A half hour webinar delivered by Octavius Black, CEO of Mind Gym. After first discussing the problems inherent in traditional performance appraisal schemes – e.g. too infrequent, too focused on weaknesses, perceived value of schemes too tied to personal relationships between appraisee and manager – Octavius moved on to the substance of the webinar, how to make such schemes more successful and achieve the right amount of positive stress for optimal performance. The six points they have identified, all based on psychological research and backed with evidence and case studies, are:
- Purpose: People need to have a sense that their work matters.
- Challenge: Work has to be sufficiently demanding. Where specific hard goals are set people perform better than when they are just asked to ‘do their best’.
- Attention: Demonstrating attention to detail in people’s work shows them that you have paid attention to it and gives them specific, concrete areas to build on.
- Growth: When people’s work is based on their strengths and what they do best they perform better and show continuous improvement – a positive feedback loop.
- Recognition: People need to feel that their work is recognised and rewarded, but as measured against their colleagues and not some arbitrary absolute.
- Choice: Giving people autonomy and ownership of their work and development.
Mind Gym’s paper which goes into detail on all of these points is available for free on their website here by registering with them, or you can watch a recording of the webinar or download the slides here.