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Constructive Performance Appraisals

In The Exceptional Executive (New American Library, 1971 -- on sale on Amazon.com), Harry Levinson identifies three conditions for the constructive use of performance appraisals:

First, appraisals "... should be conducted not annually but on a day-to-day basis.  Following an old education maxim, the more immediate the feedback on a given performance, the more useful and important it is...When suggestions for improved performance are given in less concentrated form, subordinates appear to accept them more readily."

Second, supervisors "...must have training for appraisal.  Before undertaking assessment, superiors must have an opportunity to discuss their feelings about judging others.  They must be helped to learn to convey their feelings to their subordinates without concomitant guilt about being destructive.  They need to learn, too, that people are not destroyed by having a realistic picture of reality to face, even if it means they must give up their jobs."

Third, appraisal "...must be a mutual evaluation process.  In a superior/subordinate relationship, both parties influence each other, and both have a responsibility of the task....In order to discharge responsibility, each person must affect the other....If they are to carry out the joint responsibility in the most effective way, they must be able to talk freely with each other.  Each party must have the sense of modifying the other.  The talks must also include a joint setting of goals and the opportunity for each to express how she feels about the working relationship."

To learn more about performance appraisal, and other forms of evaluation in the early childhood setting, check out the Exchange publication Taking Stock at http://mail.ccie.com/go/eed/0422

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