by The king discovers feedback need not involve an axe
On A Meeting Called The Performance Review
Good people, I was this week invited to observe a custom called the performance review, wherein a subject’s employer doth sit with them once yearly and discuss, calmly and without violence, whether their labors have pleased the household. I confess I sat through this entire proceeding with mounting confusion, for at no point did anyone reach for an axe, a dungeon, or even a strongly worded proclamation, and yet the matter of poor performance was, apparently, still resolved.
In mine own court, a performance review generally consisted of a single question, namely “Has this advisor displeased me,” followed swiftly by an answer requiring no further paperwork. Thomas Cromwell, a man of considerable talent and even more considerable usefulness, discovered this system’s limitations rather abruptly and rather permanently.
On The Matter Of Constructive Feedback
This modern feedback, I am told, must be “constructive,” meaning it should identify both strengths and areas for growth, delivered in a manner that leaves the subject feeling supported rather than terrified. I confess I never once delivered feedback to an advisor in a manner intended to leave them feeling supported. Feeling terrified was, generally speaking, the entire point.
On The Ninety Day Improvement Plan
I am further informed that an employee whose performance disappoints may be placed upon a ninety day improvement plan, granting them a further quarter year to demonstrate their worth before any final decision is made. Cardinal Wolsey received considerably less than ninety days once he had failed to secure mine annulment from Catherine, and no plan whatsoever was offered, improvement or otherwise.
The King’s Verdict On Modern Management
I do hereby declare the performance review, whilst tediously gentle by mine own standards, a genuinely superior method of correcting a subject’s shortcomings, chiefly because it results in considerably fewer traitors’ heads upon considerably fewer pikes. Had I adopted a ninety day improvement plan for mine advisors rather than an executioner’s block, I daresay the Tower of London should have needed a rather smaller staff.
I am further told this review process includes something called a self assessment, wherein the subject being reviewed must first grade their own performance honestly before their employer offers a second opinion. I confess I never once asked Wolsey to grade his own performance before I removed him from it, largely because I suspected, correctly as it turned out, that his self assessment and mine own would differ rather sharply.
Full and glorious source of this tale, as ever, upon The London Prat: https://prat.uk/workplace-performance-review-culture/
