How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals - by Dick Grote (Hardcover)

About the Book

Do you supervise people? If so, this book is for you.
One of a manager's toughest--and most important--responsibilities is to evaluate an employee's performance, providing honest feedback and clarifying what they've done well and where they need to improve.
In How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals, Dick Grote provides a concise, hands-on guide to succeeding at every step of the performance appraisal process--no matter what performance management system your organization uses. Through step-by-step instructions, examples, do-and-don't bullet lists, sample dialogues, and suggested scripts, he shows you how to handle every appraisal activity from setting goals and defining job responsibilities to evaluating performance quality and discussing the performance evaluation face-to-face.
Based on decades of experience guiding managers through their biggest challenges, Grote helps answer the questions he hears most often:
- How do I set goals effectively? How many goals should someone set?
- How do I evaluate a person's behaviors? Which counts more, behaviors or results?
- How do I determine the right performance appraisal rating? How do I explain my rating to a skeptical employee?
- How do I tell someone she's not meeting my expectations? How do I deliver bad news?
Grote also explains how to tackle other thorny performance management tasks, including determining compensation and terminating poor performers.
In accessible and useful language, How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals will help you handle performance appraisals confidently and successfully, no matter the size or culture of your organization. It's the one book you need to excel at this daunting yet critical task.

Book Synopsis

Do you supervise people? If so, this book is for you.

One of a manager's toughest--and most important--responsibilities is to evaluate an employee's performance, providing honest feedback and clarifying what they've done well and where they need to improve.

In How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals, Dick Grote provides a concise, hands-on guide to succeeding at every step of the performance appraisal process--no matter what performance management system your organization uses. Through step-by-step instructions, examples, do-and-don't bullet lists, sample dialogues, and suggested scripts, he shows you how to handle every appraisal activity from setting goals and defining job responsibilities to evaluating performance quality and discussing the performance evaluation face-to-face.

Based on decades of experience guiding managers through their biggest challenges, Grote helps answer the questions he hears most often:

• How do I set goals effectively? How many goals should someone set?
• How do I evaluate a person's behaviors? Which counts more, behaviors or results?
• How do I determine the right performance appraisal rating? How do I explain my rating to a skeptical employee?
• How do I tell someone she's not meeting my expectations? How do I deliver bad news?

Grote also explains how to tackle other thorny performance management tasks, including determining compensation and terminating poor performers.

In accessible and useful language, How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals will help you handle performance appraisals confidently and successfully, no matter the size or culture of your organization. It's the one book you need to excel at this daunting yet critical task.

Review Quotes

"Grote has written a valuable guide for managers on how to appraise and improve the performance of their people. Unlike many other books on how to improve performance, this one is down-to-earth, a model of clarity and amounts to good value for money. Managers who are facing intractable performance issues would, therefore, likely find it a very powerful work." -- HR Zone

"This book offers managers the skills and confidence to navigate the minefield we know as performance appraisals. More importantly, it provides the wisdom and insight that will help any leader dramatically raise the performance level of their team." -- Donald H. Brush, Ph.D., President, The Renova Corporation

"Those of us who are so fortunate to have worked with Dick Grote know that when he promises How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals: Simple, Effective, Done Right, we can expect solid advice based on real-life experience that actually works! Highly recommended to all managers!" -- Thomas Sohns, HR Director, Novo Nordisk; Business Area Africa, Gulf & India

"Great tips and thoughts about how to do effective performance appraisals. A mandatory read for any manager who does performance appraisals." -- Edward Lawler, author of Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage and Professor, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

"Almost every manager on the planet struggles with the task of conducting performance appraisals. Finally, there is a practical guide based both on research and business best practices that provides enough advice and how-to steps to successfully guide any manager through the appraisal process." -- John Sullivan, Ph.D., Professor of Management, San Francisco State University

"Dick Grote has been working as a change agent in the C-suite of some of the world's greatest companies for as long as I can remember. In his book How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals, he takes his expertise a step further. To say it plainly: this isn't a book for the C-suite; it's for anyone who manages people." -- Anne Ruddy, CCP, CPCU; and President, WorldatWork

About the Author

Dick Grote is President of Grote Consulting Corporation in Dallas, Texas. He is an expert in performance management and the author of The Complete Guide to Performance Appraisal, The Performance Appraisal Question and Answer Book, Forced Ranking: Making Performance Management Work, and Discipline Without Punishment.