Looking for an eye opening article on performance evaluations?

Check out Rex Huppke’s Chicago Tribune article on employee reviews.

Huppke cites the work of Avraham Kluger, a professor of organizational behavior at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who along with colleague Dina Nir poses the following three positive questions as being an essential part of a performance review.

The three questions are:

• “Could you please tell me a story about an experience at work during which you felt at your best, full of life and in flow, and you were content even before the results of your actions became known?”

• “What were the conditions, in you, others and in the organization, that allowed this story to happen? In other words, what did you do right, what did co-workers do right, and what did managers or the company itself do right?”

• “To what extent are your current behaviors at work or your plans for the immediate future taking you closer to, or further away from, the conditions that allowed you to succeed in that story?”

Kluger interviewed Huppke using the model questions cited above. The process took 10 minutes, but according to Huppke, “it was by far the best evaluation experience I’ve had.”