One of my bosses used to say, “When it comes to performance appraisal, this is not a beauty pageant. You will not be judged based on how visible you are, but instead on your merit and contribution”
Among the biggest pain points I have observed and experienced of employee performance in the corporate world is this little thorn called “visibility”.
Perhaps this may sound familiar to you: high performing, staff who have nailed and exceeded all KPI but being denied good performance ratings or promotion because they were “not visible enough”.
(Though it tends to make us wonder – does it work the other way around, in favor of the highly visible employee? Can the visible superstar simply go for a stroll and ride on the wave of popularity, by virtue of his/her shiny performance write-up?)
This is a touchy sensitive subject, especially for those who feel they are not very visible in the organization or the team, perceiving they have a built-in handicap or "unseen force" that holds them back. I’ve been there, and yes, it burns.
So let’s honestly give is some thought: how important is visibility?
The key is goal-setting and setting clear expectations of what is expected from an employee. If visibility is indeed an integral part of the job itself, then place it as part of the employee’s performance targets and KPI. If it’s not relevant, don’t turn the job into a beauty pageant.
However, a couple of things to keep in mind if you DO consider visibility important:
Firstly, let the employees know upfront and well in advance at the start of the year, so they may prepare for it. Not just a shocker “plot twist” you shoot them at the end of the year end performance review, or those final triumphant moments when they are due for promotion.
Secondly, by integrating visibility into the KPI, you need an apple-to-apple benchmark: allow fair opportunity for the employees to project their visibility. We cannot put everyone on the same pedestal if the nature of their job scopes aren’t on a level playing field.
Some job scopes are naturally more visible than others. For some of us whose jobs are highly technical in nature, these assignments don’t really require or impose us to make frequent presentations or interfacing with management, such as my current job assignment as a discipline process engineer in a project team working mainly simulation, design, and calculation to support project proposal works behind the scenes. For us to get ourselves visible outside of our teams requires us to go the extra mile to volunteer additional tasks of presentation and coordination.
But for some job responsibilities, presentations are their bread and butter: their day-to-day job has high visibility by design. They frequently require interfacing with high-level stakeholders, leadership teams and partners. Some job designations are tasked with the “final sign off” with the clients and are guaranteed to get the achievement photograph that gets splashed on the front page. For these jobs, visibility isn’t an “extra effort”; it is a given if you simply show up and do your job.
Thirdly, and this is perhaps most important, one may probably be wondering: “How would you measure visibility?”
Therein lies another problem: Visibility is highly subjective, and dependent on perception, hence does not have truly fair metrics to be measured. Bosses, too, have limitations: A person may be considered “visible” by superiors who are familiar with one’s work, but completely unknown to others. Take the other extreme: A person may be considered visible by virtue of social smoking or golfing with the higher ups. A person might be “famous” for winning the company karaoke competition, or for organizing the company gala dinner.
But you have to honestly ask: are all of these visibility acts relevant to consider a staff a “high performer”, or promotion?
An organization putting too much undue importance on subjective visibility without clear prioritization is at a risk of moving away from the emphasis of a high-performance culture, and instead inspire a culture of ostentatious employees who act purely for publicity. You might accidentally promote superficial things that, in reality, don’t actually matter and are completely irrelevant to their core job deliverables, but can get them noticed or save them from poor performance ratings. In Malay slang language, I believe the term is “capab” (cari publisiti).
Finally: whose responsibility is “visibility”, anyway?
What role do the superiors, bosses, employers play in recognizing the work of their own subordinates? Is it correct for the employees themselves to be 100% responsibility for their own visibility?
No matter how perfect you setup your performance appraisal systems, as human beings with limitations, a perception bias is inevitable. As objective as you try to make the performance targets or promotional criteria, you will still have a little factor that relies on your perceptions to make a judgment call on a person’s “worthiness”, and that still has visibility play a small, subconscious role.
People judge based on what they know. And if one doesn’t know much, or perceive matters based on an incomplete picture, one cannot make good decisions.
But we can do something to work around this limitation: and this is where the superior’s responsibilities come in. At its most basic, superiors need to make the time and put in the effort to recognize their subordinates’ works. Regularly engage your team in a consistent, structured manner: as a platform to understand the challenges, pain points they go through and efforts they put in, clearly communicate expectations (including visibility expectations), exchange feedback towards continuous improvement, and identify how they can facilitate or optimize the team’s resources to perform their jobs better.
Simple steps like regular engagements not only improve the leaders’ visibility of their teams but allow them to simultaneously build an atmosphere of trust; not just whooping out the sledgehammer during year-end performance reviews because they are “not visible enough”.
Perhaps, if done right, visibility may no longer even be relevant.
But what if superiors don’t have time to engage their subordinate teams? Too busy with meetings and engagements?
If effective leadership and management of subordinates is your core job, “no time” is not a valid excuse. Tasks that are your core responsibility – your fardhu ain – things like this, you don’t “find time”, ya sheikh. You make time.
Don’t penalize others for your own failures. “Not visible” and “not taking the effort to see” are two different things.
Besides, why are managers paid more if they don’t manage? What kind of a leader doesn’t lead?
Leadership failure leads to the evolution of performance appraisals into a beauty pageant.
Even if your performance appraisals become a beauty pageant, are you fit to judge the contest if you didn’t even show up in the first place?
Food for thought.
The Muslim Perspective
Ala kulli hal, as a Muslim, I always remind myself that the one most important performance evaluation: the appraisal of our lives, the one in which we stand in front of Allah to be answerable for our deeds in this life to determine one of two destinations: Jannah or Jahannam. Seventeen times in a day, we recite
مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ
“The Only Owner (and King) of the Day of Recompense” (Surah Al-Fatihah 1:4)
From a work perspective, this verse should give us the motivating (and scary) reminder that even though some bosses or organizations might overlook one’s contributions, Allah never overlooks them. Any oppression will be recompensed and repaid – if not in this annual appraisal, in this employment, or in this life, definitely in the next.
From a life perspective as a whole, this verse also reminds us where we should be really channeling our efforts for this performance review with Allah: I don’t have to worry how visible I am. I only have to worry about preparing myself, based on the clear performance expectations outlined in the shari’ah, without ambiguity. We know exactly what to do, and how to find out what to do, i.e. from the Qur’an and sunnah: the onus is 100% upon us to learn, act, and share. The challenge though, is that we don't know "where we are" and "when is the deadline" (i.e. death) - so we just have to keep moving forward and improving!
Share your thoughts! What do you think: is visibility important or relevant in employee performance?
Have you encountered sticky situations due to visibility? Any tips or advice? How do you manage visibility in your team?
#YearEndReview #PerformanceManagement #PerformanceAppraisal #EPM #TheBarakahEffect
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