Teams Blog

I once shocked a manager by telling her I thought she had rated me too highly in an annual performance review. I don’t recall the details anymore, just the stunned look on her face. Some mistake I had made during the year, though I had identified and corrected it at the time, made me feel that my colleagues had done a better job on one measure. Almost everybody got a 3 on almost everything, so a 3 seemed unfair. When I self-rated, I gave myself a 2. I ended up with a 3 anyway.

My apologies if this comes across as self-aggrandizing, but it illustrates a point: The most common complaints I have heard over the years about appraisals boil down to, “It’s not fair!” Many teamwork scientists and management gurus agree. John Hunter of Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog reports J. Edwards Deming “emphasized that forced rankings and other merit ratings that breed internal competition are bad management because they undermine motivation and breed contempt for management among people who, at least at first, were doing good work.” I’ve said for years that performance appraisals are legal protection for bad managers, a waste of time for the majority. If you set measurable standards for your employees, communicate monthly on the results, and praise and correct at every opportunity, an annual review tells the employee nothing new. If you don’t do those things, the review refocuses their effort way too late—perhaps 12 months too late. Though I offer recommendations in The SuddenTeams™ Program for harnessing appraisals to support team performance, that’s because appraisals are so prevalent, not because I like them.

Words like “fair” always cover a litany of traits, so I was intrigued when I came across a journal article defining the term, in effect. Two business professors, Richard Posthuma of the Univ. of Texas at El Paso and Michael Campion of Purdue Univ. started with a list of 1,000 possible sources and whittled it down to find 18 articles in peer-reviewed journals. From those they compiled a list of 20 best practices for performance reviews (PRs) that employees will consider fair. See the study summary for the complete list, but let’s discuss the ones most directly related to teams.

To ensure the team is focusing its efforts on the priorities of your company (or “nonprofit” or “agency”), I recommend having measurable standards that follow directly from measurable company goals. Some should be individual goals, and each team member should also have the team goals on his or her appraisal. Three of the best practices Posthuma and Campion found relate:

• “The PR should be based on observable job behaviors to the extent possible.”
• “Objective performance data should be considered to the extent possible.”
• “The PR should be aligned with organizational goals and objectives.”

They note in relation to another practice that at the start of the period covered by a review, “employees should have a good idea of what will be expected of them.” As an example of all of these, say a nonprofit helping ex-criminals break the crime cycle has a goal for the year to “Increase case closings by 20%.” The job placement team thus might create a goal of “Increase client placements by 20%,” and it follows that a placement counselor could have, “Place 20% more of my clients.”

You can make your whole HR process more efficient by having every employee draft their own job descriptions and negotiate them into final form with their supervisors. The method also lets you identify gaps between what managers expect and what people think the managers expect. Then use those descriptions as the basis for job ads, interviews, hiring decisions, reviews, and performance improvement plans if needed (to try to correct poor performance before firing someone). This alignment also reduces your odds of legal liability, according to employment law and HR experts. Posthuma and Campion list:

• “The content of the PR should be based on a job analysis or shown to be job related.”
• “Subject matter experts should have input on the factors to be evaluated in the PR.” They add that the best SMEs are people who are doing or have done the jobs.

I am, as regular readers know, a big advocate of employee empowerment. It is the most powerful method of improving a host of measures related to cost-effectiveness, worker and client satisfaction, etc. The professors say a best practice consistently shown to raise employee satisfaction is, “Employee participation should be allowed… in the PR process (e.g., setting goals, providing input on performance).”

Regular readers have also heard me say over and over that you cannot promote people into management without training them on how to lead people and yet expect them to succeed. Several of the appraisal best practices relate to training managers and employees on the process, and the former on how to provide feedback in a legal and respectful way. Most of us hate to give negative feedback, which is why I include that in my effective communication skills class.

If you want performance appraisals to matter to employees, then their appraisal of your appraisals has to matter. This study suggests there is a right way to review, and the professors say following it “should increase the acceptability of the information employees receive during their reviews, reduce the likelihood of complaints, and increase motivation…” If you’re a manager, that should increase your motivation to take the action below and use these “fair” practices.

