Page 260 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

244 enhancing performance through goal-setting and feedback interventions
attained that level. He can also let himself be guided by the plus and minus scores of the
ProMES system and be dissatisfied as long as he is in what he interprets as the danger
zone (negative scores), or until he can positively distinguish himself from his colleagues
(by scoring higher than the regional average).
A technician who is dissatisfied with his performance and who at the same time
has positive expectations of improving his performance, has the right mindset for the
next step: finding out about ways to improve his performance. The same applies to a
technician who is satisfied with the fact that his performance shows an upward trend
and who is thereby stimulated to try to improve again at the next occasion (see: Locke
and Latham’s High Performance Cycle (1990)). This also means that the time has come
to ask the technician how he views his own potential (his expectations about possible
improvements in the future and his ideas about his competencies).

Ask the technician if the performance results given in the feedback report are a valid

reflection of his abilities.
Does the technician believe that, given his present level of knowledge and skills, his
performance in the preceding period is the maximum he can achieve, or does he consider
himself capable of improving his overall score, within the constraints of the existing
situation?

Ask the technician to explain his line of reasoning in answering the previous question

and discuss his line of reasoning together.
Ask the technician what he could change in his working methods to improve his

productivity.
Ask the technician what others could change in their working methods in order for

him to improve his productivity.
List all the ways in which productivity could be improved and rank them in order of

feasibility (degree of difficulty, conditions that have to be met, etc.) and effect (how
much productivity improvement can be expected).
Choose the option that best combines feasibility and effect.

Make arrangements about implementing this option (‘who does what by when; when

will effects become visible?’).

Setting goals
A peculiar aspect of this case study is that the performance effectiveness curves are
based on average performance data of about 250 technicians from all over the country.
Hence, maximums, minimums and ‘zero points’ reflect national averages which will not
coincide with each and every technician’s performance range. That implies that for some
technicians negative scores will be difficult to accept and also that goals set in terms
of positive scores will be considered altogether impossible to obtain by a substantial
number of technicians. Therefore, setting specific, difficult but attainable goals for an
individual technician against the background of that individual’s performance range,
should certainly be one of the features of the performance enhancement sessions of the
supervisor and the technician.