My Employees Should All Earn “A’s”

Ken Blanchard (from the Blanchard Companies and a big proponent of servant leadership) gave a talk that I saw where he shared a lot of really interesting things. One concept in particular, however, really jumped out at me that I wanted to talk about here.

Ken described his time as a college professor and how he’d hand out the final exam on the first day of class. The other professors would give him grief and explain that’s not how it was done. Ken’s response? “Not only am I going to give them all the questions from the final but what do you think I’m going to do all semester? I’m going to teach them the answers!”

Now apply that same thinking to being a manager. Shouldn’t we be telling our teams what it is that we expect from them? It’s performance planning or setting annual goals and it’s what they’re going to be graded on, the “final exam” in keeping with Ken’s terminology.

Once those goals established, then as a manager, you should focus on day-to-day coaching to teach your team what those right answers are. That should be our mission as true servant leaders – to be constantly engaged in helping our people succeed. Sometimes that means removing obstacles, sometimes that translates to redirecting their efforts and sometimes, it means getting out of their way.

Finally, you have the evaluation on how you did — the performance appraisal. Or, in Ken’s world, your grade.

Ken wanted his students to all get A’s which can run counter to how a lot of our societal thinking views things, be they the grade curve in school or performance appraisals at work.

As a manager, I was once told that all of my team couldn’t earn “Exceeds Expectations” (our version of an “A” in our performance appraisals). They were worried I was being a soft grader; I, however, saw it as a recognition of a group of people who were consistently doing more than what I had asked of them.

What if every company and every manager did that? Set very clear expectations of what each employee’s goals were and then focused – regularly – on how they were progressing in meeting those goals. Yes, it requires time on everyone’s part to accomplish but, for goodness’ sake, these goals are what you both said were important to accomplish. Why wouldn’t you keep returning to it?

Here are two simple ways I have used to keep my people’s goals in the front of my mind:

1. After the annual performance reviews were completed and the coming year’s goals were established, I will set up a recurring meeting for the year set for every couple of weeks or at least once a month. In the meeting details, I then paste in everyone’s goals. By doing this, I set aside time on a regular basis to reflect on their goals and how we are progressing towards meeting them. (I also set a separate, shorter meeting for my own goals that my manager and I have set for me.)
2. I typically hold bi-weekly one-on-ones with my entire team and I take notes on my laptop. Each person has their own password-protected Word document on my computer and I each year, I copy their goals at the bottom of that document. This way, when I get ready to meet, I open the document and I see them each and every time we meet. They’re also handy talking points that I know to work into our discussions.

I have heard of some companies who use performance appraisals as a way to cut their lowest performers and to encourage (threaten?) better performance of those who remain. What kind of culture does that create? It’s survival of the fittest and encourages people to look out primarily for themselves.

Personally, I much prefer Ken’s method of trying to elevate the performance of everyone in the organization by being clear about what our goals are and then doing everything I can as a leader to help them accomplish that through on-going and consistent communication.

Which kind of company would you want to be a part of? I suspect I know the answer, but either way, know that I’m pulling for you!