The Office Jester… every office needs one to help employees cope with their performance appraisal
A performance review, for some reason, either brings out the best in a person or the worst. For example, when it comes to a performance appraisal, you would either see an individual overly confident or extremely insecure. It’s almost as if there’s no medium button for a performance appraisal and everything has to be dialled up to the edges of consciousness.
That sounds like spiritual mumbo jumbo. Next thing you know, the sly HR people are going to deliver soulful pitches on how you can achieve enlightenment in their companies because of performance appraisal. That would be something that most people would call the greatest heist ever pulled by mankind.
To be honest, though, most people are so self-absorbed that it wouldn’t be impossible for such a heist to be pulled. We would be surprised if anyone noticed really. Take this video for example. The dude, here, is clearly disconnected from the normal communication channels of the world.
His idea of what happened at his last performance appraisal is distinct from what the reviewer says happened. We’ll let you watch this video on before commenting on it.
Versions of Performance Appraisal
Straight off the bat, you know who the “character” is in this video. It is, of course, Matt, someone that the HR department is well aware of. This guy typifies self-absorption and disconnect from other people. He also symbolises what biased communication looks like and what lack of empathy can do to you. At the same time, though, he has that innocent quality that people find so hard to resist. We choose to call it the stupid sincerity.
This naivety shows up in his rendition of what was said by the HR woman. Consider.
- When she says something extremely negative, he hears “kind of bad”.
- When she says she couldn’t have been clearer, he calls it “manager mumbo-jumbo”.
- When she pinpoints appearance, attitude and quality of work, he hears “touch up here and there”.
- When she says she sees no future for him, he only remembers talking about his future.
- When she thinks he won’t last long, he hears that “he can go places”.
- When he thinks he is Mr Improved, she thinks he’s gotten worse.
While most of the second hand account of the performance approval was good, what clinched it was the interviewer and interviewee’s expectations from the follow up. Matt hoped for and wished a promotion and hence he expected a promotion because of a new baby and loss of job for wife. On the other hand, the HR woman, Melanie, was planning to put Matt on promotion which meant no bonus and probably a sacking in the future.
For us, the video got over about 10 seconds too soon. We wanted to see what Melanie does with Matt. Our suggestion would’ve been a new to-do list of improvement to avoid miscommunications in the future.
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