People managers in large corporations must assign performance ratings to individuals in their group. Further, you must conform to an expected distribution of “Superior,” “Meets Expectations,” and “Does Not Meet Expectations” ratings. You may or may not have some latitude about pay increases related to performance.
Lessons learned the hard way:
Pre-decide that your responsibility is to distinguish performance levels in this reporting period. Pre-decide you will do this professionally and without grumbling. You want a “tough but fair” reputation.
Ignore the “soft” language you hear about the ratings distribution; take it as a rule not a “if it’s convenient for you” guideline. These distributions fit some budget decision somewhere, and even when they say it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
Start everyone in your group at “Meets Expectations” level. Next, identify anyone who did not perform at the agreed-upon level. You expected more deliverables, more consistent behavior, and you must be able to articulate exactly what the gap is. Then select the people who performed over and above their goals, if anyone – meaning, you would have been perfectly content with fewer deliverables or lower performance. Keep that a high bar. Finally, force yourself to rank the remaining people inside the “meets expectation” category.
Make notes about your decisions to prepare for any large-group calibration discussions, and meeting with each direct report when you convey the final rating.
Calibration meetings favor the prepared. In really difficult situations it may feel like a steel cage death match. You are likely a manager among managers, part of the larger management organization. Resist every temptation to blame HR, upper management, and whoever “them” is this time. You represent the business leadership to your direct reports.
Be prepared to tell people in the “Meets Expectations” category about their relative position in that category. This is particularly important for the people in the bottom quartile. It could sound something like this: “You met expectations this year, but frankly, you should know most of your peers performed better. Let’s work together on setting some stretch goals for next year, and what I need to do to help you achieve those.”
Expect that word will get out quickly about who got what rating and pay raise. (I’m old school, and we never talked about these things freely, but it is often different today.) Operate with this mindset: Respect the privacy of individual performance conversations and avoid fueling the gossip engine.
Also, if you are mentoring a successor or someone with high potential, give them insights about how you thought through this process. You can share insights without violating confidentiality. This is crucial information for difficult decisions in their future. This kind of mentoring is how we strengthen the culture of the organization.
