Fred Nichols has oft suggested that we scrap performance appraisals, while I contend that we need to teach people to use it intelligently. Here’s a bit from the ongoing conversation.
I think this is a great example showing that we have a tendency to look at performance appraisal issues through our own direct experience, which is bound to be somewhat limited. If we’ve had bad experiences we tend to believe that ya might as well get rid of the whole thing. And most people have had some bad experiences.
Performance appraisals are probably the most misused, and goofed-up management tool in existence. Starting from misunderstanding the whole point of appraisals, right on through to use of poor communication with employees, managers make a fairly consistent set of mistakes about employee reviews , and performance appraisals. Here’s some of them in the fourth in our series of common managerial mistakes.