Action Item: Print off the employee review process best practices and go through the list with your team. Ask members whether they think your process follows the practices, voting “yes” or “no” on each. On any in which many say “no,” work with the team to raise concerns with the “powers that be” in your organization. If you are the power that be, call me to talk about how to make things right: 919-414-8939.

The trend toward pre-employment personality testing concerns me for various reasons I won’t rant about now, but one of the biggest is the spurious basis for the judgments drawn from these tests. Personality and performance are both so complex, any claim that you can predict the best personality for a given job is, at best, shaky.

First, you don’t just have to fit the tasks of the job, but also the personalities of the team (current personalities, that is), manager, and anyone else the worker will deal with regularly. As discussed in earlier posts, personality is situational: though I come up in tests as an introvert, correctly, I love making a living immersed in groups of people. Also, four researchers argued in the journal Group Dynamics, “there are specific, lower-level facets within the higher-level… traits that may have differing and even contradictory effects on team performance.” (I bet the same is true for individual performance.) For example, do extroverts help teams because they are assertive or because they are social? If you were hiring for a team that was too aggressive and thus not getting along well with other teams, an extrovert might or might not be a good addition depending on his or her specific subtraits. By the same token, there are many different ways to measure performance, the researchers point out. To use the test results accurately, you would have to match the specific subtraits to the specific type of performance you were looking for in a specific team within a specific environment—any piece of which could change the next day.

The article dates from 2006, but I found it last spring while researching my post on the Myers-Briggs test and think it has a lot for hiring managers and HR directors to consider. I am intrigued by the broad background of the researchers, with representatives from academia (Univ. of Central Florida), consulting, a nonprofit research organization, and the U.S. Army. They reviewed the results of studies linking personality to team performance and predict how specific traits will relate to various aspects of that performance.

By the way, consistent with my earlier series on the history of team building, there was a nearly 40-year gap in the research from 1959 to 1997. My point is, the personality/performance link does not have multiple decades of studies supporting it like other aspects of teamwork.

Here are the aspects they found in the literature and how they defined them (all are direct quotes):

• Adaptability—Team members use information from the task environment to adjust strategies through the use of flexibility, (changing) behavior, and reallocation of resources.
• Shared situational awareness—Team members develop shared knowledge of the team’s internal and external environment.
• Performance monitoring and feedback—Team members give, seek, and receive task-clarifying feedback.
• Team management—Team members direct and coordinate task activities, assign tasks, plan and organize, and motivate other team members.
• Interpersonal relations—Team members optimize interpersonal interactions by resolving conflicts, use of cooperation, and building morale.
• Coordination—Team members organize team resources, activities, and responses to ensure complete and timely completion of tasks.
• Communication—Team members exchange information efficiently.
• Decision making—Team members integrate or pool information, identify alternatives, select solutions, and evaluate consequences.

Out of 12 personality traits, the authors think only two will be positive for every aspect of performance: emotional stability and flexibility. When you understand that the two subtraits of the first one are “adjustment” and “self-esteem,” this makes sense. As the researchers say, “Given that those low on adjustment are prone to be distressed, upset, hostile, irritable, and nervous, they are not likely to excel in interpersonal or team settings.”  As for flexibility, a team that resists changing to new conditions clearly won’t perform as well as one that easily adapts. However, I think you can have too much of a good thing. Some teams are too quick to chase the latest gig or trend. I worked for a company that essentially failed because it leapt to meet every new customer request and spread itself too thin. And in a highly regulated industry like drug development, any flexing needs to be grounded within the restrictions placed on the team. In either case, having at least one “stick-in-the-mud” to serve as devil’s advocate would be helpful.

