Since when did performance evaluation season start being called “calibration”?

I hear it in firms across the country, and it always strikes me as odd. Isn’t calibration something you do to an instrument, or to something you’re measuring? I know public accounting is far from getting performance evaluations down to a science. I just have a hard time with “calibration.”

But I’m not here to complain about nomenclature. I’m here with a tip, and it’s one of my favorites.

Why Performance Conversations Feel So Hard

Accountants tend to have a hard time with difficult conversations about performance. I’m not sure they always have to be difficult, but that’s how they’re perceived. And I get it.

If you spend 30 minutes with someone talking about how badly they handled the client relationship, the engagement or the report, and you keep pointing out everything they did wrong, that doesn’t sound like a good time for you or for them.

There’s Nothing Possible Back There

Here’s the thing: when you do that, you’re talking about the past. You’re talking about a performance that has already happened. There’s nothing possible back there.

When a performance evaluation focuses that much on the past, it can’t be a very productive conversation. It becomes all about what they did wrong, or how you perceived them. And how do they receive it? They get defensive. Emotion kicks in. Anger kicks in.

There’s a better way.

A Lesson From the Baseball Diamond

For about a decade, I was an assistant baseball coach. When a kid on the field missed a pop fly or a grounder, the team would sometimes get down on him. They’d yell at him, call him names, tell him he sucked. You could see his spirit just leave.

So we taught the team to say something else: Get the next one.

Next time, get your glove up. Next time, move back and come into the ball. Next time, get your hat down. Next time, stop goofing around. But next time, get the next one.

We were talking about a future that doesn’t exist yet, a future where there’s a lot of possibility.

Talk About the Next Performance

You can probably see where I’m going with this. When you talk about performance with your team, don’t focus on what they did wrong. There’s nothing possible back there. Talk about the future instead.

Marshall Goldsmith calls it feedforward. I call it “get the next one.”

Talk about the next performance. The next time they write a report. The next time they serve a client. Ask questions like:

• What’s one thing you could do differently the next time you work with me?
• What’s something in the future you can actually control and influence?
• Where’s an opportunity to perform better than you have in the past?

Create a Better Future Together

That’s a great performance evaluation: one where you create a better future for someone’s performance together. You give them opportunities to perform at the level you expect, and you’re clear about what those expectations are.

So go calibrate that.

Turn Feedback Into a Better Next Performance

If you’re a CPA firm partner, owner or leader, executive coaching can help you prepare for difficult performance conversations and turn them toward what comes next.

Explore coaching with The CPA Coach →

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