Can You Do What Is Expected Of You?
By: Asad Tariq
Tags: Human Resource Management, Performance, Human Resources, Performance Reviews, HR

Can You Do What Is Expected Of You?

In my recent most experience of delivering a training session on Performance Reviews and Effective Feedback at my workplace, Discretelogix, I had a revelation. While the content of that session generally covered the performance review process of our company and how to effectively give and receive feedback, one important aspect of the session was to give our team members an idea regarding an individual’s performance.

As an HR Professional, out on a journey of discovering the finesse of measuring performance and using that information for effective decision making for the company, it is always a concern to be able to identify performance gaps, as it requires the involvement of the members of technical teams. As a student, such cases in theory look very simple, but while communicating these concepts to an audience that obviously lacks that knowledge, it really is just about being intuitive to find a way to help them to actually get what you are trying to convey. One such incident happened a couple of days before.

After the session with the first group a couple of days ago, one of the participants brought up the conversation regarding how potential of an individual is different from expected performance. Even though we had covered this during the session, it was evident that I had failed to convince at least one of them, and at most probably everyone, that both these terms are contextually different.

Coincidently, how things just happen at the right time, I had just had a glass of water; and due to the pandemic, we have been using these disposable glasses at our office. And it just clicked — I picked up the glass and asked that fellow to think of it as an expected performance. Expected performance, I continued, is not actually related to an individual. It is in fact related to the position or role in which that individual is performing his or her job. And it exists, even when there is no individual performing that job. That’s why it’s called a ‘vacancy’ after all.

Water that fills that glass is performance. An individual has the responsibility to fill the glass (expected performance) with the water (performance). What stops an individual from continuing to fill the glass is that individual’s potential. Potential is the maximum that a person can do. In my original analogy, I referred to potential as a hole in that glass.

Because of that hole, the glass can only contain water up to that hole, and not more.

But the problem is what if that individual is not even able to fill the glass up to that hole? That means that the individual is not even performing up to one’s own potential.

Expecting an individual beyond one’s own potential is unrealistically optimistic and even damaging for that individual. So the actual focus is to enable an individual to achieve its potential. Unless we can identify the gap of the actual performance and that individual’s potential, we cannot do much about it, and may even be damaging that person. So it is very important to be able to identify that potential in an individual.

But can their be a possibility where the glass does not have any hole? Yes! In that case, if a person starts performing enough to fill the glass, it means in case of higher performance, it will overflow, and we will be not be able to benefit from it. This means that such an individual now needs a bigger glass to fill, i.e. promotion, or job enrichment, or expansion of role. Now, if that individual is not provided with a bigger glass to fill, what is stopping that individual to grow is the limitation of the role in which that individual has to perform.

On the next day, when I was holding the same training session for a different group of people, I deliberately made a point to ask them to clearly differentiate between these terms and they couldn’t. I had accompanied myself with a glass for this moment. I demonstrated to them what I had explained to that one curious mind with the help of that glass, and I could see in the eyes and smiles of the participants how learning has taken place. Trainers know and understand the signs that indicate the success of making an impact, and in that moment, I had seen those signs.

Later on, while analyzing my example for the purpose of writing this article, I realized that for a different perspective, an individual could be referred to as a jug, with a responsibility to fill a glass. And that potential is not a hole in the glass, as that makes it a property of the glass (the expected performance for that job role) instead of that individual. So potential is the amount of water in the jug.

If the jug has water, but it is unable to pour it into the glass, that means that the potential of the jug, an individual in this case, is not being effectively utilized. If jug has water left in it, but the glass is full, it indicates the need of a bigger glass. Similarly, if the jug goes empty and the glass still isn’t full, it means that the potential of the jug was lesser than the volume of the glass — so the expectation was unrealistic.

Understanding the potential of an individual is therefore very important and critical at the time of selecting that individual for a job role. Expected performance, as we have discussed, is already there. So we do have an empty glass. Where we err in the process of talent acquisition is determining the volume of the glass, and evaluating the candidates for their potential. If the potential of a candidate is lesser than the volume of the expected performance, that person will not be able to fill that glass, ever.

Identifying potential, although critical, is very hard. There can be a huge difference between what one can do now and what one can do given the the best opportunity and guidance. That is still easier to identify if an individual has a potential lesser than the expected performance, as you can try everything but the performance won’t grow. But when an individual of a greater potential keeps meeting or exceeding expectations, and the company fails to offer a bigger role or opportunity, like a bigger glass, the potential of that individual keeps getting wasted.

I hope that everyone who reads this, irrespective of whatever role they currently work in, starts figuring out how can they get better at identifying potential and valuing it as much as it deserves for the benefit of the company as well as that individual.