Perf reviews, idealism, and trust
[ warning...very verbose, stream of consciousness post to follow]
What is the point of a performance review? The name is pretty simple. "Performance Review," a review of your performance. However, is that really what it is? I think more often than not, people approach it as a political game rather than a real review, and because of this, if you don't at least "play the game" by being defensive, you can get screwed.
I've been through 6 performance reviews, 4 formal ones. We've been doing performance reviews here at work for the last couple of weeks This will be the second time I don't try to "play the game." This is significant to me because it's a strong indication of a return to idealism and optimism in the workplace for myself. It might be hard to believe, but I don't like being cynical. :P
Here's some history. The first (and only other) time, I had decided to take a performance review for what it was at face value: a self-review of my performance, I was fresh out of college and full of optimism/idealism doing a job I loved at my former employer. (Surprise! For the first 6 months at my last employer, I actually really loved my job.) I knew that people said reviews were political, but I didn't care. What's the worst that could happen? I was doing pretty well at my job and I wrote my review trusting in the system to not do anything beyond just giving me a ho-hum "meets expectations". The result: I got slashed by my manager.
Why was I slashed? Performance reviews, when tied to compensation in a system when total salary increase is capped to a fixed amount each year, becomes a zero-sum game; if you do worse, someone else will do better.
From my manager's perspective, I was leaving the team, and indirectly making her look bad. Thus, denigrating me lowered the impact of my departure, and allowed her to give more of the pie to people still in her team. Is this a truthful interpretation of her motives? *shrug* I'm obviously biased. Was there truth to her negative statements about my performance? No. She couldn't even find false reasons to back any of them up when I questioned her about them.
Since then, I learned that if I was ever in a situation where I was in doubt as to the motives of my reviewers, I should write my reviews defensively. That means looking at core competencies and making sure one at least had evidence showing that one was not significantly deficient in any of them.
I don't believe I was being unethical. I never said anything untrue or even tried to slant my reflections. I just made sure that things I would believe should be inferred from my accomplishments (like, my not being a negative impact for my team) had direct evidence to avoid such a label being applied to me again.
So why stop this now? If you aren't being unethical, then doesn't this just fall into the realm of good communication? Yes and no. In an ideal world, I believe a review should be for yourself, and that people should be willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Also, people should be free to give self-criticism and even peer criticism. The fact that there is a feeling of defensiveness on my part indicates something broken about my relation to the process.
So, I've decided to be an idealist this time with respect to my self review. Idealism in action happens in one of two circumstances:
(1) the idealist is brave and willing to deal with the consequences
(2) the idealist has no worry about significant repercussions
I am not brave. Instead, I've found that I feel like I can trust the intentions of my management chain, and the system that has been constructed. It's an interesting feeling. Having been so used to not trusting, I marvel at the realization that I am in an environment where I am comfortable enough to believe in the tendency of a corporation to do something inline with what I feel to be "right."
So that bring up me up to the last point in my subject: trust. What's the greatest strength about my job currently? I think it's trust.
People all seem to trust each other to "do the right thing." Is this naive? Perhaps. But, regardless of what problems it may invite in the future, for me it has been a nice haven. It's given grounding for myself to be idealistic again. Thus in the future, if I end up in a situation where I believe I need to constantly be on guard, I can remember that there are alternatives to defensive environments and that just cause everyone's playing into a broken system, it doesn't mean it right and it shouldn't be changed.
(Afterthought: Writing this post makes me think of this XKCD comic which I've come to appreciate more and more recently. )
What is the point of a performance review? The name is pretty simple. "Performance Review," a review of your performance. However, is that really what it is? I think more often than not, people approach it as a political game rather than a real review, and because of this, if you don't at least "play the game" by being defensive, you can get screwed.
I've been through 6 performance reviews, 4 formal ones. We've been doing performance reviews here at work for the last couple of weeks This will be the second time I don't try to "play the game." This is significant to me because it's a strong indication of a return to idealism and optimism in the workplace for myself. It might be hard to believe, but I don't like being cynical. :P
Here's some history. The first (and only other) time, I had decided to take a performance review for what it was at face value: a self-review of my performance, I was fresh out of college and full of optimism/idealism doing a job I loved at my former employer. (Surprise! For the first 6 months at my last employer, I actually really loved my job.) I knew that people said reviews were political, but I didn't care. What's the worst that could happen? I was doing pretty well at my job and I wrote my review trusting in the system to not do anything beyond just giving me a ho-hum "meets expectations". The result: I got slashed by my manager.
Why was I slashed? Performance reviews, when tied to compensation in a system when total salary increase is capped to a fixed amount each year, becomes a zero-sum game; if you do worse, someone else will do better.
From my manager's perspective, I was leaving the team, and indirectly making her look bad. Thus, denigrating me lowered the impact of my departure, and allowed her to give more of the pie to people still in her team. Is this a truthful interpretation of her motives? *shrug* I'm obviously biased. Was there truth to her negative statements about my performance? No. She couldn't even find false reasons to back any of them up when I questioned her about them.
Since then, I learned that if I was ever in a situation where I was in doubt as to the motives of my reviewers, I should write my reviews defensively. That means looking at core competencies and making sure one at least had evidence showing that one was not significantly deficient in any of them.
I don't believe I was being unethical. I never said anything untrue or even tried to slant my reflections. I just made sure that things I would believe should be inferred from my accomplishments (like, my not being a negative impact for my team) had direct evidence to avoid such a label being applied to me again.
So why stop this now? If you aren't being unethical, then doesn't this just fall into the realm of good communication? Yes and no. In an ideal world, I believe a review should be for yourself, and that people should be willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Also, people should be free to give self-criticism and even peer criticism. The fact that there is a feeling of defensiveness on my part indicates something broken about my relation to the process.
So, I've decided to be an idealist this time with respect to my self review. Idealism in action happens in one of two circumstances:
(1) the idealist is brave and willing to deal with the consequences
(2) the idealist has no worry about significant repercussions
I am not brave. Instead, I've found that I feel like I can trust the intentions of my management chain, and the system that has been constructed. It's an interesting feeling. Having been so used to not trusting, I marvel at the realization that I am in an environment where I am comfortable enough to believe in the tendency of a corporation to do something inline with what I feel to be "right."
So that bring up me up to the last point in my subject: trust. What's the greatest strength about my job currently? I think it's trust.
People all seem to trust each other to "do the right thing." Is this naive? Perhaps. But, regardless of what problems it may invite in the future, for me it has been a nice haven. It's given grounding for myself to be idealistic again. Thus in the future, if I end up in a situation where I believe I need to constantly be on guard, I can remember that there are alternatives to defensive environments and that just cause everyone's playing into a broken system, it doesn't mean it right and it shouldn't be changed.
(Afterthought: Writing this post makes me think of this XKCD comic which I've come to appreciate more and more recently. )