​​ Performance appraisals as we know are very difficult since it needs to be unbiased, transparent and depends on the type of reinforcement that has been practiced with you before your final D day.

Let us look at some biases that we must avoid during performance appraisal

“Treat a man as he is, he will remain so. Treat a

man the way he can be and ought to be, and

he will become as he can be and should be.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

This we call the Self-Fulfilling prophecy that kind of affects the way we handle Performance Appraisals. Let us look at typical scenario below:

• Appraiser has an initial impression about the appraisee

that he/she enacts

• Appraisee then behaves to conform to the Appraisers

expectations

• As a result, the appraiser’s initial impressions are

confirmed and further reinforced

So it is very important not to classify implicitly in your minds or explicitly to the Appraisee that he/she is “Highly Skilled”, “Intelligent” , “Sloppy”, “Not fitting into culture”  “etc…

For example, in some studies, it showed that students that were labelled as Intelligent outperformed others a year later basis the IQ levels that they exhibited. This clearly shows that having or showing bias can completely skew the final performance or results. So, it is very important that we have a objective and regular assessment of the work done and not fall prey to any bias.

Also, it is important to avoid the Fundamental Attribution error during performance reviews where the success of one’s self is attributed to qualifications and characteristics while the success of others is attributed to Politics and Situational factors. Same way any failure of one’s self is attributed to the same politics and situational factors whereas the failure of others is directly attributed to the qualifications and characteristics of the other person.

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To sum it up some important pointers to conduct successful performance appraisals as below:

Enjoy this small funny video on Performance Appraisals 😊

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdp4sPviV74