Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive

coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you

want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today

we're talking about performance reviews. Throughout our coaching, Terry had been asking for help managing Ken.

She experienced him as defensive and emotional.

Now she had to deliver his year-end review,

and event she found awkward even with the easiest of her direct reports.

She showed me the draft she'd written for Ken's review.

There were two sections.

The first section asked the boss and the employee to rank performance in six competencies on a scale,

exceeds expectations, meets expectations, and so on.

The second section asked for written comments from the boss and employee on both

strengths and areas of development. In the first section, the ranking section,

Terry had given Ken meets expectations in all six categories.

Ken had done the same for himself except in one category driving for results where he'd ranked himself exceeds expectations.

I started with that.

This isn't a huge gap Terry, but I'm sure he'll want to talk about it.

How are you going to explain the disparity to him? I asked her.

Well, he just doesn't get results, she told me.

At least not on his own, he's always coming to me, asking me to solve his problems for him.

Always, I asked, surely not.

Yeah, that's what it feels like, she said.

...