Evaluating People: Part One

However unfamiliar overseas business practices might seem at first, managers with global responsibilities must be able to make a fair and accurate assessment of employees from other countries. Who can you depend on for market intelligence?  Who is really getting things done for the customer?  Who can give you valuable advice and insight into organizational issues?

Longer-term, another critical task for any leader is to select and develop successors for him or herself and for others who are part of the leadership team. Who are the right individuals to lead the company into the future?

Unfortunately, some leaders with very solid people instincts back home make the wrong choices in a more diverse environment. There is a tendency, for example, to respond positively to a person on the basis of his or her language skills even when that person's skills in crucial areas such as managing subordinates or working with customers may be deficient. As a veteran Asian executive of a leading US firm notes, for example,

In looking for the qualities of a leader..., I think you need to go beyond the outward qualities of a leader in a Western context, which is often somebody that is outwardly aggressive, somebody who speaks good English, for instance, or someone who is socially active. Obviously, for an Asian, unless he is brought up in the U.S., English is not his primary language, and his communication might not come across as being very effective sometimes. People may mistakenly judge the quality of this person's communication as a sign of the quality of this person's leadership.

In other words, conduct that would signal competence in one's own environment - an aggressive, go-getter style, for instance - may have an entirely different significance elsewhere. It is important to learn local standards for evaluating people and to cultivate broad sources of information so that one can arrive at balanced assessments.

There are a number of pitfalls involved in evaluating personnel in other parts of the world that could lead to significant rifts with local employees. Here are several of these hazards as they appear from the local perspective:

• Language and communication style are taken to be indicators of general competence

   

  When working in a new environment, particularly one where other languages are spoken, each of us is inclined to perceive that the people we are comfortable with are also the people that others in the organization will judge to be leadership material. This error sometimes takes almost ludicrous proportions, with foreign managers attempting to promote individuals who are clearly unqualified in the eyes of local colleagues - to the point where even the people being promoted are embarrassed.

   

• Information about individual performance is limited or distorted by people in key positions

   

  Foreign managers who do not speak the local language are particularly vulnerable to this problem. They are dependent upon the people immediately around them to interface with the rest of the organization, to obtain accurate information, and to form judgments about others. These "gatekeepers" can abuse their position by skewing information in a way that supports their personal agenda or advances the fortunes of their own favorites within the organization.

   

• Poor business results are attributed to the wrong causes

   

  It is fine to try to hold employees around the world accountable for producing results, but only if this is coupled with the understanding that different market circumstances can have unexpected consequences. Even competent, hard-working employees in other parts of the world may be frustrated in achieving their objectives by infrastructure deficiencies, limited supplier capabilities, or government restrictions that are beyond their control. Such barriers may go unnoticed by foreign managers who are accustomed to smoother sailing or to different kinds of obstacles in their home markets. When employees are taken to task for not meeting their targets - especially when those targets are seen as having been imposed from abroad in the first place - they may feel falsely accused in a way that affects morale and future performance.

   

• Global and local evaluation criteria are in conflict

   

  Subsidiary employees frequently feel whipsawed between one set of evaluation criteria set by a foreign manager, and other, perhaps less visible criteria expressed by local managers. For example, the foreign manager might ask them to complete a project requested by headquarters in time to meet an upcoming deadline, while a local manager - even one with whom there is no direct reporting relationship - is asking them to solve a separate customer issue. It is difficult for employees to serve more than one master, and particularly awkward when the tenure of the foreign manager is known to be limited while the demanding local manager will be around for many years to come.

   

• Lack of development opportunities

   

  Junior employees in growing but still immature subsidiary organizations often not have the benefit of a strong middle management cadre to facilitate their development. Middle managers may not have key skills themselves or are simply too busy with their own jobs to focus on training and developing their subordinates. Therefore very bright young people are thrown into difficult situations with minimal preparation, and sometimes fall flat due to sheer inexperience. It is important in this case to render judgments about these individuals based upon a realistic assessment of the organizational context and the strengths and weaknesses of the managers for whom they are working.

Cultural Comparisons

The table below lists some common differences in evaluation criteria that lead to misperceptions and mistaken evaluations on the part of managers who move from one environment to another:

Watch for Evaluating People: Part Two - coming in our next issue - containing practical suggestions for evaluating people effectively in your global organization.