Episode 194: That Dreaded Evaluation: Why it is Hard and What to do to Make it Better
Evaluations can be challenging. They’re judgmental in nature and often ineffective. This week Randall emphasizes the importance of understanding organizational culture and using evaluations as a professional development tool rather than a mere judgment. We also talk about why leaders should avoid surprises and ensure evaluations are consistent with ongoing feedback, while employees should see evaluations as an opportunity for growth. The goal is to make the evaluation process less stressful and more constructive for everyone involved.
Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Halette Philanthropy, Randall Hallet.
It's an honor to have you join me, Randall, on this edition of Around with Randall. Today, we want to talk a little bit about evaluations. I have a number of clients going through this process as they, at the end of the year, usually sometime before August 31st or September 15th, go through evaluations with staff. I heard something very interesting in a conversation with a client and some other people in the room.
What was fascinating about it is the challenge of doing evaluations. The commentary was around, "I can't give everybody a five on their evaluation or can't give every aspect of the evaluation a five for everybody." This got me thinking a little bit about how we do evaluations because there are all these odd moments, depending on the evaluation form and style, that cause discomfort, distraction, and stress. Evaluations aren't fun. So today, I want to talk a little bit about them, but more importantly, from both the leader's perspective and those filling out the evaluation, things to keep in mind when you do so. Hopefully, that will reduce the stress and give some more credibility to the process, at least as much as we have in our control.
So I want to start with two big issues and we'll kind of talk about a few others. Number one is evaluations are hard because they're about judgment, and nobody really likes to be judged. Even by the people that you look back at—I think about two of my mentors who are incredibly important in my career—I didn't like being judged by them, and I respected and appreciated them so much, it's hard to explain. Even in my relationship with my wife, who I think is the finest person I've ever met at any time during my existence on this earth, I don't like to be judged by her. It doesn't mean she's not always right, as she usually is. Judgments are hard, and for leaders—good leaders at least, and hopefully I think of myself as one—we don't like to judge.
I mean, I think about it from a biblical perspective: "Yes, to be judged, don't judge unless you..." Yes, it's glass house time. You know, I'm judging you, yeah, but I do these things. It's really hard to have these conversations when they're done ineffectively.
Number two is that most of our evaluation tools—though it's getting better, frankly—aren't very good. In fact, there have been several articles from sources like the Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and other academic studies that indicate that, in some ways, when evaluations are done incorrectly (i.e., the instrument or the methodology), they're actually more harmful than helpful.
I'll give you an example. If you're filling out an evaluation and HR is giving you a template of some fashion to fill out, the employee is filling one out, and you have questions like, "Tell me what goals you think you met this year," or, "Explain the overall performance level of the employee or yourself." On what metric? If we ask open-ended questions in HR-driven evaluations, we get a lot of variety, and variety in evaluations can cause stress because you might look at something one way, but the other person—whether you're the leader or the person being evaluated—looks at it in a totally different way.
Then there's the issue, particularly in philanthropy and in places like healthcare and education, where the evaluation tools are built for another aspect of the organization. Let me take healthcare as an example. The evaluations that I always tried to figure out were built for nursing and clinical environments. While they weren't directly asking questions specific to the clinical environment, they were framed in that way. I would do them and think, "But this question is so poorly applied to what we do." By the way, there are all these other things we should be doing—making phone calls, seeing people, building relationships, going out and creating deeper, more meaningful opportunities for transformational gifts—that aren't even included in the evaluation. Bad evaluation tools sometimes hinder us as well.
A couple of thoughts about this understanding of evaluations beyond those two points:
Organizational Culture: Both the leader giving and the employee receiving the evaluation process need to understand that there's an organizational culture. Typically, if you use a scale for the evaluation—more and more people do, like a 1 to 5 scale—there is something in the 2, 3, or 4 range, usually 2 or 3, that equates to meeting expectations. This goes back to where we started the podcast, where I heard my client talking about, "Well, I can't give everyone a five." This gets to be really a conundrum because the employee, when doing their evaluation, might think, "I met all my goals, I exceeded expectations," but the organizational culture says, "No, if you met your goals, you've met expectations." Who really wants to hear, "Thanks for that great year of work. You made such a contribution to the organization with what you do, and you 'met expectations'?" It kind of sounds hollow. So, should I work less hard so I can meet expectations? This is a cultural issue, and larger organizations, in particular, struggle with creating a culture where meeting expectations is acceptable. If that's really meant to allow the employee to feel like they did a really good job, the organization has a responsibility in some way, shape, or form to frame this issue around a culture that says it's great if you meet expectations. The problem is, that's not what normally happens. Statistically, you can't be in a scenario where you have 100 people and they all get a five. Statistically, that's almost impossible to justify. So, you have HR people saying you can't give people that high of a particular evaluation mark individually or all together because we have too many people doing that, it skews everything. Then you tie raises to it, and too many people get raises, and now we've got a financial issue. The whole thing becomes kind of messy, to be honest.
Consider Stopping Evaluations: There is an argument in all of this that I've heard used that, frankly, we should stop doing evaluations almost entirely because they really aren't helping. If budgets aren't being tied to them because too many people get fives, it's like grade inflation. You may have heard, if you have a child, how many people are getting an A? How is that possible? It's the same issue.
