Designing an Above Average Performance Rating
Professional development series
This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.
In the recent interview with Steve Wynkoop (founder of SSWUG.org) we covered some tips to taking more control of our own performance evaluation process (don’t miss another professional newsletter tip—signup for the free newsletter here). This article covers the topic in more detail. Or better yet; attend the workshop at https://www.lauraleerose.com/take-command-of-your-performance-reviews/
Last few interviews and articles; we introduced the Personal Business Commitment tool as a great way to communicate your goals and commitments to your manager. We also discussed the importance of frequent meetings with your manager on the topic. This is great for getting a “Meet Expectation” or average performance rating. What if I wanted to get an Above Expectations, Above Average or even and Exceptional performance rating? How would I go about that?
How do I go about designing an Above Average rating?
Well – the first step is having a frank discussion with your manager on what he/she sees as “Above Expectations”.
For example: A developer’s primary role and responsibility is perhaps to design, code, test, and deliver high quality products and services. Being an exceptional development is exactly what your manager expects of you. Therefore, being an exceptional developer (even though you feel that it warrants you an Exceptional rating) is a “meet expectation” to your manager. There is nothing wrong here – except there is a mismatch of understanding.
Above Expectations or Above Average often refers to activities outside your regular development duties (while still accomplishing your regular duties with high quality). If you were to get published in a technical journal, present at a technical conference, bring back sales leads (contact names, numbers, email address from people that attended your presentation or workshop), visited client sites to provide on-site Q&A, job-shared with a Technical Support person so that you gained additional customer insight into your product, manned a Tradeshow booth as the technical support partner to the sales force, or conduct an executive business strategy proposal based on your innovation – those things would fall outside normal expectations for a developer. If you were to accomplish those things in addition to your high quality development responsibilities, that would better warrant an Above Expectation rating.
Gosh! If that’s an Exceeds Expectations or Above Average, what the heck is Exceptional and Excels Expectations? This rating seems impossible.
Once again, it means sitting down with your manager to discuss what they see as Exceptional. More often it is tied to the business results of your “extra activities”. For instance, if your client visit (which is outside of the normal duties of a developer) caused the client to purchase $50,000.00 more product or services – that would be exceptional. If you conference presentation and subsequent collection of contact names/emails, lead to a huge sale – that would be exceptional. If your presentation to the executives an on innovative business strategy was accepted, executed and successful – that would be exceptional. If the business result of your activities propelled the business forward faster to the business goals – that would be exceptional.
Conclusions:
The key is to have this discussion with your manager to understand what your manager feels is Above Expectations. If you have no clue on your manager’s scaling process, you are less likely to hit the target.
If you liked this tips, more can be found at www.lauraleerose.com/blog or subscribe to my weekly professional tips newsletter at http://eepurl.com/cZ9_-/
The weekly newsletter contains tips on:
1) Time management
2) Career maintenance
3) Business networking
4) Work life balance strategies
If you haven’t taken advantage of your introductory time management coaching session, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info