"Give employees ongoing feedback on their performance so that they always know what they're doing right-and what they need to improve upon."
Effective supervisors shower employees with frequent feedback. Assessing performance is a central part of their daily interaction with their staff. They praise superior work and provide constructive suggestions on how employees can elevate mediocre or substandard work into something truly excellent.
Workers should never wonder if their performance meets or exceeds your expectations-or your organization's needs. You must remove the mystery so that employees can accurately gauge their performance rather than withholding input and saving it up for the employee's annual performance appraisal.
Many companies set specific policies and procedures to evaluate employees' performance, so it's important to understand and comply with your employer's rules. The following guidelines apply to performance evaluation in any organization.
- Cite specifics. Give feedback that's based on well-defined actions or behavior that you observe. This eliminates ambiguity and helps you and the employee establish a clear reference point for improving
performance. It also prevents you from flinging generalizations at
workers that put them on the defensive. Example: Instead of saying, �You tend to lecture the customers�, say, �When you spoke to Joe Smith this morning, you repeated what you wanted him to do three times without letting him get a word in.�
- Avoid the �but.� To give critical feedback, frame it constructively.
Begin with a sincere, positive observation, and don't follow it with a
�but.� Employees will disregard your opening compliment as soon as they
sense you're about to shift into criticism mode. Example: Replace
�You've got great content, but you need to prune it down,� with �You've
got great content. By pruning it down, it'll be even more powerful.�
It's True! No one likes to receive �average� ratings in a performance
review, so use a scale that avoids �average� and �below average.�
Better examples include �poor, marginal, competent, above
average and outstanding� or a numerical system that uses rankings of one to five.
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