Leadership Evaluation Methods and Improvement Strategies

The main idea of this essay is to explore how leadership is formally evaluated in different organizations. One more question which needs to be open is what the organization could do to improve the leadership evaluation process.

Nowadays, numerous companies in the world practice leadership evaluation. The main idea behind it is to control the level of employees’ knowledge, which is necessary to perform the duties well. That tendency gives opportunity for employers to understand what they should change for the development of the organization. The most important thing that must be enrolled thanks to that process is a point about improving professional skills and knowledge of the staff. Considering all the above mentioned, we can understand the importance of leadership evaluation in organizations today.

There are some methods which check and assert the knowledge of people in companies. Performance evaluation report is one of them. The main sense of that document consists in analyzing the data which is submitted there. Performance evaluation report consists of two documents: document A and document B.

The document A has two parts. The first part is Evaluation Summary. The general information is indicated here. It means that the name of an employee, his/her position title and evaluation period are placed in this part. One more point that must be on the first page is a mark per overall performance during the evaluation period. There are some variants but only one of them should be chosen. They are: outstanding, excellent, satisfactory, unsatisfactory. The first point means that an employee’s overall performance surpasses performance standards established for the position. “Excellent” means that the employee is perfect in performing his duties, and all expectations about him were proved. “Satisfactory” is compliance with standards in this position and justification of tasks which were given for the worker. The last point – “unsatisfactory” says, “the employee’s overall performance inconsistently meets the performance standards established for the position and indicates that significant tasks are not completed in the time or manner expected”.

The second part of the document A is the summary of major job duties with performance expectations. A comparison of the major job duties and performance expectations is described here. It gives a possibility to understand how progressive and useful are the results of an employee’s work. The details like reporting for work on time, following work rules and procedures, maintaining effective working relationships with the public and co-workers are noted on that page too.

Document B is performance comments. That means that supervisor should leave here the description of the character qualities of an employee, the level of work which had been done by a worker, and other information that can be useful to evaluate that person.

One more part from document B is performance expectations for the next evaluation period. Here are three points: reviewer comments, appointing authority comments, and employee’s comments. It is not hard to understand what people should write here. The main information and plans that should be done till the end of the next evaluation period are noted on that page.

That system is perfect for measuring leadership effectiveness. Performance evaluation report is like a tabulation of the level of the quality work that had been done by an employee, objectives for the next periods and other important points. The main advantage of the document is that all parties of the treaty have the right to note their own opinion about expectations for the next evaluation period. According to the aforementioned, everybody has a possibility to write his preference and desires about the plan for the next evaluation period.

There are also a lot of other methods to measure leadership effectiveness. They include psychology tests for employees, different types of work with them, and changing the conditions of work. In this situation, it will be easy to see how people perform their duties in different, sometimes stressful situations. As a result, organizations will see their leaders. The main goal of a company is too see a leader among other employees. However, who is that leader and how select him/her in a big company is a real problem sometimes. The aforesaid ideas confirm that performance evaluation report is one of the effective forms for that. Robert Hohman – Glassdoor Co-Founder and CEO, has his own opinion about that. “We find on Glassdoor that a strong leader is often one who has the ability to clearly communicate the vision for the company and who helps employees see how their work connects to the big picture. In addition, top-rated CEOs are commonly seen as accessible transparent,” says Robert Hohman. His idea can be useful for directors in other companies who want to find their leaders. May be that is a secret of a successful business.

How to make employees interested in their work is a question for every supervisor. The suitable answer was given by Matthew Swaya – Starbucks senior vice president, deputy general counsel. He said the next words: “Throughout our history, Starbucks has embedded acting ethically as a cornerstone to our culture and to how we work every day. Our partners (employees) are passionate about doing business the right way and it shows through the way we treat each other, our customers, business partners and communities” (“Starbucks Newsroom”, n.d.). This is a very interesting and useful information considering the fact that Starbucks is one of the most famous companies in the world.

Rumsey (2013) has the opinion that the set of measures of leader effectiveness employed should be based on the substantive and practical concerns giving rise to the study (p. 436). Therefore, following that recommendation, organizations, which want to improve the leadership evaluation process, should focus on the development of employees’ knowledge in the professional sphere. The best way to improve the efficiency and productivity of a company is to concentrate on employee’s studying and development.

There are a lot of different ways to realize it. For example, there are a lot of different psychologist and other developing books. They were written to change people’s mind and make them want to develop in professional sphere as well as others. The Handbook of Leadership Development Evaluation is not an exception. The authors of that book – Hannum, Martineau and Reinelt wrote about it: “This book supports the daily work of people responsible for developing, implementing and evaluating leadership development programs and initiatives” (2007). That is one more proof about the necessity of improving knowledge and growth in some industries.

In order to gain a complete answer, leadership evaluation is necessary to say that all the efforts should be concentrating on developing and making progress of working better. Methods that are used to measure leadership effectiveness are on the high level and it is hard to add any change to this system. The main advantage of them is that both sides have rights and are in competence to protect them. Organizations build plans and make goals for employees, while workers have all the rights to agree or disagree with them.