Page 68 - Communication in Organizations Basic Skills and Conversation Models

The performance evaluation interview 57

tendency, for example, to observe the things that we expect to see. When we dislike
somebody we may see the negative sides much more than the positive sides.
Furthermore, there is a stubborn bias that is often implicitly taken into account when
judging someone, such as: Scottish people are stupid, women cannot drive a car, etc. We
may use such prejudices in order not to have to adjust our opinions. It is easier for us to
place people in little boxes and keep them there. This error of judgement is also typified
as ‘labelling’. You label someone and then do not check to see if the person has
changed—you just look at the label. We now discuss some other often occurring errors of
judgement.

Avoiding extreme judgements
People who have to evaluate others often avoid extreme judgements; they limit
themselves to the middle of the rating scale. This is the reason why there is little
differentiation (Roe & Daniels, 1984). An explanation for the tendency to avoid low
judgement is that one is scared to deliver bad news (see Chapter 10). It is also possible
that extreme negative judgements are not considered to be useful to motivate an
employee. A final explanation for the tendency to avoid extreme positive or negative
judgements is that it makes it harder to criticize the particular employee in the future.

Leniency

By leniency we mean an evaluation that is too positive. This mistake often occurs in
organizations where the relationships between managers and employees are more
amicable than hierarchical. The bilateral dependency is therefore greater so the
evaluations should not be too negative, otherwise the motivation and atmosphere in the
workplace are endangered.

Halo effect
The halo effect means that a positive aspect of a person overshadows all other aspects.
Therefore one positive aspect becomes the reason that a person is evaluated positively
overall: for example, a project manager who is good at dealing with the executors is
therefore also evaluated positively with regard to the administration process and priority
setting at work, even though he might be functioning in a mediocre manner in these
areas.

Horn effect
The horn effect is the opposite of the halo effect when, for example, the evaluator in
general has a negative judgement of the employee based on one aspect only. A secretary
who does not fill in the office agenda neatly is evaluated on other aspects more
negatively than she deserves.