Conflict Avoidance is "Naughty" -- Conflict is "Nice"

A manager calls me in a panic wanting to know what to do with the incompetent, unprofessional, badly behaved employee who has just done something exasperating, mind-boggling, terrible, and/or unbelievably stupid.  “I’m fed up with so-and-so.  He’s worked here for 10 years and he’s still ______ (fill in the blank with any number of bad behaviors or evidence of poor performance).  I’m tired of this and I want him gone!”

I ask, “What have you done so far to let him know it’s a problem that needs to be corrected?  Any warnings?  Poor performance evaluations?”

“No.  I’ve just put up with it.  But it’s gone on too long and it needs to stop now! He needs to go!”

(Heavy sigh on my end of the phone.)

It never ceases to amaze me how often managers avoid talking to employees about issues as though to bring up something unpleasant would be “mean”.  In reality, the desire to be “nice” and well-liked by avoiding conflict and failing to correct the employee’s mistaken understanding of expectations at work is “mean”.

Conflict avoidance leads to enabling, because it:

• Prevents or interferes with the other person’s acquisition of new competencies
• Reduces another person’s sense of power or control over life events and self-efficacy
• Reinforces old or maladaptive behavior such as procrastination or passivity.

Addressing the issue in a healthy way leads to empowerment of the other person, because it:

• Promotes acquisition of new competencies
• Increases another’s sense of control or power over a situation
• Encourages new coping abilities to replace maladaptive behavior.

Conflict is a natural part of interacting with others because we don’t all think, believe, or act the same.  In the workplace, conflict occurs every minute of every day.  Handled appropriately, addressing workplace issues through healthy conflict and confrontation are very necessary processes.  Healthy conflict and confrontation allow a department, work group, business unit, or team to consider differing opinions and ideas before a course of action is chosen.  They allow for clarity to emerge out of differing opinions and interest.  However, when managers in charge of leading others don’t know how to approach conflict in the context of their responsibilities, the workplace becomes coated with the waxy buildup of unvoiced concerns, resentments, passive aggressive behavior, disengaged employees, and gossip.

As the end of the calendar year approaches, leaders in many organizations are wrapping up performance evaluation cycles and deciding which employees will get merit increases for 2011.  It’s a good time to reflect on how well you’ve brought clarity to your workplace by addressing issues rather than avoiding them.  Have you been "naughty" or "nice"?

The Myth of the Performance Evaluation as an Effective Management Tool

Let’s stop pretending.  Performance evaluations don’t work.  But organizations do them anyway because they think that if they don’t do them, they won’t  . . . . well, I’m not sure what organizations think will happen if they stop doing performance evaluations.  Maybe they think won’t look like they are “managing” employees.  Well, here’s a news flash:  performance evaluations don’ t help you manage employees,  and by using them, organizations are dodging the real problem:  conflict avoidant managers.

The standard performance evaluation usually has a grade-card-like section that rates an employee’s ability to do aspects of the job or to exhibit the organization’s expected behavior.  Seriously?  NOW, you’re grading the employee’s abilities in these areas?  Wrong.  The time to grade the person was BEFORE you hired him . . . during the selection process.  Grading the person’s abilities AFTER you hired him is a bit late.  If the person made it through your selection process and landed a job he can’t do well or at all, you don’t need a performance evaluation tool:  you need ways to assist you in hiring hire better.  At this point, you’re really grading how well your selection process worked.

Also, research shows that it’s really difficult for an employee to turn ability deficits into strengths.  So what do we think we’re going to accomplish by filling out a grade card on each year?  Not a lot.  Oh sure, you need to document poor performance to justify remediation or eventual termination, but you can do that in timely memos or letters created after each conversation a manager has with the employee about deficit performance.

You see, the real reason organizations create and use forms called performance evaluations is that HR knows that managers are conflict avoidant.  Maybe the form that will do the managing for them.  But the forms don’t do the manager’s work.  And that leads to the heart of the matter.  Because even if we give managers a handy form to communicate their perception of an employee’s performance quality and ability, they don’t do it!

How many times have I, as the HR person, opened up a personnel file when asked to assist a manager when he seeks to discipline or terminate an employee.  Almost 100% of the time I find that each performance evaluation form in the file indicates that the employee is at least an average performer if not downright stellar.   Why?  Because most supervisors don’t want to ruffle feathers or rock the boat by subjecting themselves to the negativity that might occur when bad news is delivered to a poor performer.  Conflict avoidance.

Well, in my book, any manager, who hires the wrong person and doesn’t take timely steps to address performance issues when they occur, ought to experience a little negativity.  The issue isn’t about the employee’s performance level or the fact that you don’t have a performance evaluation form.  Could it be that the hiring manager didn’t know what he was doing when he hired the person to begin with and cannot face up to telling the employee that they both made a mistake.

So, whatever shall we do without the performance evaluation?  Trade all the time and money used to create, distribute, complete, file and store annual performance evaluations for training on how to hire the right person in the first place.  Oh, and use a hiring manager’s track record of hiring sub-par employees as feedback when talking to HIM about his OWN performance.