Over the past few months EDR has been attempting to implement a more structured process for conducting performance evaluations throughout our company. So far results have been mixed and I think the reason for this is that it isn't completely clear what the true purpose of performance evaluations is.

The term "performance evaluation" itself conjurs up all sorts of negative connotations. At some level it implies that Person A (who has all the power) tells Person B all the things they he/she should do to improve (while Person B sits back and takes it). Over the years I have been on the receiving end of these "talks" and have always found them, shall we say, less than motivating. The reason for my opinion is that they really never were "talks" where a back-and-forth dialogue was taking place between two people. Instead, I was always being talked to.

I think there is simply one overriding reason for conducting performance evaluations; to overlay an individual person's goals and skills with the company's goals and skills to determine how well they are aligned.

Of course, to actually do this means that one must know what the company's goals and skills are and what the other person's goals and skills are. The former should be relatively simple provided that a company's management team has done its job in communicating the organization's mission, values, goals and strategies in a clear way. The latter is more difficult because it demands a personal, one-on-one dialogue between two people who perhaps don't have a history of communicating at this level. Doing this requires a high degree of trust and, as we all know, trust is something that must be earned and takes some time to develop between people. But when it does happen, people are able to break through things that had been barriers and achieve results they hadn't thought possible before.

At the end of the day, a manager's role is to help others, both customers and employees, attain their goals. No more and no less.