Page 258 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

242 enhancing performance through goal-setting and feedback interventions
happen again. Eventual consequences of the continuation of bad practices will have
to be explained too. It should be made clear for instance that such continuation will
not improve the technician’s position (it may have consequences for his performance
appraisal). Furthermore, a number of conditions, such as working the required number
of hours, should be set. In this way, the technician’s normal activities will become
more sharply defined and the impression might arise that his room to manoeuvre has
been somewhat restricted. In a way that is true. On the other hand, role clarity will
improve (as it already did for those who actively participated in the development of the
system).
Ask the technician for his opinion (questions, misgivings, objections but also endorse-

ment of the proposed new procedure) and listen to him with an open mind.

It is very important to be able to empathise with the technician and show understanding
of his present feelings. Moreover, new aspects that have not been thought of before may
suddenly come up.
Ask the technician for his help in making the new procedure a success.

This again can prompt him to think about the “ifs and the buts”, which also helps in
gaining insight into what he really thinks.

Ask the technician to think about solutions to the objections he may have raised about

the new procedure.
If, in this particular session, the technician cannot overcome his objections, even

with your help, ask him to think matters through and arrange a date for a follow-up
discussion.
If the technician expresses his endorsement of the objectives, procedure and conditions,

start up the actual feedback discussion.

PART 2: PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT THROUGH FEEDBACK AND GOAL-SETTING

Giving feedback
The main points of the structure of a feedback session are as follows. First, the supervisor
should explain the purpose of the discussion to the technician. Then, the feedback reports
from the preceding period(s) should be examined together with the technician to get a
detailed picture of the performance realised and to find out whether it coincides with the
technician’s own idea of his performance. They should find out how this performance
relates to the standards the technicians imposes on himself and to his abilities. They
should then try to identify the causes of the scores obtained, for example, by looking
at working methods the technician employed and comparing these to his colleagues’
methods, and by looking at factors which help or hinder the technician to perform well.
After bottlenecks have been identified, agreements can be made about contributions
they both can make to overcoming these bottlenecks. At a following session, one should
decide together whether the agreements have been kept.