How individual performance appraisals destroyed the cohesion in a team
Taking months to recover from it
Taking months to recover from it
![Appraisal form Appraisal form](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0cc39bbe-f4e3-4eb3-a264-2eef4302d1df_800x533.jpeg)
Team Ace was a true Scrum Team with a Development Team of 9 individuals. They shared ownership of what they build and they had ingrained the Scrum values and lived by it. Building the product was a team effort. Improving their way of working was too. Then came the time of year of the appraisals.
Rita, their manager, was happy with the performance of the team and thought that they all should receive a High Performer rating. However, she knew this was impossible. According to company rules, the ratings should be divided as follows:
20% should receive a High Performer rating
70% should receive an Average rating
10% should receive a Below Average rating.
Rita had two other teams, totaling about 25 people. According to the objectives that she had set with these teams, one other team rated Average and third team rated between Average and High Performer. This already gave her a direction of what the ratings should be.
She knew that team Ace should receive the highest scores on average. She also defined individual objectives in close collaboration with the persons involved. This allowed her to finalize the individual appraisals.
Rita decided that Carla, Puneet and John should receive the High Performer rating. Carla represented the company in conferences and meetups, giving presentations, really putting them on the map. Puneet helped the development organisation to improve their Definition of “Done”. John helped to cement the team cohesion.
Jane, Klaas, Jose, Alice, Anna and Louis should receive Average because they didn’t stand out as much as the other three.
Rita had little trouble to bring the message to the team. Everyone already had an idea about what they could expect, based on the objectives and the regular talks with Rita.
Trouble in paradise
At an appraisal alignment meeting the managers concluded that too many people scored High Performer and the category Below Average was under-represented. Rita was disappointed to see that she was one of the few who had taken the appraisals seriously. She had carefully considered company policy with the ratings. But others hadn’t. Some even gave an entire team a “High”.
But what disappointed her even more was that the discussion turned into a political battle where the wrong reasons were brought forward to rate one team higher than another one. Rita wasn’t fully prepared for this and she drew one of the shortest straws. She needed to lower the scores. So, after discussing it with the team, she decided to do the following:
Carla dropped from High Performer to Average. Although it pained her, she believed she was slightly less prominently representing the team than Puneet and John.
Klaas would drop to Below Average. He didn’t deserve this, but the C-level message was very clear. There’s no escaping from one person having the rating and Jose, Alice and Anna already had it before.
As a result of all this Klaas and Carla were outraged. Klaas also helped with expanding the definition of “Done”, although Puneet did more. It made no sense to him that he got a “Below”. He also feared next year, because having Below Average twice in a row meant being sacked. Puneet was proud, but he didn’t know how to respond to the team. He was a team player and felt that everyone deserved the highest score. And no-one should have gotten a “Below”. Alice didn’t understand why a team from a different manager had so many people scoring “High”. While they sucked. She was disappointed that Rita didn’t put up a fight for them.
The team spirit was totally disrupted. It would take the best part of Q1 to heal the wounds. Should nothing change, next year the wounds would be opened again.
The lesson
Arbitrary appraisals are powerful:
they can split the unity of your team;
they can demotivate the members of your team;
they can help your team to focus in individual goals, instead of team goals.
It gets even more powerful when these individual appraisals are given:
while not considering how people met the objectives;
while looking at how much you like or need a person, not on what she or he achieved;
and then bargaining with appraisals as if you play a game of Tetris (where numbers have to fit perfectly).
Playing with individual appraisals is like playing with fireworks. You better know exactly what you do, otherwise it may blow up right in your face.