Now that you've delivered all the good news - the ways in which your employee has shone in the past year, the positive expectations you have established together for the coming year, the road map you have outlined for fulfilling those goals - the timing is opportune to raise any and all problematic issues you need to address. The key is to lay our your case in language that is straightforward yet not withering.
- Emphasize the positive within the negative
- Couch your criticism in terms of the shared greater good
- Enlist your employee as an ally
- Offer the employee flexible options in resolving the shortcoming
- Beverly Ballaro, Dealing with Difficult People
After you have identified for an employee both a range of goals and the mindset necessary to achieve them, the next logical step is to map out, in a pragmatic fashion and with employee input, different possible paths to success. The idea here is to describe actions, resources, and plans of action in terms as specific as possible...you want to provide your employee with a "nuts and bolts" repertoire of approaches that he or she can draw upon in the coming cycle.
Even when the review is weighted toward the critical, it makes psychological sense to start out on a positive note. Acknowledging, front and center, an employee's achievements to date makes him more receptive to the recommendations for improvement that follow. Tying the accomplishments to specific challenges set forth previously-in the employee's last evaluation, for example-provides objective, tangible evidence of progress. It also creates a sense of fair play, as the employee understands in advance the specific criteria by which he is being assessed.
Most people are not comfortable being judged themselves and therefore tend to err on the side of caution when they have to put their personal assessment of a colleague in writing. What they don't realize is that an excess of diplomacy can actually produce consequences just as damaging as those created by an unduly harsh approach. By squandering an opportunity to deliver meaningful criticism, they deprive both themselves and the employees they are evaluating of any practical benefits. They turn the process into an exercise in futility, and a time-consuming one at that.