Supervisors with No Authority to Conduct Evaluation

Have you experienced this problem: You supervise your employee’s work, but do not conduct her performance evaluations? This dynamic invites enormous and frequently conflicts that will prompt your employee to run to the next level supervisor for every one --the supervisor who conducts performance evaluations. Although most employees naturally accept delegated authority in supervision relationships, if you do not conduct your employee’s performance evaluation or have no role in its final outcome, your employee will not feel accountable to you. This dynamic contributes to conflicts. A troubled employee may take advantage of this situation, making it difficult to correct performance. Conflicts can increase if the manager at the next level (who does conduct performance evaluations) acts as an accessible arbitrator. This can cause the troubled employee to feel a safe harbor exists, reduce motivation for correcting performance, and reinforce the perception of non-accountability to the immediate supervisor. The interventions for this problem include reinforcing proper communication channels by requiring the employee to go through the supervisor first, making the immediate supervisor's contributions to the performance evaluation weigh heavily. Never ask your "assistant supervisor" to supervise an employee, but refuse to give this person evaluation authority in some small respect. A little is all it takes to completely change this destructive dynamic.

The Employee Straightened Up, So Why Do I Not Want to Treat Him Like It

Okay, so you confronted your long-term, problematic poor performer. You put the fear of God in him, and he went for some sort of help. What ever it was, it worked. Now he wants a different relationship with you, but you're still not over your anger about his irresponsibility for the past several years. You need to get over this attitude and fast.

This is not your spouse who suddenly decided to get sober. I have seen relapses happen over this sort of thing. The problem: You have a mindset and a well-honed "neurologic" pathway in your brain of seeing your employee as a loser. Now, you need the help. Not him.

This is the same syndrome that is experienced by family members when an alcohol or drug addict finally recovers--seriously recovers. Do you realize that you can, by your attitude, create a situation where your employee relapses into poor performance again. If this happens, you will of course blame the employee, but what you did was PROVOKE IT.

So, it is normal and natural to get mad at your employee for wasting years of time and along with it lost productivity. You won however. You salvaged your employee.

Often, supervisors feel that a troubled employee put the workplace through a long period of disruption before he or she finally sought help. Consider the following in order to acquire a more positive attitude and lessen the likelihood that you could act provocatively and jeopardize your employee’s progress: 1) Assume employees want to do a good job and feel good about their work. 2) Believe that some personal problems do not easily permit self-diagnosis or self-motivated decisions to seek help. Instead, some personal problems and diseases are naturally fought with denial until consequences nearly overwhelm the victim or others. 3) With this understanding, focus on the present and reinforce the changes made by your employee. This will increase productivity and help you develop a more supportive attitude.