a good conversation to have on a regular basis rather than once a year. But I will tell you the one thing that I look for from a leader that reports to me, a supervisor, a manager that reports to me, is who on your staff can you develop to that next stage in terms of leadership? If we're hiring somebody, we should be looking at somebody that is filling the bench and giving us the ability to promote from within, to promote from within. So we want to challenge maybe not so much the staff that's there, but maybe who is coming in that can help the organization grow and, most of all, a career discussion. A performance discussion should be candid and is honest and is straightforward. There's no need to try to sugarcoat the truth. That's probably the one thing that I have found is appreciated whenever I've gone through a review. It may not have been positive, but it was truthful and they can tell the difference Disadvantages.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you can have a discussion that they're talking about improving on their job and it gets into a pay discussion and, trust me, pay will come up when they're talking about performance reviews, because they're putting in the effort.
Speaker 2:They want to see if management is correspondingly adjusting pay scales that are staying current with the cost of living. I understand that we also have to give them the opportunity to step back and see all the other advantages that maybe the organization has done in terms of benefits. But pay should also be something that management should understand. If there's high turnover because the competitor up the street is paying $3 more an hour, that's going to affect your ability to hold on staff and it's going to affect retention and it's still a conversation that needs to be had. Until you have a conversation with the employee about career goals, your ability to help that employee is limited to a department, employee number, a start date and how many people are part of your organized team. That is not the purpose of what we do in management. We're supposed to engage these individuals to help them to that next level, to that next year, whatever it may be. Just considering them part of the payroll is just really exhausting and I've seen people who have done that, greg.
Speaker 1:So just a quick example. We like to talk about stories from time to time. John and I think about a company not so long ago for me and we went through what I would call the evolution of performance reviews. As I've mentioned earlier, we got it down to beating formerly four times a year at least you could be more often than that and it was really more of a conversation and we had questions. Here were the questions you asked the employee and then the manager would answer the same questions what's going well, what could be going better, what's your focus for the next period, next three months, and what learning or development opportunities are you pursuing in the future? And you would have that every quarter.
Speaker 1:And the good part about that was it was a discussion it wasn't to be afraid of. It wasn't about oh my gosh, if we don't get this one right in the performance review, I'm going to get a negative compensation, I'm not going to get a bonus or whatever. But we wanted to make a conversational relationship. They were having one-on-ones, they were having project meetings, but we really wanted to be beyond. Oh gosh, hey, I've got that performance review. And your wife says later your spouse, how did it go today, hon. Hey, I had a great conversation with my boss about how things are going, what I can do better, what they can do to support me. It was a great conversation. I'm really excited about the next period. So we got to a pretty good place with that. I'm not sure if they're still using that methodology or not, but it took a lot of the stress out but really helped develop people and really helped get feedback.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean having a formal way of doing it quarterly makes so much sense because I've I've seen some people that are hiding from that conversation about performance and a manager hiding from that conversation of performance with their staff. What in the world is going on If? If that's happening is just a comedy of errors, and and it's interesting that I've done it a couple of times where I've been in the room and I've just encouraged the conversation the issues get solved, the employee leaves and the manager looks at me and how did you do that? And it's like you start Well, as you described it, quarterly. They had starting notes and ways to start conversation so that you have the ability to answer.
Speaker 2:One of the favorites for our maintenance staff is similar questions, but we would throw in what tools do you need that you don't have today, that you need in order to be productive, and do other people need the same tool? And you know it's just that basic of if you're not asking us, we're going to stand up and ask you specifically what do you need? That's, that's really good management. Let me see If you're asking your employee to fill out the review, the reviews sometimes I consider that cheating and the employee considers it cheating, but a self-assessment is what Greg was talking about and I think that piece of it, when it's done right, you're learning about things that they're doing on their own that you weren't aware of, because if you're not micromanaging somebody, they're going to be doing work that you're not aware of, and that's the implied trust and the application of leadership. And the application of leadership and this is their opportunity to try to share with you what it is that they're doing for you, for the team, and that assessment and a lot of what I've worked with Greg and I have agreed the assessment, self-assessment has to be combined with the management assessment and then there needs to be a conversation to combine the scoring. Now I'll tell you one scoring discussion that I find aggravating is they want usually a score between one and three and I like one to five, I like one to ten, and a lot of the HR folks will say, look, either you like them, like, like, like the work, or you don't like the work.
Speaker 2:A grade of eight or six isn't telling anybody anything. Either you are or you aren't, or it doesn't matter and it's neutral. You want to do that? That's fine, but you're trying to drive results, not drive impressions, and that's, I think, the way that they phrased it to me. It sounds familiar Greg, sounds very familiar John. So engineers want more numbers, but we weren't getting any more numbers. This is all you get, pal.
Speaker 2:But I can't explain better the psychology of leadership than the whole thing about evaluating their performance. And how management conducts themselves is a mirror on whether you're taking it seriously or not, and they'll see through someone who is faking it in a heartbeat. If it means something to them and it means something to you, you get a very productive review and it's a. It's an amazing tool. If you use it the right way and you put that whole part of being candid and being honest, it really does work out.
Speaker 2:And I think it also helps us try to talk about the next subject, which I think is going to be something that's going to be interesting in terms of describing management styles, and we're going to do something that's a little bit different. We're going to go to the 2024 description for leadership style. So I'm going to kind of break away from the 2000 model and Greg and I are going to explain what I think is Dr Durst's change to that approach. But you know, in the 21st century, what are we supposed to be doing going forward and leadership style is a little bit different. It doesn't fit into that old model really well and his new model does a very great job, and we're going to talk about Success Growth Academy.
Speaker 2:Anyway, if you like what you heard, yeah, my book is available on amazoncom and lulucom called Building your Leadership Toolbox. That same book is available as an e-book format at Barnes Noble. Success Secrets and Stories is what you're listening to, thank you, and also on a lot of other popular podcast formats. Dr Durst's books and MBR program is available on successgrowthacademycom, subject for our next podcast. If you'd like to talk to us, we have our emails. Mine is wando75.jw at gmailcom and Greg.
Speaker 1:I can reach at gpowell374 at gmailcom and Greg, I can reach at G Powell three seven four at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we also have another format called bias, a cup of coffee where you can leave a message. The music has been brought to you by my grandson and we want to hear from you, so if you have an opportunity, drop us a line. Well, thanks, greg.
Speaker 1:Thanks, thanks, greg, thanks John, as always.
Speaker 2:Next time.