Performance Conversations® Questions & Answers
Interview with the Author

The Performance Conversations® model is an innovative approach to building partnerships for successful performance between managers and employees. It is a 21st-century approach to performance management that uses feedback instead of appraisal, and conversation instead of evaluation to describe and achieve great performance.

Instead of emphasizing the rating, ranking, and documenting of past performance, it focuses the individual’s attention and effort on improving the only performance that can be affected—future performance. The environment created in the continuous dialogue protocol designed within the Performance Conversations® approach allows managers and employees to continually calibrate and recalibrate their joint efforts to ensure that performance is on track and improves over time. The Performance Conversations® model simply stated is a structured feedback and supervision system that uses continuous dialogue and adjustments to manage work efforts, outcomes, and behaviors.

Q: Why did you write this book?
A: I wrote this book after being frustrated for years with performance appraisal systems that seemed to do more harm than good. As a Human Resources Manager, I had designed or managed several systems for the organizations where I worked. However, no one ever liked any of these systems and no organization I knew had a better system. The answer became clear to me; ‘no one likes them because they simply do not work.’

Q: What do you mean they do not work?
A: In my book Performance Conversations®: An Alternative to Appraisals, I outline 15 research-based reasons why they do not work. Performance appraisals were created 75 years ago during the industrial age. Their assumptions are no longer applicable to today’s workplace.

Q: Can you give some examples of why they do not work?
A: One of the biggest reasons is that they are focused on the past. Managers spend countless hours documenting what each employee did last year instead of planning and regulating future performance. The past cannot be changed. Another reason they do not work is they are based upon the manager’s observations only. Managers are not always around, they miss things, and they take vacations. The employee is there 100% of the time, but most performance appraisal systems do not give the employee enough input into the performance management process.

Q: Are you alone in thinking that they do not work?
A: Most employees will tell you that they do not work and that they have had at least one bad performance evaluation experience. Most managers will also tell you that they dislike conducting performance review sessions. Furthermore, my research is based upon, the findings of a number of experts, such as Douglas McGregor, W. Edwards Deming, and Tom Coens; each has provided evidence that highlight the shortcomings of appraisals.

Q: If they are so bad, then why do so many organizations do them?
A: Organizations conduct them because they think there is no good alternative. They hope that they get more value out of them than the downsides associated with their use. Organizations know they need some system to provide employees with feedback and some system of holding individuals accountable for their work outcomes. But, performance appraisals are the problem, not the answer. Performance appraisals are actually designed to document past performance, not to improve performance.

Q: You advocate that organizations should stop conducting appraisals. What should they do instead?
A: This is exactly where Performance Conversations®: An Alternative to Appraisals comes in handy. It is a 21st century method of managing performance and increasing productivity. It is a process that makes the employee and manager partners together in better performance. Through a structured system of feedback and continuous dialogue, the two diagnose performance challenges and agree on plans to optimize performance. They manage performance as it occurs and makes corrections as necessary during their performance conversations meetings.

Q: Your approach seems very different than the traditional process of meeting to talk about ratings, isn’t it?
A: The Performance Conversations® approach is an innovative method of managing performance. It is not business as usual. It is a better way to manage today’s knowledge-based workforce as opposed to the outdated ‘stick and carrot’ appraisal approach that uses the fear of punishment associated with bad evaluations to motivate employees.