He came out of
the room fully drained from the marathon discussion with his team member; the
appraisal had lasted more than five hours. His team was watching from the sides
of their eyes trying to guess who won. It was not the first time an appraisal
had taken that long with the appraisee. The demeanour suggested that the CIO
had not been able to prevail and had to concede some ground. The victor emerged
later beaming that he had the ratings he wanted in his appraisal.
For many this
time of the year – December – brings appraisal time when the annual game begins
with everyone attempting to be on their best behaviours; keep smiling, look
good, don’t upset the boss, don’t make mistakes, say all the nice things,
tolerate quirkiness that makes all bosses a pain. This time of the year (some
companies have different year ends and some countries like India have financial
year end in March) brings butterflies even to the strongest stomach,
irrespective of how well or badly they may have done.
Every company has
an annual appraisal cycle, some do it more often with a mid-term check, and few
have also adopted a quarterly discussion. Appraisals review performance against
set objectives in most cases and others review consistent productivity and
quality (e.g. production workers or financial back office or for that matter within
IT the helpdesk and system/database administrators). Mistakes are frowned upon
and may bring the score down. It matters since in almost all cases the
increments are linked to appraisals.
On top of this
exercise that forces managers to have a courageous conversation with their
team, many companies use bell curve to force fit performance within a function,
location or the entire company. The resultant pushbacks, disagreements, and
angst have been accepted with a hypothesis that bell curves take away
sub-optimal talent raising the performance bar. Statistically bell curves have
had no impact on corporate performance, profitability or relative growth in the
industry. Recent announcement by one of the tech bellwether companies
discarding the bell curve had many celebrating.
The CIO who had
aspirations to grow into a HR role was discussing how to manage the employee in
question who always managed to stay one up on him. Listening to the story, I
found myself at the edge of the seat with multiple questions and answers. I
could visualise the situations and his helplessness which arose due to his
inherent nature and behaviour. He was a good person and had done well over his
25 odd years of work life. He always drove decisions by consensus and avoided
conflict or confrontation.
Managing
recalcitrant behaviour does require a firm demeanour; his ability to remain on
top of the situation failed him many times when he was required to be
assertive, take a stand or give bad news. People took advantage of this and he
a backseat most of the time. The appraisal discussion was no different with the
employee using all instances to his advantage where he had raised the issue
with the CIO and not received feedback. The CIO was reluctant and did not know
how to give candid feedback.
Annual appraisals
are not the only opportunity to give feedback to a person in the team. It should
be continuous tactically and periodically planned discussion to review
progress, consider challenges, explore opportunities for improvement, and
overall development. Restricting this to once in a year takes away the context
and relevance or focuses only on the recent past. Performance review and
appraisal is an art and a science which is easily mastered, giving factual especially
negative feedback is an act of courage for many.
Many years later
I happened to meet the “difficult” employee; I found him knowledgeable with an
inherent need to talk and discuss throwing challenges to the other side as if
to test the other persons’ expertise. I enjoyed the conversation as he
gradually backed off and focused on the discussion at hand. I could see why he
would be a difficult person to manage if not held with a firm reign. He
received the suggestions and worked upon them. Today he has matured and manages
a team having himself survived multiple managers in the same company.
