Thinking about appraisal 1

The primary goal of organisations is find and keep customers so that in this way they make a profit. But they cannot do this without the active support of their staff. The key issue is to help teams and individuals improve their performance. How, then?

Appraisal is just such a system that is designed to help organisations and the people in them improve performance. In fact, it could be argued that if performance were not improving after introducing an appraisal scheme, then what would be the point?

Unfortunately, Deming, the great quality guru, observed that it took the average American employee about six months to recover from a typical performance appraisal. As such appraisals tend to be bi-annual this means that they never fully recover! And it’s not only Americans who experience this horror: the UK, especially the public sector, have many stories of where what was intended as a tonic to the troops proves to be an albatross around everybody’s neck. Why is this; and what, then, is appraisal?

Before answering these questions I’m going to say at the outset that it is my belief that it is possible for any organisation to have an effective – even a motivational – appraisal system. Many of the problems that appraisal generates can easily be avoided – it’s all in the setting up and the thinking through. However, let’s be clear: no amount of knowledge or insight, even coupled with relevant skills, is going to enable a manager or boss to run a good appraisal programme when they personally are – what might be called – ‘psychologically or emotionally deficient’.

By this I mean that the manager is using their position to play games. This might be summed up as having – in Transactional Analysis terms – one of three negative life positions: first, ‘I’m OK, you’re not OK’, which will lead them to consistently ‘put down’ the subordinate. Or, ‘I’m not OK, you’re OK’, in which they will lack confidence for positive follow-through; or worst of all, ‘I’m not OK, you’re not OK’, which leads to despair and cynicism and the self-fulfilling prophecy of hopelessness – what’s the point, nothing works, does it? If as a boss or manager, these sound familiar attitudes in those below (or even above) you, then I advise you try to develop a strategy for dealing with it before attempting appraisal. Appraisal will only expose the glaring deficiencies, not remedy them.