The deeper issues behind surprise negative performance feedback
Part 1 of a three-part newsletter series on "performance management"
Hello all,
I hope your start into the New Year was a joyful and reflective one. What are your commitments this year to work towards liberation?
I recently reread an article about “performance management” I wrote a while back. It still holds up. So, I’ve decided to bring it back and share it as part of this newsletter (with some updates, as my work situation has changed in the meanwhile).
I also decided to break it up into three parts, as it’s a monster of an article. I did promise bite-sized learning when you signed up, even though by now we all know I’m a liar when it comes to that part. Nonetheless, I try my best.
Enjoy and let me know what you thought!
A bit of context
I’m one of those people who became a manager organically in a start-up modelled after a, by all accounts, pretty traditional company structure. I built a team and then a department step by step as the need for our outcomes and output arose within the organisation.
I’d learned a lot in this process. I was blessed with an amazing group of people that became the Research Department, who were patient and helpful through that process with their first time manager (me). For the most part I’ve had a mental library of examples for how I did not want to manage a team. For some facets, I was lucky enough to have some amazing role models, most of whom encouraged me to be “Human” before being a “Manager”.
One of the things I had to piece together on my own, was “performance management”. I ended up with the following thesis statement:
Lacking employee performance more often than not reflects lacking resources.
Honestly, I think I may be onto something, and I want to share - maybe it’s of value to others out there. And I don’t just mean managers. If you feel like your performance is judged in weird and unexpected ways, I hope this piece of writing will give you some ideas on how to hold your management accountable to give you reliable and transparent feedback.
Ultimately, it’s about figuring out if and how management is blocking an employee from doing the work they can proudly stand behind.
Without further ado, I give you all my first golden rule of “performance management”:
Rule #1: “Performance” feedback should never come as a major surprise
One would think that this one speaks for itself. And we might think this depends on the self-awareness of the employee.
To which I say, self-awareness is not an innate quality! It's something that is cultivated by the person themselves, in collaboration with their environment. Self-awareness and how it manifests is entirely defined by each specific context we expect it in. For instance, one may be self-aware when it comes to their presentation style during a sales pitch, while being wholly unaware that the types of jokes they make at the coffee machine are kinda inappropriate in a workplace setting.
Self-awareness is an agreement that is built in collaboration by the individual and their environment. Continuous honest feedback is crucial for healthy self-awareness, as is an open receptive mind. Hence, when it comes to “performance”, all parties work together to define beforehand, and update when needed, what is and isn’t seen as “good performance” (I’ll get to that part in next week’s newsletter).
Surprise negative feedback on performance is most often a management failure, not an employee one.
But it’s also important to talk about positive feedback. Tons of people (mostly people carrying enormous baggage of bad management in the past, *waves shyly at fellow marginalised folks*) have a skewed perception of their own “performance”. A lot of us worry constantly that we are somehow secretly failing at our role, at least partly because we have experienced major negative feedback out of left field before, regardless of whether or not it was justified. Some of us were fired or almost fired as a surprise, our performance cited as a reason without us ever realising that expectations were completely misaligned.
Am I bringing DEI into this? You bet.
Marginalised employees who ask for accommodations, or stand up for their or other people’s rights may be automatically filed away as less productive, with no evidence backing up those claims from management. When the goalposts are constantly kept in movement, anybody can become a “bad performer” at a moment’s notice and at management’s convenience. Many of us carry workplace baggage or even trauma linked to that.
Objective, transparent standards coupled with regular feedback, both positive and negative, are essential. And just because the feedback shouldn’t come as a surprise, doesn’t mean it has to be unspoken.
Into the trash with moving goalposts, I say.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter! If you found it insightful, don’t forget to share it with someone you think could find value in it, too.
Are you in it for change, too, and would like to work together? Don’t hesitate to reach out at we.are@initforchange.com :)
And finally, thanks to Bernard Hermant on Unsplash for the photo.
Cheers,
Emil