Whatif… Performance evaluations captured learning and growth?
Performance evaluations sort of drive me nuts. Once a year you are judged by someone who may or may not be closely connected to the work you do. It’s typically performative and it often feels like being rewarded for checking off a to do list than a real opportunity for growth.
You have some goals for the year. Those goals may or may not be interesting to you or even truly valuable to your organization. Then you achieve those goals (or don’t) and your supervisor says well done or not. Then they base your salary increase on this.
I recognize not all performance evaluations are conducted this way. There has been a move to shift the performance evaluation mindset from evaluating once a year to consistent conversations about performance. “Anything in the final evaluation shouldn’t be a surprise” is the mantra that fuels this goal of consistent communication.
And yet the thing that might drive me the most crazy is the fact that someone with more authority is judging someone with less authority. I get this - this is our system. It’s like giving grades in school (maybe in another post I’ll get on my soapbox about the problems with our grading system when it comes to true learning). This model doesn’t really translate well into the workplace. These are adults. In school, the grade demonstrates that someone grasps some knowledge at a certain level. That’s not the goal of work.
Whatif…. employees took ownership of their own performance evaluations?
**A quick point of clarification here. Many organizations have employees write their own evaluations and then send them to their managers for approval. That is not what I’m talking about here. That’s still the old system just with the employee doing the legwork.
Instead, imagine if we were each empowered to track our own learning and development on a regular basis, with the goal of learning driving the effort?
Consider this: I start a reflection and learning tracker of sorts. I start with the larger goals of my role as the guide and then I break those down into areas of opportunity for learning. Each week, I set aside some time to review what I have learned, how I learned it, what I need to know for next week, and how I will learn that. I set small experiments for myself and keep track of what am learning from the things I am trying. This is done in the context of regular conversations with my team and supervisor. We share what we are learning to ensure that we are all working toward the same big picture goals. This helps us identify what our most important responsibility is (and what we are not responsible for).
At the end of a year, you have a completed log of everything you’ve tried, the lessons you’ve learned along the way, and what progress you’ve made in your work. You can use this to have a conversation with your team and supervisor about what you all want to accomplish next year. And your teammates and supervisor should be using the same method for themselves
The key shift here is that the supervisor isn’t just observing and judging, rather you are building a robust set of data that includes not only what you’ve done, but also what you’ve learned. You’re capturing both individual and institutional knowledge. That’s so much richer than an evaluation by a single person based on observation.
Whatif…. performance evaluations were not ways to measure people in the organization, rather they were opportunities for learning and growth - driven by the person doing the work?