Despite being a great opportunity to get all your staff singing the same song, many CEOs still view the performance appraisal process as a chore (and an annual one).

Performance appraisal is akin to giving your car a service to ensure that it continues running smoothly.  “But I have a high-performing team” is a common refrain.  That’s wonderful to hear … but most exotic sports car owners tune their vehicles regularly to maintain that peak performance.

The three parties in any performance appraisal discussion (manager, staff member, and corporate business plan) must reach terms that allow them all to flourish individually and as a collective.

Underperformance arises when one or all off these parties are not fully aligned, leading to different agendas and behaviours that will not optimise organisational results.

The best performance appraisal processes are dialogue driven, involve commitment and accountability from both appraiser and respondent, and are not complicated by complex psychometric mechanisms or behavioural rating scales.

The key to achieving this simplicity in execution is design quality and (occasionally) expert facilitation.  Clever performance appraisal process design draws on disparate corporate themes and stitches them together into a narrative-based discussion that is able to flow readily.  It ‘builds a story’ regarding the respondent’s place within and contribution to the organisation as both change over time.

Interested to find out more?  Enabling appraisal conversations and unlocking people performance is what we do at Brainbox, and we would love to share some of these insights with you over a cup of coffee.