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New research shows that one of the greatest sources of stress is the annual performance review. Under the guise of ¨constructive criticism,¨ evaluations can be used by bad bosses to dominate and undermine workers; they can instill fear; and they might end up making people less effective. Should companies do away with workplace evaluations?
On May 28 I wrote in these pages that 40 percent of U.S. workers said in a survey their workloads had grown over the past year. At the same time 36 percent of employers reported they had tightened pressure on workers to be more productive.
During the recession, businesses produced 3 percent fewer goods and services, but they did so with employees working 10 percent fewer hours, squeezing dramatically higher output from every worker.
Now I want to turn to one culprit that produces extra stress: the annual performance review.
Annual reviews, says Samuel A. Culbert, a clinical psychologist who teaches at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, not only create a high level of stress for workers but end up making everybody—bosses and subordinates—less effective at their jobs.
He argues reviews are so subjective—so dependent on the worker’s relationship with the boss—as to be meaningless. He says he has heard from countless workers who say their work life was ruined by an unfair review.
“There is a very bad set of values that are embedded in the air because of performance reviews,” Culbert said in an interview with the New York Times.
Frank Cordaro, 56, of Ontario, N.Y., said years of good performance were undone by one bad review from a new manager. He refused to sign the review and ended up taking medication to cope with the anxiety and stress at work. Eventually he lost his job.
“It played hell with my physical health, my mental health, too,” said Mr. Cordaro, adding that he is much happier since he started his own business. “When you’re always fearing for your job, it’s not a good situation.”
Not every expert agrees that reviews should simply be abolished. Robert I. Sutton, a Stanford University management professor, says they can be valuable if properly executed. But he added, “In the typical case, it’s done so badly it’s better not to do it at all.”
Mark Shahriary, president and CEO of Lucix Corporation in Camarillo, Calif., said he stopped doing performance reviews after witnessing the emotional havoc they created for workers at his previous job.
“People confuse the review with who they are,” he said. “If they get a review saying, ‘You’re not effective at work,’ they would hear, ‘You’re not effective as a person.’ ”
Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash., said office bullies have been known to use performance reviews to undermine a worker.
“I say, ‘Throw it out,’ because it becomes a very biased, error-prone and abuse-prone system,” said Dr. Namie, the author of “The Bully at Work” (Sourcebooks, 2000).
“It should be replaced by daily ongoing contact with managers who know the work and who can become coaches.”
That is the operational word: coaches. Bosses who aspire to be great bosses may want to consider adding coaching to their leadership repertoire.
According to my colleague Mick Crews, former vice chairman of Cunard Ellerman, ¨coaching is one discrete activity of managing.¨ As an effective manager, you have to know when to put on your coaching hat.
This is especially true in today’s information society, where your intellectual capital leaves the company every night. Bill Walsh, the celebrated former Stanford University head coach who died in 2007, said once: “Some of the most talented people are the ones who are the most independent.”
In the old industrial paradigm, managers could get by without coaching. Command-and-control was good enough.
But in the age of independent knowledge workers, when your company’s intellectual assets leave the door every night, the best managers are no longer the ones who treat their people like objects to move around and manage; the best managers are committed to their organization’s “leadership pipeline,” and use coaching to widen their funnel of leadership.
Fortunately more and more companies and leaders employ coaches. In a 2008 Fast Company survey, 63% of organizations said they planned to increase their use of coaching over the next five years. Most telling, 92% of leaders being coached said they planned to use a coach again to keep polishing their leadership.
And leadership is that elusive quality that you can never have enough of. How many real leaders (not just managers) does your company have right now?
Imagine it had double the number; what would be achievable, and achieved, that is now a frivolous dream? That type of leadership explosion is what true coaching, not annual performance reviews, can bring about.
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P.S. If you like this article, click on the ¨Share¨ button above. And/or retweet it.
See also ¨Time to Review Workplace Reviews?¨ New York Times, May 17, 2010
On May 28 I wrote in these pages that 40 percent of U.S. workers said in a survey their workloads had grown over the past year. At the same time 36 percent of employers reported they had tightened pressure on workers to be more productive.
During the recession, businesses produced 3 percent fewer goods and services, but they did so with employees working 10 percent fewer hours, squeezing dramatically higher output from every worker.
Now I want to turn to one culprit that produces extra stress: the annual performance review.
Annual reviews, says Samuel A. Culbert, a clinical psychologist who teaches at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, not only create a high level of stress for workers but end up making everybody—bosses and subordinates—less effective at their jobs.
He argues reviews are so subjective—so dependent on the worker’s relationship with the boss—as to be meaningless. He says he has heard from countless workers who say their work life was ruined by an unfair review.
