Reflect on employees’ progress
Thanks to his busy schedule, Russell doesn’t have time to evaluate every employee’s performance on a daily or even per-project basis. But that doesn’t mean he neglects his employees’ development altogether when their personal development review comes around every year.
He does, however, rely on them to carry some of the weight. The process begins with their self-assessment. Russell asks employees to come to their review prepared with their own list of personal strengths and weaknesses. After they evaluate themselves, he steps in.
Instead of keeping track of an employee’s every high and low, Russell takes the time to review their big-picture strengths and weaknesses a few times a year. It’s sort of like throwing the spaghetti on the wall and seeing what major issues still stick after several months.
“It’s only when you sit back and you reflect that you highlight more high-level positives and negatives,” he says. “Sometimes you deep-dive into a project or a program and how somebody behaved or specific incidences that have occurred, but it’s just a reflection.”
Even though hindsight is 20/20, you can’t rely on memory alone to judge an employee. For example, plenty of performance-measuring data and feedback from others feed into Russell’s reflections. Engaging these other resources not only saves you from having to know everything about each employee, but it also provides a more complete assessment than you alone could.
“Tangible measurements are a good thing,” Russell says. “Unfortunately, not all businesses are set up to provide tangible measurements to all functional areas.”
“Some people you can hold directly accountable, especially if they’re running a business and you’re looking at profitability or customer satisfaction metrics,” he says. “But it’s the functional support areas that are a little bit tougher to get tangible measurements on.”
So when specific data is lacking, yo
u can make up for it by turning to the people around that employee for their input.
Throughout the year, their feedback comes informally as either complaints or kudos. But Russell also asks for it directly through 360-degree evaluations of directors, vice presidents and other managers. Colleagues above, below and beside those employees are asked to rate them on topics such as performance, customer focus, interest in developing others and teamwork skills.
“When the person who’s doing the assessment isn’t known — a discreet type of evaluation — you’ll get more honesty,” says Russell, who lets employees choose whether they want to leave their names on the online form.
Even if you’re not doing every aspect of the assessment yourself, the combination of cut-and-dry data, employees’ own observations and evaluations from co-workers will give you enough fodder for a conversation. Even meeting with your direct reports — and having them do the same with the employees under them — illustrates that the leadership cares about the development of its team members.
