My team member assesses themselves too highly – what do I do?

Posted by Amanda Whiteford

This is a classic appraisal problem – you are reviewing a team member’s performance, which you feel is good and which they see as excellent! How do you handle the resulting discussion without demotivating or demoralising them?

Firstly, what evidence do you have to support your assessment of their performance? Make sure you have solid facts and figures to back up your evaluation. Often, managers have been so busy that they have forgotten some achievements from earlier in the appraisal year. It’s easily done.

What evidence does your team member have to back up their assessment of their performance? This is not something you want to find out during the meeting – you need to know beforehand, so you are prepared. That’s why I always recommend whenever any form of performance review is being undertaken, whether an annual appraisal or discrete project review, managers get their team members to assess their own performance first, in writing, so they have time to read and reflect on it before the review meeting. You will be much better prepared.

Are you looking for the same outcomes from a piece of work? If the specific outcomes or standards were not discussed at the outset, it’s possible that you are both right in your performance assessment! So, ensure when setting future work goals, or project outcomes that it is clear to all your team what you want them to achieve, to what standard and with what behaviours.

Let’s assume your assessment is correct and your team member is over-rating their performance. How can you get them to share your perspective? First, share with them the evidence your assessment is based on, give them time to reflect on the information and then regroup and continue your discussion. Don’t forget to recognise everything they did well – your conversation can then focus on what would have made it even better. Hopefully, having had time to reflect they will see that while their performance was good it wasn’t outstanding, and you can help them use this insight to build a meaningful, focused, development plan for the months ahead.

Peer feedback is another useful tool to use particularly if you are concerned that your feedback is more opinion based (subjective) than objective. If your organisation uses 360 tools regularly, check to see if the current questionnaire will cover the areas of concern you have. Alternatively, you can ask people who have worked closely with your team member for their feedback on their performance. To make this more informal approach easier, you can make it clear that any input will remain anonymous – unless they are comfortable to be named – and that you are looking for examples of good performance and areas for improvement.

If your colleagues’ assessment of your team members performance tallies with yours that will be helpful, and you can use these joint insights to help your team member to develop a meaningful, focused development plan which will take their performance to the next level. However, what if your colleagues’ feedback doesn’t tally with yours? What if your team members impression management skills are excellent? In this case, you can either:

• present the evidence you have – assuming it’s strong enough – and outline clearly why you don’t agree with your team members assessment, or
• you can graciously concede that you hadn’t fully appreciated their achievements and congratulate them on a project well delivered

Most managers I know have a good understanding of their team members performance and approach to work. However, I would occasionally come across issues where the discrepancy in a performance assessment was due to unconscious bias or personality clashes. This is why it’s so important for managers to gather evidence to back up their assessments, to gain feedback from others before the meeting, and to have an awareness before the meeting of how the team member has assessed their performance. Forewarned is forearmed.

TAKE AWAY
It is always going to be a difficult conversation when a manager and team member assess the team members performance differently. However, by remaining objective, ensuring you’ve set clear standards before a period of assessment or a project, and gathering evidence to ensure your view is not unduly biased, you can hold a constructive, supportive discussion which recognises their achievements and demonstrates to them what it will take to move their performance from good to great.