Alleviate Anxiety and Increase Insight: Facilitated Performance Reviews
Corporate CEOs tend to keep their jobs for almost 10 years, while the median tenure of a city manager is half that (1). Effective performance evaluations require high emotional intelligence and strong communication skills under the best of circumstances. For employees who directly report to elected officials, the challenges go way beyond that, on both sides. As Jan Perkins and Frank Benest noted in their November 2016 PM Magazine article, A Constructive Dialogue, “A facilitated performance review can strengthen the governance team and the relationship between manager and council.”
The Challenge
Challenges for mangers being evaluated include:
Multiple Evaluators, One Evaluation - A majority of elected officials must agree on a final evaluation, which can be difficult because they often have:
Varied backgrounds, styles, ideologies and goals
In many cases, limited experience in executive or municipal management, therefore limited experience with formal employee evaluations.
Divergent political views and agendas
Concern about possibly straining an important professional and personal relationship
Broad Job Responsibilities – Local government managers have an extremely broad range of responsibilities, some of which are clearly stated and some of which are implied:
Operational responsibilities are similar to those of a private sector CEO and include managing finances and the overall budget, successfully delivering products and services, enhancing customer satisfaction, leading staff and fostering innovation.
Political and policy related responsibilities include administering public meetings, assisting elected officials in implementing policies and laws, engaging stakeholders affected by government action, and working with other government agencies on creating, interpreting and implementing taxes, laws and policies that affect the local community.
Enforcement responsibilities include ensuring that laws are followed and maintaining an organization that can appropriately enforce such laws.
Life in a Fish Bowl - Adding even more pressure to this situation, contracts with the chief administrators of local governments are public documents, often scrutinized by government watch dog groups and the local media.
Making it Easier on Elected Officials
As any manager knows, thoughtful performance evaluations require a lot of time. They are also one of the most stressful workplace situations -- for those being evaluated and those doing the evaluating. Adding a facilitator can ease this stress, for all parties. Here’s why:
Laying the groundwork – Whether it is their first evaluation or their 20th, it helps to get all the evaluators on the same page about the evaluation criteria prior to the actual evaluation. A facilitator can help council members determine what they want to accomplish with the evaluation
Relieving Pressure - Let’s face it, it is hard to tell someone if they aren’t doing well, or even discuss relatively minor areas for improvement. This gets easier with time, and with the understanding that corrective feedback helps an employee grow in a position. Many elected officials will find it easier to be honest with a facilitator who can act as a buffer, and help craft the message that council members want the manager to hear.
Gaining Consensus - The experienced facilitator will be able to work with multiple evaluators to determine what are truly performance concerns, verses political or personality issues, and will be able to work with them to reach agreement on the final evaluation.
Setting Goals – Whether there are areas for improvement or just an affirmation of direction in the coming year, a facilitator can get clarity on these issues and get them in writing. This serves as a baseline for the following year’s evaluation.
Gaining Clarity for the Manager
Managers need to understand what is expected of them; this is the crux of meeting performance goals. Many times in my career I have seen city managers working their hardest to build a strong organization, yet the elected officials feel that the manager is focused on the wrong things or isn’t achieving the results they want. Sometimes it is a personality conflict with an easy solution, but the elected officials aren’t able to communicate this in a way that the manager understands. Other times, there is a serious disconnect between council expectations and manager performance. Facilitators can translate these issues and bring managers the clarity needed to do their jobs well.
Greater Honesty – Whether it is a big issue, such as implementing goals or meeting financial targets, or small things like the way a manager dresses or punctuality, it is often difficult for elected officials to give candid feedback to the organization’s manager. This is even more difficult when multiple elected officials must agree on input. It is usually easier for council members and other elected officials to tell an intermediary about their feedback. The facilitator can take the emotion out of the issue when talking to the manger. Using a facilitator as a buffer and translator reduces the stress of the performance evaluation on all parties.
Alignment – A disparity between what officials want to accomplish compared to the available resources or time can cause friction between the manager and elected officials. In addition, individual elected officials may have different priorities. Even when councils engage in goal setting, the goals are usually political goals, while the organization has operational goals, such as workforce development, IT implementations, systems improvements and employee engagement. The chief administrator’s evaluation can be a great opportunity to shed light on these organizational goals and how they support the council’s priorities.
Telling the Story – A good self-evaluation is a tool that can lead to better evaluations. A professional facilitator can help identify tools to help make process a success. For example, the facilitator can help make sure that the manager provides the elected officials with a self-evaluation that truly represents the work and accomplishments achieved over the year. The facilitator can review this self evaluation with the council and help identify any disconnects. Doing this work upfront usually makes for a better process overall.
Facilitation Process
A good facilitator should have a well-stocked toolbox with a variety of approaches at hand. After learning about the objectives of the evaluation and getting to know the parties involved, the facilitator will recommend a process.
Regardless of the specific process, there will need to be clear “before, during and after” phases of the facilitated evaluation. During the “before” phase the facilitator works with the council and manager to determine if there are any outstanding issues that may influence the process, gain agreement on the evaluation criteria and instrument, and work with the city manager on a self-evaluation.
The evaluation itself can take place during one or more meetings. This phase highlights areas where the manager is performing well and clearly explains any areas that are lacking and improvements that are needed. Ideally it should result in an evaluation and compensation package that a majority, if not all, council members can agree to.
In the final phase, the facilitator works to ensure that the manager and council fully understand the expectations for the coming year, and how results will be measured. The goal is to get to an honest evaluation that not only provides feedback on the prior year’s performance, but lays a clear path for the year to come.
(1) Susan Adams in the 2014 Forbes article, "CEOs Staying in Their Jobs Longer," noted that the average tenure of a CEO was 9.7 years, while a 2005 academic study by David N. Ammons and Matthew J. Bosse in State and Local Government Review, "Tenure of City Managers: Examining the Dual Meanings of Average Tenure," concluded that the median tenure for a city manager was five years. They argued against using the average city manager tenure of 6.9 years because the presence of some extremely long serving manages skews this number.
