Happy February!
In Maryland, the weather has had its ups and downs, causing a lot of people to come down with illnesses. Not fun!
This reminds me of being sick as a child with what seemed to be a stubborn fever. My mother took my temp
erature when I first got ill – 103 degrees. As the week went on, I started looking and feeling better, but strangely, the thermometer kept reading 103 degrees. The persistent “fever” didn’t add up. My forehead felt cool to the touch, my appetite was back to normal, and I felt fine – yet according to that thermometer, I was still seriously ill for over a week.
Want to know what really happened? My mother finally bought a new thermometer, and when she took my temperature again, it read 98.6 degrees. Oops! The old thermometer had been broken all along.
Isn’t it interesting? My family had relied so heavily on a broken tool (the thermometer) that we completely ignored all other indicators (touch, appearance, appetite, and overall well-being).
This same pattern shows up in the workplace. Too often, we depend on broken tools like ill-fitting performance reviews when we should be evaluating the whole person instead.
Need help creating a performance management process that works? Why not contact The HR Team?
-Eileen
