The Performance Appraisal

It’s getting late. You sit alone in the office working on employee performance appraisals. You are working on Skippy’s performance appraisal. His is the last one, the one you have been avoiding.

Your mind wanders.

You see it frequently in the workplace. You have an employee who is smart and well educated, but he exhibits poor work habits.

He is often confused and frustrated by ambiguity.

He avoids working on complex problems with no straight forward answers.

He does not understand why his co-workers and bosses are often frustrated by his low productivity.

He assumes criticism is essentially unfair and a burden.

He stakes out his opinions on the basis of personal moral certainty rather than organizational concerns for effectiveness and efficiency.

He rarely resorts to listening, negotiation, and empathy as problem solving skills.

He isolates himself from co-workers when things are not going his way.

He often confuses efforts to help him as agreement with his opinions.

He often resorts to emotion as a strategy to win arguments.

Those kinds of employees often move on to jobs where the work is not as hard as it is here. They take new jobs where the answers are given before the appropriate questions are asked. They achieve a certain psychological happiness once they make this transition.

You suspect you know how Skippy arrived at this current state of affairs, but that is irrelevant. It’s his performance that counts.

Your mind returns to the task at hand, Skippy. You think of the long line of folks who have stopped by to complain about Skippy’s work. Everybody is working long hours under tight deadlines. Stress fills the air like fog. Everyone is tired of doing his work for him.

You check the box that says, “Provisional. Does not meet most or all expectations.”

Skippy will be happier in his next job. And your team will enjoy an incremental, yet noticeable improvement in productivity.