Performance Coaching Process

There's no one single script you can develop that will ensure productive, effective performance appraisal interviews. But avoiding the following five common interviewing errors will give you a good margin for success:

1. Failure to prepare for the interview. This is the number one reason why appraisal interviews fail. You and the employee should know what the job requirements are, and how the employee is meeting them, before you even schedule the interview.

2. Failure to establish good rapport. Any employee who is being appraised will be nervous. It's up to you to put him or her at ease. There's nothing wrong with a little small talk to make both of you comfortable. A firm handshake and a smile will usually do the trick.

3. Failure to listen. Establish yourself as a good listener. Employees trust someone who listens carefully and respects their contributions, even when they might be rejected.

4. Failure to withhold judgment until all the evidence is presented. Justified or not, some employees think they have legitimate reasons for substandard performance. Giving employees the idea that their complaints won't get a fair hearing destroys the whole concept of effective appraisal interviewing.

5. Failure to remain objective. It's not always easy to keep personal feelings, attitudes and opinions out of the appraisal interview. The employee may get emotional, but the manager must maintain control, so the interview stays objective and professional.

Preparing for the Interview

A good performance appraisal starts long before you actually conduct the interview. Before you can hold employees to certain goals and standards, you and the employee must agree on what standards should be set. In fact, one well-conducted performance interview begins the process of preparing for the next. After discussing the employee's past performance, you set objectives for the next appraisal period. That's the beginning of a multi-stage process which, in full, looks like this:

1. At the beginning of the appraisal period, establish the precise goals and standards you expect the employee to meet.
2. Communicate these standards in detail to the employee.
3. Monitor the employee's performance throughout the period. Let the employee know how well he or she is doing. Offer praise when it's due. Make necessary corrections as soon as you see the need.
4. Conduct a formal appraisal at the end of the period. Give the employee a full and honest picture of how well he or she has done. If outside factors kept the employee from doing better, make a note of them. Set goals for the next appraisal period. Arrange for training or any other resources the employee requires to succeed.
5. Provide a clear, honest assessment of the employee's future in the company.

Setting Goals
Commit goals and standards to writing before the appraisal interview and you leave less room for future misunderstandings. You will also have a historical record of the employee's successes and failures. These can also be valuable when you are considering the employee for a promotion, transfer or disciplinary action. Here's a suggested list of records:

1. A summary of the department's goals. Decide what goals your group should meet by the end of the appraisal period. Show the employee how individual goals fit into the department's overall objectives.
2. Specific goals and standards you expect the employee to meet. Go over this list with the employee and make sure you both have a good understanding.
3. An appraisal report, marking the results of the completed appraisal.
4. A progress report, a quick historical reference sheet to be checked before the next appraisal interview.

Employment is a mutual bargain, and its terms usually are familiar. If the employee helps the company achieve its goals, the company will help the employee reach some personal goals. This means that the goals you set are not just criteria for making judgments; they are also incentives for the employees to succeed.

Start with the job description. Your most elementary requirement is that the employee do the job. A good description breaks the job down into component tasks. From these, you can develop a list of goals to accomplish these tasks. You can then add any additional goals the employee should meet. The goals you set should meet these requirements:
1. They must be related to the job.

2. You must be able to observe the employee's behavior.3. You should be able to measure success in some way.

Setting Standards

Standards should come from the same sources as goals ? the job description and the company's specific needs. A good job description gives you a starting point by listing the individual tasks and responsibilities that make up the job. You can adjust these standards to mesh with departmental goals.

The job description will tell you only what the employee should do, however. You must decide how well it should be done. This can be a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, you don't want to set lax standards that fail to motivate employees. But you don't want to insist, either, that they do the impossible. There are several ways to strike the right balance:

1. Examine the employee's present ability. Current levels of skills and experience usually indicate the standards you can legitimately expect.
2. Examine the performance of co-workers. The group's performance level provides a useful index of what you can expect from each member.
3. Look at the employee's past performance. The last appraisal level the employee attained should set the minimum standard for the new period.
4. Look at the lob description. Make sure you both have a clear picture of what the job requires. Check the job description carefully. If it needs to be updated, correct it.
5. Determine the job's responsibilities. A good job description can be the springboard for a list of job responsibilities, and can even appear in the same document. The list of responsibilities, in turn, can be the basis of the goals and standards on which you rate the job holder.

