Recognise This! – Evaluating team contribution and performance is as important as evaluating individual performance.
Today in his always excellent Three Star Leadership blog, management guru Wally Bock said this:
“When you review performance you should review both team and team member performance. Pay attention to how team members work together and support each other. Be alert for situations where one person pulls the others down or lifts them up.”
Wally couldn’t be more correct in the importance of evaluating contribution to the team. The catch is – how do you do that effectively? How do you go beyond the anecdotal or the few occasions you may have witnessed (both positive and negative) to accurately capture how well someone truly contributes to (or detracts from) the team’s success?
You need a positive, transparent way that doesn’t induce fear of repercussions like many 360-degree review mechanisms do. You need to crowdsource performance evaluations through strategic, social recognition.
How does that work? When you have a strong technology backbone, it’s really quite simple. Structure a strategic recognition programme that encourages anyone to recognise anyone else for living your core values. Be sure the system includes clear hierarchies so you can track and view in an easy infographic style who on your team has been recognised by those on your team as well as those outside your team. Now you know several important factors with the data to back it up:
- Who is influential within your team
- Who is influential from your team across the entire organisation
- Who lives particular core values in their daily work versus those who do not
With this data easily to hand, you can have much more informed and impactful team performance evaluations throughout the year to help everyone better live your values and support the team’s success (and the company’s as well).
What do I mean? Members of the executive team at Globoforce explain it better than I can in this video (click through).
Do you evaluate team performance and contribution as well as individual performance?