Managerial Workload: Managers are doing a lot of evaluations, and particularly in today's environment, they could be doing more than they should be. The number that we hear in terms of effective active management is that somewhere between six and nine people can report to a supervisor or leader/manager effectively. But how many times do we run into people who are overseeing a department or something where there are 28 people? How are they supposed to do an evaluation and be effective?
Limited Knowledge: Most managers, leaders, and supervisors don't know as much about what happened to that employee, so they're more dependent on that employee. That can be good or bad. It can be good if maybe you didn't have a great year, and they're not understanding all of that, and you can frame the evaluation in a way that maybe looks a little better. That's really bad for an employee who's had a great year, and yet they're being pulled down by averages that are being required. When I did my evaluations with my bosses, I always wanted them to get what I thought before they filled out what they were required to do because I felt very strongly, particularly in philanthropy, that I was reporting to people who didn't have a full understanding of philanthropy. They hadn't had years of experience—quality high-level people, but they were managing academic programs or a hospital, academic programs, academic institutions. So, I would frame it before they ever got it to me in terms of what they were required to do, like, "Hey, I got to fill this out. I've already done that. Here's how I would view this. I'd be interested in your opinion."
All of this is to say that evaluations can be messy, and we all can't get fives even if we're all great—and we're not all great.
So, what are the tactical pieces for today? What I want to do is come up with about seven or eight things for you to think about, whether you're filling out the evaluation for yourself or your leader/manager/supervisor, or you're the leader asking to help get us through sometimes these difficult conversations, which in some instances really don't mean all that much, unfortunately.
Relax and Reflect: For both sides, relax, take a few moments, and just reflect. This means you should not wait until the last minute to do these. My experience is when we wait until the last minute—and by the way, I understand because I had probably about eight or nine when I was at Nebraska thinking back—these took time. This was not fun, but I knew it was important. If I waited until the last minute, it got sloppy, and things were written, said, done, and marked that probably, with some reflection, would have been much better if I had taken more time. This is true of your own evaluation for your boss, supervisor, or manager—if you wait until the last minute, maybe you're missing things. So the first thing is to relax, don't wait until the last minute, and reflect.
Understand Organizational Culture: Realize or figure out, talk about, or come to an agreement about either directly with your boss, as a department, or ideally as an organization, what the organizational culture is. If organizational culture has a grade inflation issue where everyone who's worth anything gets a five out of five, then the organization is going to have to figure out what that means. But more importantly, you need to understand that. What does it mean for you? If I get a three, what does that mean? What does that mean for my compensation? Is it average? Do I need to be working harder? Is that the perception? Should I be happy with that? Don't misunderstand organizational culture because, particularly for larger organizations that have hierarchies, a three out of five is probably a win. But for many of us, we have to consider it a loss. Understand that. Have that conversation.
Use the Evaluation as a Professional Development Tool: Realize this is a professional development tool. This is what we call a backward reflection: What happened this year? But the idea is not to look backward. It's to think about what happens next year—where do we go? If you're an employee and you've received feedback or you've received a score of whatever it might be, what do you need to do? I would encourage you, particularly if it's a lower score, ask what specifically should happen. There should be examples given, but most importantly, how can I improve this year? And for you as a leader, if you find yourself in a difficult conversation, don't just tell people, "Well, you've got to do better. I'll talk to you later." It should be, "Here are two or three things I want you to do better at." In a very difficult situation with an employee who was just absolutely toxic in the department, I said, "Here are three things you can do." Two were specific to her job. The other was how she talked to people. I told her, "Stop talking to people negatively, otherwise we won't be together, and I'll tell you that sooner rather than later." Unfortunately, I had to do that. This was a long time ago, but I want people to think about what they can improve on because if I'm just being judged—back to our original premise—and there's no next step, how do I get better? Now, if I have a good score, it's the same process. Don't take this as just one of those things that is difficult to hear. Look at it as, "How do I use this to help me get better as a leader or as an employee?"
Avoid Surprises: Don't make it a surprise. This is mostly for the leaders. If you have been communicating and supporting employees, the evaluation should not be a surprise. And if you get a low score or a lower score than you expected, it shouldn't be a surprise because you've been in conversations with your supervisor, manager, or leader throughout the year. This has become a major focus of many HR people: these quarterly, monthly, or bi-monthly meetings where you check in. That way, nothing on the evaluation should be a surprise.
Evaluate the Process: Take a step back and ask if the evaluation process is helpful. As an organization, is this really working? And as an employee, if you are confused or unclear, get clarity. Ask the question, "Can you tell me why I received this, and more importantly, what does this mean for me going forward?"
The bottom line is that we all should be working to improve, and if you're an employee who has an evaluation that maybe is substandard or something that you didn't expect, don't allow it to deter you from becoming better. It should motivate you to do something different. And if you're a leader and you've given an evaluation that's difficult or challenging, realize that there should be some examples and some ideas about how the employee can get better.
I appreciate so much you being here and listening to me about evaluations today. I hope your evaluations go well, and most importantly, I hope they're not that difficult, that they reflect well on you, but most importantly, they allow you to get better.
And don't forget, make it a great day.