Performance Evaluations Don't Need to be Stressful

I had a real slow-down on posting new and interesting messages up here because I was on a detail for 8 weeks. This was a great experience for me. My detail began the last week of fiscal year 10 and ran through the first seven weeks of FY 2011. I specifically asked for this time frame because I wanted to have a very specific experience. I wanted to lead the performance evaluations for the new branch we had started.

I know what you are thinking, "Who would ask for that type of assignment?" Me, that's who. The reason is quite simple, I manage people all the time. As a Program and Project Manager I I lead people to accomplish difficult objectives. However I don't have the actual authority to evaluate the performance of the people who support my programs and projects. I provide feedback to their manager and that feedback is mixed with other stuff to eventually generate the annual performance evaluation. I had often been a contributor to that evaluation but never the author of the evaluation for federal employees. Now, I can say I have.

There were 6 employees in the branch and I sought feedback from the people who were responsible for monitoring their performance over the course of the past year. I then synthesized that feedback and generated an evaluation rating. I then justified the rating for each person to the Division Director. Next, I scheduled the performance evaluation meeting with each person and shared the feedback and offered some ideas for ways to improve.

These are supposed to be difficult and stressful situations. I worked hard to take the stress out of it by making sure that everyone understood the process before we began. I think that is the key. People aren't stressed out by the performance review, people are stressed over not understanding the process. We in the federal sector don't make it easy. The process can be confusing. The different between Outstanding, Superior and Fully Successful can be confusing.

For me, I think the labels are confusing. Outstanding is higher than Superior. But look at the definition of Superior - something which is higher in a hierarchical structure of any kind. Maybe it is just me, but the method of the ratings is not intuitive and that can cause confusion which leads to stressful situations.

Anyway, I worked hard to make sure everyone knew and understood the process of the evaluation. Next time, I'll write about what I did to establish the performance plan for FY 11.