“There is a very bad set of values that are embedded in the air because of performance reviews,” Culbert said in an interview with the New York Times.
Frank Cordaro, 56, of Ontario, N.Y., said years of good performance were undone by one bad review from a new manager. He refused to sign the review and ended up taking medication to cope with the anxiety and stress at work. Eventually he lost his job.
“It played hell with my physical health, my mental health, too,” said Mr. Cordaro, adding that he is much happier since he started his own business. “When you’re always fearing for your job, it’s not a good situation.”
Not every expert agrees that reviews should simply be abolished. Robert I. Sutton, a Stanford University management professor, says they can be valuable if properly executed. But he added, “In the typical case, it’s done so badly it’s better not to do it at all.”
Mark Shahriary, president and CEO of Lucix Corporation in Camarillo, Calif., said he stopped doing performance reviews after witnessing the emotional havoc they created for workers at his previous job.
“People confuse the review with who they are,” he said. “If they get a review saying, ‘You’re not effective at work,’ they would hear, ‘You’re not effective as a person.’ ”
Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash., said office bullies have been known to use performance reviews to undermine a worker.
“I say, ‘Throw it out,’ because it becomes a very biased, error-prone and abuse-prone system,” said Dr. Namie, the author of “The Bully at Work” (Sourcebooks, 2000).
“It should be replaced by daily ongoing contact with managers who know the work and who can become coaches.”
That is the operational word: coaches. Bosses who aspire to be great bosses may want to consider adding coaching to their leadership repertoire.
According to my colleague Mick Crews, former vice chairman of Cunard Ellerman, ¨coaching is one discrete activity of managing.¨ As an effective manager, you have to know when to put on your coaching hat.
This is especially true in today’s information society, where your intellectual capital leaves the company every night. Bill Walsh, the celebrated former Stanford University head coach who died in 2007, said once: “Some of the most talented people are the ones who are the most independent.”
In the old industrial paradigm, managers could get by without coaching. Command-and-control was good enough.
But in the age of independent knowledge workers, when your company’s intellectual assets leave the door every night, the best managers are no longer the ones who treat their people like objects to move around and manage; the best managers are committed to their organization’s “leadership pipeline,” and use coaching to widen their funnel of leadership.
Fortunately more and more companies and leaders employ coaches. In a 2008 Fast Company survey, 63% of organizations said they planned to increase their use of coaching over the next five years. Most telling, 92% of leaders being coached said they planned to use a coach again to keep polishing their leadership.
And leadership is that elusive quality that you can never have enough of. How many real leaders (not just managers) does your company have right now?
Imagine it had double the number; what would be achievable, and achieved, that is now a frivolous dream? That type of leadership explosion is what true coaching, not annual performance reviews, can bring about.
P.S. If you like this article, click on the ¨Share¨ button above. And/or retweet it.
See also ¨Time to Review Workplace Reviews?¨ New York Times, May 17, 2010
So true, but unfortunately there are many companies who have "coaches" who will then have to deliver reviews, so in a way it is just performance reviews repackaged... the trouble is that real leadership is time-consuming and may have to be tailored to the individuals being lead, which is more than most managers are willing/capable of giving!
ReplyDeleteyou are right on both counts. the term ¨coaching¨ (as you indicate with your quotation marks) has been abused all too often to mask force and top-down domination. to return the term to its original meaning (a coach is a vehicle that gets people from point a to point b, as in ¨do you fly business class or coach?¨), the coaching client would have to co-design the performance review. call me over-optimistic, but i see more and more business leaders who know that the investment in their people power pays rich dividends.
ReplyDeleteEliminating performance reviews policy should be studied first in a company. Further studies should be made and considered.
ReplyDeletecertainly. that is the purpose of my post: to provoke further inquiry and shed light on the practice to see whether and how it should be done.
ReplyDeleteI say throw it out as well. Most people have no idea what to do or how to conduct them. In my honest opinion, a person's performance should be reviewed throughout the person's employment, not just performance review time. If someone is not performing to task, it is up to the manager to discuss the situation in a timely matter to try and correct the situation. For most, its waiting six months into the year and then trying to explain to the individual the problems and the corrective actions to resolve them. I would rather that someone engage me right on the spot than wait until my performance review to let me know the issue.
ReplyDelete@stephanie: you are making an excellent point. what you are really talking about is a culture of coaching and feedback. timely and empowering feedback is a key tool of effective coaching. if i meet with direct reports regularly, and not just when something goes wrong or when they don't perform up to standard, but also when they do something right or succeed, the action always provides an opening for coaching (defined as evoking excellence in others).
ReplyDelete