The authors think someone with a strong desire to achieve will also be good for a team, with the exception that a high achiever may not have the best interpersonal relations. (What if that person wanted to achieve at any cost?) No trait is absolutely negative, they think; dominance comes closest, with a mix of negative or neutral marks. A team with lots of dominant people would probably have difficulty making decisions, but those same people might monitor the team’s performance carefully, which could be a good thing.

The rest of the traits, the authors think to be a mixed bag. You might think people with high levels of affiliation (desire for personal connection) would be good for a team, and it probably would improve communication and interpersonal relations. But that trait could hurt the ability to lead, coordinate, or make decisions with team members, because those people can be more interested in socializing than getting work done.

All of this is only educated guessing, mind you. The critical point? These are predictions, results these very educated guessers think will prove true if studies are done on them. They are saying nobody knows what personality traits will help specific parts of team performance, which means nobody knows better than a team’s leaders and members what traits will help that team. Even then, being human, they may go for the traits they prefer rather than the ones they really need to perform better.

Action Item: Call me if you want to talk about how to cut through issues of personality by focusing on demonstrated character and agreed-upon behaviors instead, at 919-414-8939.

Source: Driskell, J., et al. (2006), “What Makes a Good Team Player? Personality and Team Effectiveness,” Group Dynamics 10(4):249.

If you would like to have a hard-working, loyal team member, consider hiring an ex-criminal. At the very least, it may keep you out of trouble.

No, I’m not joking on either count. We’ll start with the latter. An article published this week by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) states that "pre-hire testing and background screening of applicants’ credit reports and criminal histories have come under increased scrutiny…" Recent U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) hearings and its first lawsuit against these practices are evidence.

The EEOC asserts in its lawsuit that the plaintiff company used credit histories and criminal background checks to unlawfully "deprive a class of black, Hispanic and male job applicants of equal employment opportunities and otherwise adversely affect their status as applicants because of their race, national origin and sex."

A "policy guidance" page on the EEOC’s Web site explains, "the use of arrest records as an absolute bar to employment has a disparate impact on some protected groups, (so) such records alone cannot be used to routinely exclude persons from employment." Only if the crime is "job-related and relatively recent" can a blanket ban be justified.

If you are hiring an accountant, an embezzlement conviction is probable a valid reason not to hire them. A conviction for a bar fight probably is not, nor is an embezzlement conviction for someone who will have no access to money. (Usual disclaimers: I ain’t a lawyer, contact yours for legal advice, just reporting what I’ve been told.)

The logic is, since minorities and males are more likely to commit crimes, criminal history can be used as a dirty trick to discriminate against otherwise qualified candidates. Don’t want to hire a male into your all-female office, but a male is the most qualified candidate? Check his criminal history, and refuse to hire him regardless of what the crime was or what he has done to make up for it. Since males commit more crimes than females, the odds favor your bias. But the EEOC does not.

What about increased risk to your company or workforce, both valid concerns? Two relevant statistics are bizarre in their similarity given that experts in different fields presented them. In the ethics presentation I blogged about last month, Jacob Blass reported that 93% of ethical violations are committed by people with no prior record. On Feb. 2, a column in the Raleigh News & Observer by a social work professor stated that 96% of sexual crimes are committed by first-timers. As someone said from the audience at the Blass talk, you are only increasing your risk by 7% (or less) when you hire an ex-offender.

Furthermore, Blass said, ex-offenders often are excellent workers because they are so grateful for the second chance. Logic indicates an ex-offender knows he or she is being watched and thus is likely to toe the line even more carefully than workers who feel more secure about their career options. A “blanket ban” on ex-criminals may well harm your company by cutting out the best possible hire without reducing your overall risk. If you consider yourself an ethical or religious person, you have plenty of other reasons to respect each individual on a case-by-case basis.

Do make the person explain their crime, when it was, what the circumstances were, and what the person has done to make up for it. Listen to the words they use, to see if they accept responsibility. Make sure the explanation matches the background check results. Consider how long ago it was, and how similar the situation was to anything they will face in your workplace. Then use your best judgment, lest even in these times of worker surplus, you miss out on hiring the best team member for the job.

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