Constructive Feedback Wanted

According to numerous research organizations, a leading cause of employee frustration and disengagement is the lack of feedback, coaching, and yes, even constructive feedback they receive from their managers. Informal discussions with managers tell a different story.

Many of the managers, even some senior executives I meet with tend to dismiss the need for frequent feedback (note that giving instructions does not qualify as helpful feedback). Sharing what is going well and where improvement is needed is an essential responsibility of managers and leaders. Clearly, the data show team members want and need this. Why the gap?

Digging deeper into this paradox reveals a key factor. Managers lack the tools and training to do this. What is needed is a reliable, customized, structured process to provide meaningful feedback and guidance on a regular basis.

Dynamic Performance Appraisal (DPA) provides managers a simple but powerful method for working together with their direct reports to ensure clearly stated responsibilities, goals and behaviors needed for success and growth.

In the DPA process, individual performance management consists of three parts:

• 1. Responsibilities (what are the major functions of my job?)
• 2. Goals (what is it that I need to accomplish this year?)
• 3. Work-related behaviors (how will I go about it?)

Responsibilities for major job functions takes the traditional “job description” to a new level. Since we begin with a blank form, a dialogue between the supervisor and the direct report enables us to get clear, concise agreement on what we need from the team member to accomplish our organizational objectives.

There may only be four or five of these items, or as many as 10. You may want to have the job description on hand but only as a reference point. The company’s strategic plan and the department plan and budget are more useful tools for this exercise. Once the responsibilities are written out, each is ranked in order of importance/impact with the total reaching one hundred (this for the scoring part of the document). For example, you may have nine items listed; three are ranked at 20 points each, two at 10 and four at 5 points. The idea of course is to focus job performance on the responsibilities that matter most.

The next step is to determine goals. Here again, we refer to the operating plan for guidance. If the organization is to be successful, what must that individual accomplish in a way that provides a meaningful, measurable contribution? Each goal should be discussed openly and agreed upon by the employee and his/her supervisor. It must be specific and measurable. For instance, “develop a better understanding of…….” is not a measurable goal. There may be as many as ten goals and each is assigned a point value based upon its impact/importance. No matter how many goals are assigned and weighted, the total for this section will amount to 100.

The third and final step focuses on work-related behaviors. This is an important but often overlooked part of individual performance management that is rarely included as a performance metric. Yet, it is easy to see how it brings balance to the process. In short, we are measuring performance by three criteria: responsibilities/job functions; goals/accomplishments; and work-related behaviors which correlate with the organization’s stated values.

For more information and a sample DPA packet including instructions and worksheets, email me at joe@ajstrategy.com

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions. Artificial Intelligence may have been used in part to create or edit this content.