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The Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check Wally's Three Star Leadership Letter

Find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.

Find out more about Wally's coaching services.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal contained an article titled: "Get Rid of the Performance Review!" UCLA professor Samuel Culbert offers "seven reasons why I find performance reviews ill-advised and bogus."

"Bogus" is the kind of word academics use when they want us to think they're in touch with what's really going on in the world. The article itself makes some good points, but it's mostly full of grand, unsupported generalizations.

Dr. Culbert, naturally, has an alternative to the current performance appraisal system as practiced in most companies. He describes his idea as "twoside, reciprocally accountable, performance previews."

If the performance appraisal as practiced now is bogus, than this idea is bogus as well. It's another annual or semi-annual ritual that effectively ignores the only performance appraisals that actually have an effect on performance.

Those are the appraisals done every day about specific issues by supervisors with team members. If you make that work, you can set almost any review system atop it and that system will work fine. Ignore the day-to-day part, though, and your system won't work. So here's what to do.

Start by selecting people for supervisory work who have at least a shot at being good at it. They should like helping others succeed. They should be willing to talk to others about performance and behavior. They should be willing to work at communicating.

Teach those supervisors how to set clear expectations and check to see if they turn into performance. Teach them how to follow up. Teach them the skills of effective, behavior-changing communication.

Hold them accountable for their supervisory behavior and the performance of their team. Support them on the job.

If you do that, here's what you're likely to get. I know this because I've studied top performing supervisors and this is what they do.

They touch base with their people a lot. They use every encounter with a team member as an opportunity to coach, counsel, encourage, and correct. They seek feedback on their own behavior.

Because of those behaviors there is better performance, fewer confrontations and higher morale. There are also no surprises at the formal appraisal ritual.

When that comes around you'll see those good supervisors take more time than their less effective peers at appraisal sessions. You'll see them spend the interview focused on the future instead of the past.

The solution to today's mostly dysfunctional performance appraisal systems isn't to create another superstructure of a system with different forms and jargon. It's to make sure that real, effective performance appraisal happens several times a day on the front lines.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

Request your free copy of "Meeting the Challenges of the Boomer Brain Drain: An integrated approach."

Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.