You Cannot Afford to Skip Staff Assessment

In most organizations, getting people to tell each other the truth about their performance seems a challenge always out of reach. It can be uncomfortable and there’s never any guarantee it will be well received.

One of the most unloving things a manager can do is to refuse to give honest and constructive assessment to their team members. It may not always feel loving. None of us appreciate being told where we need to improve performance or where we are failing to hit the mark. But knowing there’s a problem and refusing to deal with it is anything but loving. 

So how should Christian leaders and managers approach staff evaluations and assessments?

First, make it a regular practice.

Most organizations have some model of annual performance reviews. They usually come with a standardized form issued by the human resources department and have all the excitement of a phone book. Managers use them every twelve months and wonder why they keep having the same conversations with the same team members every year. It seems like there is little growth or improvement, just deepening frustration and perhaps even a resignation that the status quo is immovable.

Personnel evaluations have to be far more regular than an annual review. If you’re a leader, you are always doing reviews. It may not have the formality of an annual review, but every effective leader is regularly giving team members honest feedback on their performance. Most of it will be informal, the kind of conversations that come up during regular meetings. For me, I find that a focused weekly meeting with each of my direct reports is crucial. It gives an opportunity for ad hoc assessment, where I can give immediate feedback and then allow for those leaders to deepen their strengths and make adjustments where necessary.

Evaluation needs to be timely, consistent, and intentional. If you defer until months from now, you’ll miss vital opportunities to affirm team members who are succeeding, you’ll forfeit opportunities to help them make adjustments that could yield greater success, and you’ll eventually frustrate them by raising points of criticism long after the fact. 

Second, make sure your primary commitment is to their growth and success.

We all like affirmation and cringe at criticism. That’s just human reality. But we genuinely need both. In fact, we need truth. It is essential that managers and leaders give honest assessment of their team members. 

But you can’t simply rush headlong into assessment. Well, I suppose you can but it will not be nearly as effective. For assessment to have lasting value, it has to be built on a foundation of trust, where team members know that their manager is deeply invested in their growth and success.

Invariably there are times where a leader has to lean in and ask hard questions or point out how a team member is underperforming. That criticism will be far better received and the opportunities for growth expanded when the team member is confident that this is actually motivated by a concern for their own flourishing. I want the people I work with to love their work. I want them to succeed in every way possible. I want them to advance in their careers. But they need to know that. And while it’s certainly true that actions speak louder than words, words still matter. A lot.

As a manager, beware of letting frustration or embarrassment animate your evaluation. You may feel some immediate catharsis in an outburst, but you’ll never recover trust with that team member and they will instantly know what matters most to you.

I’ve seen too many leaders who have an almost visceral anger problem and are quick to lash out in criticism of their team members. And in some corners of the corporate world, these kinds of temper tantrum-prone executives are almost valorized, venerated for their larger-than-life personalities. But eventually, narcissism and self-preservation suck all of the oxygen out of an organization. No one is motivated to grow. But if employees know that their manager actually cares and is invested in their success, motivation grows exponentially.

Third, be generous in praise and encouragement.

This requires work. But if you only give negative feedback, you will be an ineffective leader and have a hard time retaining talent. We all want to work in organizations and for leaders where hard work is honored, where excellence is celebrated, where virtue and integrity are held in esteem. So when you see a team member doing the right thing and doing it well, make a point to affirm it. 

Leaders also need to know when that affirmation is best done privately or publicly. There is a difference. But I have yet to meet a leader who has ever told me they worry they are too promiscuous in their public affirmation of the achievements of team members. Be quick to celebrate successes and victories. Do it privately and publicly. It sounds simple, but you’d be surprised how rare it is for organizations to do this well.

I think this is especially true in developing younger leaders. One of the most powerful things a young leader can hear from a mentor is, “I am proud of you.” Trust me, that is more than sentimentality. More than a mere affirmation of a performance or outcome, it is a verbal affirmation that a leader sees personal qualities that are admirable. It helps push against the transactional nature of so much organizational behavior and culture, where value is entirely determined by functionality or metric-based performance. Those certainly do demand affirmation, but don’t be reluctant to go further. As much as possible, affirm not only the performance but the person.

Fourth, don’t pull punches.

I know a leader who is especially good at patiently leading team members through negative evaluation. He’ll ask questions like, “Help me understand your thinking on that” or “What were you hoping to accomplish there?” It’s more than a management trick, it reflects his desire to do his best to have some level of understanding and empathy for the employee he’s managing. 

Leaders have to tell the truth. I have seen far too many leaders who are paralyzed by the thought of giving honest assessments. Conversely, I’ve seen far too many leaders who have never before received direct and honest feedback. When they finally do receive it they immediately appear stunned. But in almost every situation, they have actually appreciated it. 

Too often what happens in organizations is that when a team member is underperforming the organization adapts to compensate. Other people have to pick up the slack, goals aren’t met, and morale suffers. But it’s remarkable how often the status quo is perpetuated simply because the leadership abdicated their responsibility to give honest assessment and then demand accountability. Sometimes team members are just not in the right job for them. But quite often they simply have not been given clearly define expectations and then provided with ongoing and regular feedback. 

If you have to give someone a negative evaluation, don’t be subtle about it. Kindness and respect are not inherently at odds with directness. Of course, this presupposes the earlier admonition to make sure personnel know your fundamental commitment is to their success. But if that kind of trust is present, then you simply must be as direct and clear as you can be. If you have a team member who clearly struggles with task execution, don’t be vague about it. Get right to the issue, point out the problem, and help them identify immediate ways they can improve. If one of your team members is struggling with communication skills, don’t dance around it. Show them in their writing where they need to improve. Watch a video with them of them speaking or teaching and ask them how they think they can grow. It may sound painful. But when done well, it’s a tremendous gift to team members who genuinely care about the mission of the organization and want to do well. 

The Bible is full of wisdom on the value of honest and direct words of correction. For example: “The wounds of a friend are trustworthy, but the kisses of an enemy are excessive” (Proverbs 27:6). What if a robust theology of Christian friendship shaped how we approached our work in this way? It might help us more clearly and lovingly give direct and constructive criticism when needed and also caution against the trap of flattery or passive avoidance.

Fifth, be gracious and hopeful.

For Christian leaders should approach personnel development in general and assessment in particular in a distinct way. After all, the gospel is a constant reminder to us of the infinite grace we have received in Christ. If God has been so patient with us, surely we are called to be patient with colleagues. The gospel is a message of hope, summoning us away from cynicism and despair. Instead, it assures us that God is at work in our world through his Word and Spirit to save a people for himself, transforming them by his grace. Things will not always be as they appear now and no matter how dire the circumstances of the present may appear to our eyes, faith tells us that eternity will look very different. We are a people marked by hope because we are resurrection people, after all.

That kind of vision recalibrates the human heart and it certainly reshapes the way we lead and the way we seek to facilitate growth and development in our colleagues. It means we do indeed give timely, direct, and honest feedback when correction is needed. But it means we do so with hope that change and growth are indeed possible. It means we do so patiently and lovingly, even as we maintain accountability. 

In The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis put it well. “There are no ordinary people,” he wrote. “You have never talked to a mere mortal.” 

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. 

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.”

Our colleagues are no mere mortals. If we handle our work together--including assessment and evaluation--with an eye toward eternity, we have far more reason for hope.