You will inevitably find yourself forming impressions of team members as you meet them. Don’t suppress these early reactions, but step back from them and undertake a more rigorous evaluation.
The starting point is to be self-conscious about the criteria you will explicitly or implicitly use to evaluate people who report to you. Consider these six criteria:
- Competence. Does this person have the technical competence and experience to do the job effectively?
- Judgment. Does this person exercise good judgment, especially under pressure or when faced with making sacrifices for the greater good?
- Energy. Does this team member bring the right kind of energy to the job, or is he or she burned out or disengaged?
- Focus. Is this person capable of setting priorities and sticking to them, or prone to “riding off in all directions”?
- Relationships. Does this individual get along with others on the team and support collective decision making, or is he or she difficult to work with?
- Trust. Can you trust this person to keep his or her word and follow through on commitments?
To get a quick read on the criteria you use. Allow yourself 100 points to divide among the six criteria according to the relative weight you place on them when you evaluate direct reports. Record those numbers in the middle column, making sure that they add up to 100. Now identify one of these criteria as your “threshold issue,” meaning that if a person does not meet a basic threshold on that dimension, nothing else matters. Label your threshold issue with an asterisk in the right-hand column.
Now step back. Does this accurately represent the values you apply when you evaluate direct reports? If so, does this analysis suggest any potential blind spots in the way you evaluate people?
Your assessments are likely to reflect certain assumptions about what you can and can’t change in the people who work for you. If you score relationships low and judgment high, for example, you may think that relationships within your team are something you can influence, whereas you cannot influence judgment. Likewise, you may have designated trust as a threshold issue—many leaders do—because you believe that you must be able to trust those who work for you and because you think trustworthiness is a trait that cannot be changed.