The Metiss Group's Blog

Sometimes leaders are disappointed with the performance of a direct report who was expected to be a superstar but didn’t pan out that way.  Sometimes a mediocre hire can slip through the cracks when shooting for a great hire; but other times the reason for a new hire not reaching their potential is best found looking in the mirror.  Even the hires with the greatest capabilities need some quality time with their leader to reach their full promise.

If leaders have an expensive hard asset like a large copier or other piece of equipment, they’re likely to invest in on-going maintenance to avoid unforeseen mishaps or negative surprises; interestingly enough, they’re willing to make these investments despite the fact that those assets will only depreciate over time.  When you think about a human asset that should appreciate over time, why wouldn’t leaders invest in similar operations maintenance to ensure the highest level of performance?

When it comes to accelerating the performance of direct reports, leaders should invest in weekly one-on-one time, provide on-going and timely course corrections and positive feedback, deliver quarterly performance reviews, discuss goal alignment, and encourage personal development.  Leaders who have fallen out of the habit of those activities should start them back up.  If they’ve never tried them, try it for a month and watch the investment grow.

Leaders who empower their direct reports by investing some quality time with them then watch the ROI grow on their original hiring investment.

Cognition, the act or process of thinking, enables us to process vast amounts of information quickly. As we are consciously thinking about one specific thing, our brain is processing thousands of subconscious ideas. Unfortunately, our cognition is not perfect, and there are certain judgment errors that we are prone to making, known in the field of psychology as cognitive biases. They happen to everybody regardless of age, gender, education, intelligence, or other factors.  For leaders, these errors often impact their leadership effectiveness.

One of the challenges leaders face is availability bias when conducting performance evaluations.  Availability bias is the tendency for a direct report’s recent positive or negative action to “spill over” to other areas the evaluator’s perceptions of them. This bias happens a lot in employee performance evaluations. For example, if a direct report has been late to work for three days, leaders may remember this and conclude that they are lazy and don’t care about their job. There are many possible reasons for this; perhaps their car broke down, their babysitter did not show up, or there has been bad weather. The problem is, because of one negative aspect, they may assume that the direct report is a poor worker and that may unfairly influence the overall evaluation of them.

Empowered leaders document all the behaviors of their direct reports for the whole performance evaluation period. They review those notes when preparing their performance evaluations and try not to let recent or singular events influence their evaluation and develop more successful direct reports.