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A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy
Q: Leadership IQ’s research into the effectiveness of performance reviews produced some pretty discouraging results. What are the exact numbers?
MM: We did a study of a little over 48,000 people and only 13% of managers and employees thought their year-end reviews were effective. And by effective I don’t mean that they liked the experience, but rather only 13% said their review had a positive impact on their future performance. And just as disturbing, only 6% of CEOs thought the performance reviews their organization used were effective. That’s a lot of resources being funneled into something that is producing more or less zero benefit, and probably even creating new problems. Poorly conducted performance reviews are a big demotivator for most employees.
Q: What can leaders do?
MM: There’s actually a lot that can be done. Starting with the process side, there are factors like: What kind of content you should have in this conversation? What order the conversation should take place? What is the correct basic structure of this conversation? Leadership IQ has specific scripts we teach for talking to high and middle performers, which are really different than the low performer conversations you should be having. And then there’s the development side of a performance review, knowing the right way to plan with the employee for what comes next.
Q: What’s one of the biggest things most performance reviews miss?
MM: Attitude. I see this all the time where a manager gives somebody a 5 out 5 on a performance review and then three months later he’s calling HR saying, “Oh, hey, listen, I need to fire this person.” And HR comes back and says, “What do you mean you need to fire them? You just gave them a 4 or 5 on their performance review, they just got glowing marks, how could you possibly need to fire them?” And the manager says, “Well, you know, it’s for attitude, it’s for reason that our system doesn’t really evaluate. So I had to give them good marks because they have great skills, but their bad attitude is just killing me and the whole department is suffering.”
Q: Why do so many reviews skip evaluating attitude?
MM: There’s a big misunderstanding about what objective means and it keeps a lot of managers from realizing that attitude absolutely is measurable. Objective means verifiable and observable, it does not mean quantifiable. So just because you can’t assign a number to something, like a bad attitude, like gossip or stirring up conflict, it does not mean it is not a valid issue. Attitude leaks out in behavior, and attitude can be measured to the extent that it emerges in the form of those behaviors. And, of course, behaviors can be verified and observed. Managers may not be able to mind read, we can’t climb into people’s heads and divine what our folks are thinking, but we can observe their behaviors and determine what’s appropriate and what’s not.
Great organizations like Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton and Disney; they all regularly assess attitudinal issues. And it’s those attitudes that make those companies so famous and so successful. So this is one of the things you have to be crystal clear about. You don’t want your managers who are conducting reviews avoiding tackling issues related to attitude because they think attitude can’t be measured. That’s just sending low performers with bad attitudes back out there with strong validation that they are welcome to keep on exhibiting those bad attitudes. It’s just a fact that too many managers mistakenly avoid tackling attitudinal issues because their definition of objective is distorted.
Q: Employees tend to hate performance reviews as much as the managers who have to give them. What can managers do to make it easier on employees?
MM: A lot. You can start by making sure that you call in your high performers first. Let them take that walk into the review with full knowledge that they are in the first group and that defines them as a high performer. Not only is this going to make them feel great, it’s going to send a clear message to your low performers. Especially when you next call in your middle performers.
Also, if you meet with low performers first, they are going to go back out there and interact with their peers and have all kinds of negative things to say: lots of denial, blame and excuses. They’re going to be angry and they’ll want to take others down with them. You take that power away from low performers when you meet with them last, because by then you’ve already got all these high and middle performers out there who are feeling pretty good about things. They’re not going to be interested in listening to low performers gripe and bash. And that’s going to make low performers feel the sting of a poor review even more.
Q: What’s one of the biggest mistakes that happens in low performer reviews?
MM: One of the worst things you can do, and lots of managers do it, is use a compliment sandwich. And that’s a compliment followed by some corrective feedback followed by another compliment. It sounds something like this: “You know, listen, Bob, you’re just so talented. You’re the smartest person on the team. You get nasty and caustic when we’re in these team meetings and it’s really hurting our morale. You’re just so smart. I want everybody else to see how smart you are.” So basically, if I’m Bob, what I just heard is “I’m great, I’m smart. I hear a compliment. Then I hear Charlie Brown’s teacher (“wawawa”), but, wow, then I hear another compliment, the boss just said he wants everyone to know how smart I am. Oh boy. I’m great. I am golden.” The compliment sandwich is a giant fail. No one hears the corrective feedback shoved in the middle of two compliments. The only effective way to deliver corrective feedback is to state the facts.
Attend our webinar Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews and learn more specific scripts for talking to high, middle and low performers. Learn about the other mistakes managers make when reviewing employees and some simple fixes you can make to conduct more effective reviews.
A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.
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