Articles and Presentations

IWLA NEWSGRAM SEPTEMBER 2002
How To Develop A Measurement Tool For Senior Staff
By Donald Jacobson and Shelley C. Safian

Within your organization, performance appraisals are used to measure the progress and success of staff members. However, senior management should also have some type of assessment for their own performance besides a yearly bonus based upon bottom line profitability. They need a method of measurement to stay on track, laud their successes, and indicate opportunities for improvement.

Developing a performance appraisal tool for senior level managers cannot come from a box of standardized evaluations. The first step is to qualify the categories of important skills and tasks. You might find it helpful to begin with a revised job description and a list of core competencies. These documents should provide you with a foundation upon which to base the queries. In most cases, these categories will include: interpersonal skills; communication skills; self-management skills; and negotiating skills, to name a few.

Once you have the main sections established, the questions can be developed. In creating the format for the questions, be certain to structure the answer choices to a limited number, or the results will be ambiguous. Your answer choices should be an odd number. Most often, in evaluations of this nature, three works best. Provide response choices such as usually, sometimes, and not usually. If certain questions should evoke an absolute response, add never and always to the list.

Before beginning to write the actual questions, it must be decided how the evaluation will be administered. Will the questions be given in a formalized manner to be scored by the human resources department or another manager? Or, will it be presented as a suggested method for self-evaluation? This must be taken into consideration because the circumstances of the process will affect the answers. People will answer differently if they know others will see their answers, particularly when the questions deal with personal behavior. The goal of this evaluation should be to help your senior staff to be more in touch with their progress and management style.

Structuring the actual questions will not be as easy as it sounds. You want the questions to be thought provoking, and possibly require a bit of soul searching. The goal is to provide these managers with a measurement tool that will tell them where they are, and what they may need to do to improve that position. Remember the trickle down theory. A manger's style, attributes and inefficiencies can be mirrored in the employees that report to him/her. It is certainly in the best interest of the organization to make your managers aware of their opportunities for self-improvement.

In addition to self-evaluating questions, such as, "I get visibly frustrated when a staff member makes an error...never, unusual, sometimes, usually, always", you want to include outside-in questions as well, such as, "I ask my staff if they understand our goals...never, unusual, sometimes, usually, always". With a self-assessment evaluation, one goal is to get managers to think about and remember what they know to do, but may not have done because day-to-day tasks have interfered. With our example, a manger reading this question and saying to him/herself,"Wow, it really has been a long time since I discussed our goals with my staff. I need to do that" is an excellent result.

Senior management must be responsible for creating an environment that will encourage the greatest number of employees to function at their highest level of productivity. They play a crucial role in the ultimate value of the company and its products. Therefore, they need to be bolstered by the ability to measure their own effectiveness and efficiency.

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