Neuroleadership guru urges employers to ‘get rid of performance ratings’
Just a single word, such as ‘yet’, may be all it takes to shift people from a fixed ‘I can’t improve’ mindset to one in which they believe they can get better, according to neuroleadership expert David Rock.
The problem with fixed mindsets, said Rock, who is director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, is that if you think you are never going to get better at something you won’t put in as much effort. Conversely, with a growth mindset, we work harder because we believe we can improve but that it will take effort to do so.
“People are either trying to prove themselves or improve themselves,” he told a meeting of the CIPD HR Leaders’ Network this week. But he added that very small things can nudge us between fixed and growth mindsets. For instance, adding the word yet to a negative comment on performance can imply improvement is possible.
It is “profoundly important” for managers to understand that one of the best ways to help people get better is to have a growth mindset, said Rock. Many companies, however, still rely on ratings within their performance management processes, which lead to employees trying to prove themselves and little conversation about improvement.
The key to quality conversations, he said, is to foster a growth mindset, minimize threat in the five social dimensions outlined in his SCARF model (status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness) and facilitate insight for people to positively embrace change.
Performance management systems that include ratings, however, push all five of the dimensions towards threat as people often think the system is unfair, that they are competing with each other and that there is very little autonomy – they can work much harder but not get a better rating.
“Get rid of ratings and the last three are way up. Conversations are much more fluid and much less stressful,” Rock said, referencing a study that he is due to publish that reveals that companies that have removed ratings see more stretch goals and an increase in the quantity and quality of performance conversations.