Issue 21 · 30 June 2010

A personal message from Joan

Hello and welcome to the June edition of my newsletter. I hope you've been enjoying the fantastic weather, Wimbledon and the World Cup. I'm going to resist commenting on England's performance except to say I knew I should have sent Mr Capello my DVD ‘Improving performance with positive criticism.’ How could I have forgotten? I blame myself, I really do.

I've just realised how ‘UK centric’ that opening paragraph is, so apologies to my readers from the USA, HK and India and I hope everything is well with you – whatever the weather and whatever your sporting ‘heroes’ are doing (or not)!

In this month's article I'm sharing some tips and hints around how to prepare to fail for a performance review meeting. Why the focus on the failing? Well frankly I sometimes get a little bored with writing about the ‘how to’ so I thought we would have a change and take a look at the ‘how not to.’ As ever, I'd love to hear your feedback.

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Preparing for a performance appraisal meeting – 5 sure-fire ways to fail

Many managers, team leaders and supervisors I work with seem to have a real knack for making their performance appraisal meetings suck. They don't mean to do this (well most don't) but they often tell me they just can't make these meetings work. When I ask them to talk me through how they prepare for the meeting a number of issues consistently arise. So, here are five ways you prepare to ensure your performance appraisal meetings fail – just in case you need it!

1. Talk the system down, down, down

It's critical to ensure that everyone (and particularly new recruits) is crystal clear what a total waste of time the appraisal meeting is. Be subtle though. Something on the lines of ‘I’m really sorry Jack, it's that time of year again. HR says we've got to do the appraisal thing. Yeah, I know, who’s got the time? Anyway let's get it over with as fast as possible so we can get back to the real work.’

2. Postpone the meeting date – at least twice

This is a neat way to really underline the message of how little you value the appraisal meeting and, as a bonus, how little you value your staff member. Postpone the meeting as often as you can and for any reason you can. Particularly effective are reasons relating to, say, preparing a budget report or financial statement. Anything that says ‘we value the numbers more than we value our people’ should do nicely.

3. Pick a lousy location

If possible hold the meeting somewhere noisy, too hot or too cold and smelly. Be sure you can guarantee a number of interruptions and that other people can overhear your conversation. Anywhere in an open plan office should work well. If you have to use a private office make sure the air conditioning or heating system is malfunctioning, that you are able to claim a seat that is i) bigger ii) higher iii) clearly more comfortable than the staff member's seat and that there is some light shining in their eyes. And don't, whatever you do, offer any refreshments. This is not a party.

4. Do no preparation at all. None

Preparation is for wimps. It's much more effective to:

a) Look blankly at the staff member when they enter the room and then begin frantically searching your desk drawer, then filing cabinet, then waste paper basket for a copy of the objectives you agreed 12 months ago at the last meeting. Don't worry about not finding them – they’re nine months out of date anyway.

b) Attempt to give feedback based on only the vaguest understanding of:

• What the staff member's job is
• What effective performance looks like for their job (performance objectives and standards)
• How the staff member has actually performed against the objectives and standards (and don't even think about using objective, fact-based examples)
• Areas of outstanding performance (‘nice job Dibley’ will suffice)
• Areas for development (‘a bit more oomph’ will do nicely)

5. Do not encourage the staff member to prepare. Ever

The very last thing you want is to encourage the staff member to have an opinion on their:

• Performance
• Achievements and success
• Areas for development
• Job satisfaction needs

Why would you? You don’t intend to ask them about any of this so why bother?

Summary

So there we have it. Five easy ways to ensure your preparation for the performance appraisal meeting results in a total waste of time and a totally demotivated staff member. Of course if you would like the opposite result you could try taking the opposite approach. Just an idea.

And now I'd like to invite you to check out my free video ‘How to hold a motivational performance review (or appraisal meeting)’.

Joan Henshaw is the author and presenter of the video management training series ‘The 10 Minute Management Toolkit’ – the flexible, cost effective and time effective way to help managers, team leaders and supervisors learn how to motivate their staff to high performance.

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Joan recommends

Consider online access to your management training

At the end of May I had the pleasure of hearing Charles Jennings speak at Trainingzone Live on the topic of ‘The Challenge of Performance Centric Training and Development’ (you can see Charles' slides). I was particularly interested in his proposition that to improve performance with T&D we need to move from training ‘in case you need it’ to training ‘when you need it’ and from ‘courses and curricula’ to ‘short modules and chunks.’

One of the key reasons for us bringing our management training videos online is to give managers, team leaders, supervisors and business owners both ‘when you need it’ and ‘short modules and chunks’ management training. The way we are developing the online solution will mean that you can have a range of options around how you or the managers in your organisation access the training and how you pay for it – a totally flexible resource for you. I will outline the options in the next newsletter but if you would like to talk to me about how this could work for you (and take advantage of the reduced rates I’m offering for the trial period) contact me at joan@10mmt.com.

A word of warning! I will only be taking five clients for the trial period (at the reduced rates) on a first come first served basis so if you want to take advantage of this offer you should contact me NOW!

Very best wishes
Joan

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Joan is the author and presenter of the 10 minute management toolkit. Her monthly newsletter is full of tips, hints and ideas on how managers can learn how to motivate their staff to high performance.

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