Rating:

In a hurry?  Recommendation   

This DVD opens with Brad just entering the jaded mode of managing people. Then a fresh-faced intern turns up who pulls him back and catalyzes his thinking about how he should perform performance appraisals.

As Brad learns the key points of developmental performance appraisals, he has flashbacks to times when he's delivered perfunctory or punishing appraisals. Then the video shows Brad putting the key points he's learned to good use.

Crammed with Content
There are a lot of key points squeezed into this program. To help your supervisors and managers, you'll need to pull the points apart and reinforce them, ideally over a period of time. And they need to practice.

The content is certainly worth the effort because evaluations are so often dysfunctional or simply a ritual that manager and employee try to get through as fast as possible. However, an organization needs to support and value a developmental approach in order for the ideas to be implemented.

The actors are very good—they kept me attentive. In fact, the actors are better than the script. They make the dramatic action believable, but then one of them has to deliver the didactic content—and usually comes across as a talking textbook. But then this is a training video. Other production values are so-so. The setting is a generic white-collar office.

This program is a companion to Looking Forward: Your Performance Appraisal, which looks at appraisal from the employee's standpoint.

Recommendation
Managers and supervisors, particularly new ones, can benefit quite a bit from the keys to appraisals that aim at development rather than judgment.

Supervisory Skills At Work Rating