Wandering through the chapters of Armstrong’s Handbook of Reward Management Practice, the reader finds themselves presented with the phrase “The true role of performance management is to look forward to what needs to be done…”

So why do most appraisals start with considering the extent people have met their objectives? …and, if performance is linked to contingent pay, this also tends to emphasise the focus on past performance and achievements.

It would be easy for an appraisal discussion to go along the lines of:
Manager: “OK, you’ve done quite well in some areas, but not so good in others.”
Employee: “So will that affect my bonus?
Manager: “A bit, but if you can work on some things over the next few months, you can nudge this up.”
Employee: “Cheers.”

So back to the ‘”true role” of performance management, we could consider adopting a ‘coaching’ framework for an appraisal discussion (which encourages a forward looking conversation). Typical questions applied in an appraisal context are:
– What do you want your job to look like/feel like in 6 month’ time?
– What do you want others to be saying about your contribution?
– On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your current position against this?
– What makes it this score?
– What might you or the organisation do to make it the current score plus 1 or plus 2?
– To help you in this journey:
a) What resources have you or the organisation got?
b) Who do you or the organisation know who could help?
c) How does the organisation culture or ways of working support this?

One other reflection, is that appraisal discussions invariably involve an element of change. John Kotter referred to leadership as ‘inspiring people through change’. So the role of the line manager is to inspire the employee through this change – a leadership task rather than a management one.
…So why do we call the whole process performance management, rather than performance leadership?

…and one more other reflection. Sometimes an organisation will ‘performance manage’ people out, which gives the term ‘performance management’ a sinister overtone. Is it possible to ‘performance lead’ people out?