I was at a Bruce Hornsby concert recently and there
was a line in a song that got me thinking: “20/20 vision and walking ‘round
blind”. It turns out the line is
from an old Jimmy Martin song.
You should feel sorry for me as a human resources
consultant that in such a moment, struck by such a poetic line, the first thing
that came to mind was a question: “How do you measure behavioural
competencies?”
Perhaps it’s because performance reviews are around
the corner. Many performance reviews I have had experience with use a scale
akin to the traditional five point Likert Scale with the high point being “Exceeds
expectations.” That should be a
red flag. After all, how can you exceed expectations when it comes to the
demonstration of desired behaviours?
On LinkedIn you can find a spectrum of comments on
this debate that range from: “Why bother trying to capture the behavioural
performance since it is totally subjective?” to “Use a tool like 360˚ feedback
as a means of getting ‘meaningful’ feedback.” Neither of which are helpful. Everyone who thinks they have
the answer has 20/20 vision, while those who say there is no answer believe it
is impossible to see.
So how do you measure behaviour and can you measure
it objectively?