Assessment Questionnaire Instruments

There are some principles need to be considered when designing questions items for 360 degree assessment questionnaire. to be useful, they must be constructed carefully. A simple way to test each of your items is to ask if the item can be described as the following:

Unidimensional. This means that the item measures only one thing. Perhaps the most common survey-item error is the double question, for example, "To what extent does this person coach and counsel subordinates effectively?" Coaching and counseling are two different activities, of course, and they require separate measurement. The item should be recast as two; otherwise, how does the rater respond if the person being rated is effective on one but not the other?

Free of qualifiers. Words like "usually," "always," "never," and "good" can invalidate the rating scale. For example, if you use a "Strongly agree? Strongly disagree" rating scale, and an item reads, "This person always involves others in decisions that affect them," how would a rater respond if the person being rated sometimes does this, but not always! Such qualifiers should simply be eliminated.

Observable. The rater must have had the opportunity to see what is being rated. Asking raters to infer and judge is asking for contaminated data. The item, "To what degree is this person skilled in making his or her points clear under stress?" is preferable to "To what degree is this person good at handling conflict situations?" The former can be directly observed, whereas the latter represents an inference or summary judgment. The difficulty with items that require inferences and judgments is that raters will respond to them, but the recipient of the feedback may not be able to interpret the data or find ways to improve on those items.

Tied to the scale. If you use a frequency scale, the items must be written to conform to it. The item "This person shows competency in being able to locate prospective customers effectively" requires a degree scale rather than a rating of frequency.

Clear and understandable. Ideally, every rater needs to interpret each item the same way. That means avoiding any language that is ambiguous, jargonistic, or at too high a level of comprehension. Good rules are to use easy, common words and to write at the lowest educational level of the personnel who will respond to the instrument.

Ratable by the data sources. Since 360° feedback interventions often involve such disparate sources of ratings as self, bosses, peers, subordinates, internal customers, external customers, trained observers, and friends and family, it is critical that the items cover what these raters know something about; otherwise there will be many holes in the feedback. Our practice is to determine the sources of ratings before constructing the instrument, so that we include only those items that respondents are qualified to rate.

Developmental ("So what? Now what?"). Instrument items should center on things that the feedback recipient can do something about. The goal is to generate reliable, valid data that will be useful for developing self-directed action plans for improvement. Getting feedback on "To what degree does this person display an attitude of optimism?" would probably not be so useful to feedback recipients as one that asks, "To what degree is this person able to assist you in analyzing your problem situations at work?"

Aligned with the organization's vision. The item set should concentrate on what is critical to realizing the hoped-for future of the organization. The connection between what the instrument measures and what the organization stands for and is headed toward should be obvious to all respondents. In a sense, 360° feedback instruments are strong organizational messages about what is important: "If you're going to stay here and flourish, you need to become highly competent in these areas." This approach obviates the need for "importance" ratings; every item has already been decided to be critical to carrying out the organization's intentions.

Content Areas

Developing instruments for 360° feedback entails choosing appropriate content, If you choose to measure other dimensions of individuals, here are categories to consider:

Skills: Sets of behaviors that are shaped toward "objective" standards. Examples: designing meetings, writing objectives, listening, repairing a machine.

Competencies: Developed abilities. Competencies are more general than skills, and often subsume sets of skills. Examples: intervening in conflict situations, providing performance feedback, elucidating vision, strategic planning.

Traits/Characteristics: Descriptions of the feedback recipient as an individual?his or her "character." Examples: trustworthiness, intelligence, creativity/innovativeness, decisiveness.

Attitudes/Feelings: Inferred from behavior. Attitudes are predispositions to behave predictably toward an object or class of objectives. Feelings are emotions that are experienced in reaction to, or anticipation of, situations and events. Examples: "isms," optimism, patience, anger.

Behaviors/Leadership Practices: Observable: what the person actually does. Examples: involving people in planning, interceding for subordinates making "command" decisions, expressing caring.

