An Excerpt From "My Mentor" Meaningful Performance Evaluations

I started to open my mouth to respond in disbelief…and he immediately told me to stop and listen!

Your boss does not have the right to evaluate your performance…unless…you give that to him!

Most people are too stupid or lazy to realize that!

The only right that your boss has is to agree or disagree with you!

Your performance is yours and yours alone...

Do you realize that…?

I nodded in agreement…but it was a jump for me…because I too had been brainwashed by traditional management theories such as MBO…

You have something in your possession that will change the entire face of your evaluation…do you realize that?

I shook my head…I had no idea of what he was taking about…

Your notebook!

The light went on!

Yet he went on to confirm it!

Every time he gave you an assignment…you wrote down his expectations…I thought that was brilliant and began doing that my self!

You have a chronicle of exactly what he expected from you over the past year don’t you?
AND you know exactly how you did in relation to each of those expectations…right?

Perhaps you should make a list of everything that he assigned to you and ask him if he missed anything…

Then when that list is agreed upon…send him another column that lists what he told you he expected…

Then when that list is agreed upon…send him a list of how you performed in relation to those expectations…

Then when that list is agreed upon…send him your assessment of the expectations versus actual…

OR…

You could just leave it up to him to remember all that stuff…and gamble that you are at the top of his list!

He smiled and walked out…he knew that my evaluation was in 5 minutes and that my definition for being at a meeting on-time was 5 minutes early!

I walked down the hallway and just before I turned the corner...I looked back and he was standing in the doorway of his office...smiling...I smiled back...took a deep breath...and...

"Come on in Phil…I see you have your notebook…no assignments today…its all about you and last year’s performance…let me see…you had a pretty good year…wouldn’t you agree?"

I smiled and said…”Boss…we have a few weeks before the final reviews are due…what would you think if we stepped back and really worked this through?” “Rather than spending an hour today…let’s just take a few minutes and look at what I was assigned and make sure that we have captured everything that mattered! “Besides…I have 12 impromptu "one on ones" that I just came up! ”