Catalytic Coaching: an effective alternative to performance evaluations

Performance Evaluations without the judgment and critiquing

Catalytic coaching is a program developed as a healthy alternative to performance evaluations. Its process, content and roles are very different from performance evaluations.

Less Paperwork than Performance Evaluations
The process is different because time focus shifts from the past to the future. The average length of feedback form is one in catalytic coaching versus many pages in traditional performance evaluations.

All the manager fills up is one side of one piece of paper. This makes a lot of managers very happy. It doesn’t make the burden a whole lot lighter, but it makes some happier because they’re going to get something out of it for all their effort. And the effort may be dramatically reduced from what some of you are used to giving them with traditional performance evaluations.

The primary customer shifts from the file, from HR, from the lawyers standby in HR to you, the employee. So that’s how the process differs.

As for the content, there’s no grade. There’s no label. We just simply don’t call anybody names.

It is nice to know that they like what you’re doing but it would be much better for you to hear about what you could do to get more of what you’d really like. Catalytic coaching will give you that.

Don’t rank anyone. If you want to rank people for a lay off, there’s no problem with that. You want to rank people for promotions, no problem with that either. But don’t do it for performance evaluations.

Tie the system to salary treatment indirectly. Is there a connection? Yes, but it’s not a direct one. In order words, if I tell you, “You’re this close to being fired” you can correctly forecast no increase. On the other hand, if I tell you, “You’ve had your best year yet. You’re really doing an awesome job”, that does not necessarily mean you’re going to get a big increase three to six months later when we give out raises. So there is a connection, not one for one.

What employees think in performance evaluations matters
In catalytic coaching, we care a lot about what you think. Because if you’re talking about judging, labeling and critiquing, it doesn’t really matter what the person who’s being judged or labeled or critiqued thinks. They’re going to hear what the judge thinks anyway. When you go to coaching, what somebody thinks is pivotal.

How does the boss change from evaluator-judge to coach? You get employees to go from passive recipient feedback to empowered crew to craftsmen. And you go from performance evaluations police to coach of coaches in HR.