Page 72 - Communication in Organizations Basic Skills and Conversation Models

The performance evaluation interview 61

Manager’s discussion points
Before discussing any possible problems, the manager starts by giving positive feedback.
He might have the inclination to start immediately with the discussion of things that are
not going well. However, receiving ‘support’ has a positive influence on the motivation
and health of employees (Argyle, 1995). That is why it is important that the manager
expresses the value of the positive aspects of the employee’s functioning in concrete
terms.
In the following example the positive feedback relates to the concrete actions of a
task: ‘In general it has come to my notice that you work very hard. You are usually one
of the first people to come in and one of the last ones to leave!’
Besides positive feedback, the manager also sometimes needs to criticize (see p. 26).
When giving criticism the manager should try to be as concrete as possible, so instead of
saying ‘You make mistakes all the time with personnel estimations’ he could say ‘With
assignment X you made a mistake in the estimation of the amount of part-time personnel
that were needed.’
It has to be clear that the manager does not give a negative judgement of the person as
a whole, but that he has a remark to make regarding specific behaviour in relation to the
functioning of the employee. Criticizing is not easy. In the first place the manager could
be scared of hurting the other person’s feelings. In the second place, the relationship with
the employee could be damaged if the manager says something negative about him.
However, an irritable situation can be created if the manager always swallows his
criticism. Irritation in a working situation can influence both the functioning of the
manager and the employee in a negative way. It is important, therefore, to be open,
honest and clear when giving criticism:

The tone should thus be businesslike (assertive), not aggressive: ‘I’m
really fed up with this…’, but also not sub-assertive: ‘Well, I really find it
difficult to tell you this, but…’ It is better to say: ‘According to me the
preparation time for projects is too long. I really want to discuss with you
what the reasons are for this and how we can improve the situation.’

When discussing points, about which some decisions were taken in the previous
performance evaluation interview, the manager could start by giving an overview of these
points: ‘We agreed last time that you would write a monthly short report about the
complaints that have come into your department. Since then I have been receiving the
reports neatly on time. However the information is not always very clear.’ In this
example we see that the manager starts with positive feedback. Then he indicates a
concrete point for improvement.
When the criticism is about a new point the manager first indicates the problem: for
example, ‘It occurs quite often that people make a phone call to you and I cannot reach
you. It is very difficult for me to indicate to these people where and when they can reach
you.’
It is important to make sure that the employee recognizes the problem: ‘Can you see
that this is difficult for me?’