Ref: John Jones and William Bearley

Elements of Career Planning Programs

Though programs differ, four distinct elements of career planning programs emerge. They include (1) individual assessments of abilities, interests, career needs, and goals; (2) organizational assessments of employee abilities and potential; (3) communication of information concerning career options and opportunities with the organization; and (4) career counseling to set realistic goals and plan for their attainment. Each of these elements is discussed in greater detail below.

Individual Assessments

Individual assessment of abilities, interests, career needs, and goals is basically a process of self-exploration and analysis. Individuals are frequently guided by self-assessment exercises.

The self-assessment process is basically viewed as an individual responsibility; however, organizations can aid in this process by providing the employee with materials and opportunities for self-exploration and analysis. A variety of self-assessment materials are available commercially, but a number of organizations, including IBM, Xerox, General Motors, and General Electric, have developed tailor-made workbooks for employee career planning purposes. Individual career planning exercises can be done independently by employees or in workshops sponsored by the organization. Workshops have the advantage of combining a number of career planning elements including self-assessment, communication of organizational career and development opportunities, and one-on-one counseling to ensure that career goals are realistic.

Organizational Assessments

A key issue in career counseling sessions is whether an employee's goals are realistic in terms of organizational possibilities and organizational assessments of employee abilities and potential. Accurate assessments of employee abilities and potential are important to both the organization and the individual.

Organizations have several sources of information for making assessments of employee abilities and potential. First is selection information, including ability tests, assessment center test, interest inventories, and biographical information such as education and work experience. Second is current job history information, including performance appraisal information, records of promotions and promotion recommendations, salary increases, and participation in various training and development programs. Organizations have traditionally relied on performance appraisal data as the primary basis for assessing employee potential.

Career Information within an Organization

Before realistic goals can be set, an employee need information about career options and opportunities. This includes information about possible career directions; possible paths of career advancement; and specific job vacancies. In organizations with informal career planning programs, employees learn about career options and opportunities from their supervisors within the context of developmental performance appraisal interviews. Organizations with more established career planning programs make greater use of workbooks, workshops, and even recruiting materials to communicate career options and opportunities. Career paths have been defined as logical progressions between jobs or from one job to a target position. They can be either traditional or behavioral.

Traditional career paths are based on past patterns of actual movement by employees. They tend to be limited to advancement within a single function or organizational unit, such as purchasing, sales, or customer relations. Years of service to the organization largely determine the rate at which advancement can occur. For example, a salesman might expect to advance to the position of account supervisor after five years, to sales supervisor after 10, to district manager after 15, and to regional manager after 25 years of service.

More flexible patterns of employee career movement are described by behavioral career paths, which are based on analysis of similarities in job activities and requirements. Where similarities exist, jobs can be grouped into job families, or clusters. Thus, all jobs involving similar work activities and levels of required skills and abilities form one job cluster, regardless of job title. Focusing on job similarities across functions and organizational units brings to light new career options for employees and greater flexibility for the organization in utilizing its available human resources. One organization, for example, was able to shift a number of its sales personnel to purchasing positions when sales declined in one major product line and opportunities became available in the purchasing department. This shift was undertaken when a job analysis showed behavioral similarities between the two previously distinct functions.

Career Counseling

It is in counseling sessions, typically with supervisors and managers in developmental performance appraisal interviews, that most employees explore career goals and opportunities in the organization. Supervisors and managers need accurate assessments of employee abilities and potential, as well as information about career options and opportunities in the organization. HR professionals may be involved in some informal career counseling activities, but basically their role is to support career counseling activities of supervisors and managers. This means providing supervisors and managers with needed information as well as with the necessary training to function effectively as counselors.

In career counseling sessions, employees seek answers to the following kinds of questions:

1. What are my skills and what are the possibilities for developing them or learning new ones?
2. What do I really want for myself insofar as work is concerned?
3. What's possible for me, given my current abilities and skills?
4. What's really required for certain jobs?
5. What training will be required if I choose to pursue a certain career objective?"

When counselors are equipped to help employees find the answers to such questions, realistic career goals can be set. Next, development strategies must be devised.