“Performance Appraisal Phrase Book..” By C. Sandler & J. Keefe Book Review

Abstract

This book review paper is based on Performance Appraisal Phrase Book: The Best Words, Phrases, and Techniques for Performance Reviews by Corey Sandler and Janice Keefe (2004). The paper consists of five parts, which helps to receive a better understanding from the reading. The first part is an Introduction of the book including the title, authors and year of publication, and the main topic. The second part is about brief summary of the book including key points made by the authors. The third one tells who should read this book, which category of people, for example students, employees, managers or everyone. The fourth part critiques the book, and explains what people like about it, its strengths, weaknesses, and gives recommendations about the book to others. The last part of the book review paper is concluding remarks.

Introduction.   

Performance Appraisal Phrase Book: The Best Words, Phrases, and Techniques for Performance Reviews by Corey Sandler and Janice Keefe (2004) is a great food for thought, that helps to receive a better understanding of performance and people will never struggle with performance appraisals. If people struggle with hours to find the right words or phrase, than it is the useful solution that really works. Performance Appraisal Phrase Book makes it easier. Featuring concise sections on how to write the evaluation, handle tricky legal issues, and verbally discuss the evaluation, this book includes a directory of thousands of words and phrases appropriate for any type of written evaluation.  People have a brilliant opportunity to know more about accuracy and attention to details, quality of work, about work habits, teamwork and interpersonal skills, timeliness of work and work attitude. With Performance Appraisal Phrase Book at people’s tables, they will get through reviews in a snap and have plenty of time left to accomplish all their other managerial duties.

Brief summary of the book.
  1. Performance Appraisal Phrase Book consists of nine chapters:
  2. Can performance really be evaluated;
  3. Insider tips for employee evaluation;
  4. Legal matters;
  5. Strategies for dealing with unsatisfactory performance;
  6. Qualitative attributes;
  7. Quantitative attributes;
  8. Management skills;
  9. Personality and human relations;
  10. Personal skills.

Every chapter provides a vast library of useful phrases that can be used on performance appraisals. The phrases are nicely organized into key competencies with three levels of grading. Each competency also has listed a number of key verbs and nouns. The information is useful when a person lacks inspiration for detailing the success or failure of his direct reports.

First chapter gives handy tips about choosing words, for example before saying a word put it in writing, stop and think about the impact of language. Tip about thinking of the game is a basic for the composing an evaluation. Here a person has to take into consideration a careful judgment about whether she or he is: a superstar, an up-and-comer, a benchwarmer, a weak link, headed for the door. It is necessary to read about the spectrum of judgment, about a bad attitude, about maintain control, how to schedule evaluation, ten insider tips for employee evaluation, and step-by-step to the employee evaluation.

Second chapter about Insider tips for employee evaluation gives the key advice to evaluate the performance, not the person. From this chapter people know that it is improper, ineffective, and sometimes illegal to base their judgment on the personal characteristics of an employee. This chapter shows examples of focusing on the specific and observable. At the beginning of the third chapter about legal matters, the author writes: “An employee-employee relationship is in some way like a marriage – happy and productive when things do well, but tense and threatening when they don’t” (Sandler, Keefe, 21). People have an opportunity to know three things that helps to protect them and their company or organization. An author intended for managers to keep this book handy whenever they needed it to compose their performance reviews. There is the information about the performance review legal issues, importance of documenting poor performance, for example people should keep their comments focused on performance, and not on personal attributes. The person has to be sure to support her or his actions. Here is a great phrase: “If an employee dismissal is challenged in court, your position is much stronger if there is a paper trail to support the action” (Sandler, Keefe, 25). Fourth chapter tells how to help a below-average employee to improve, but first of all the person has to decide if he is worth the effort to keep and retrain. There is some information about how to begin the evaluation session, and develop the plan of improvement, as it is the manager’s best interest to help any employee to improve the quality and quantity of work produced. As a result, fifth and sixth chapters will be helpful in success of an employee at making decisions, negotiating a deal, improving communication skills, making presentations, these chapters provides great analytical skills, helps to improve adaptability to change in decision-making process. When people are looking at characteristics that can be measured against some sort of objective rule, they consider the quantitative attributes. The reader can find everything about how to put the right priorities at work, accomplishment of tasks and goals, computer skills, their planning and scheduling, technical competence and time management.

The last three chapters inform about the criteria in a job description and how to divide the same duties or responsibilities. Here a reader learns more about leadership, management and organizational skills, supervisory skills, job safety and security management. Personality and human relations is one of the most important knowledge for employees or managers. Author writes: “A worker who displays a less than perfect temperament may nevertheless be highly productive or otherwise capable” (Sandler, Keefe, 200). People enrich their knowledge with cooperation and teamwork skills, how to deal with personal potential, personality, character and temperament. Every manager has got to know the territory when it comes to evaluate a professional – information technology, accounting, government relations, and human resources, so professional skills are an essential part of the book for everybody who wants to improve their knowledge in this sphere.

Who should read this book?

Performance Appraisal Phrase Book is an excellent choice for everybody who wants to discover more about useful phrases that can be used on performance appraisals. When a person is lacking inspiration for detailing the successes or failures of his or her direct reports this handy reference book provides the right words for appraising direct reports. For employees and managers everywhere, the authors promote effective words, phrases, and techniques for successful evaluations. It is absolutely wonderful resource for all types of positions.

Critique of the book.  

This book addresses just about every situation at every level that the reader can think of. This is a great phrase book to assist with wording on performance appraisals. Although it can be argued that this type of book can devalue the feedback given in performance reviews, it can also help to prevent the reviewer from writer’s block and falling back onto a few stock phrases. The biggest criticism people have is that the book does not contain a concise index to all of the competencies. They have to browse the whole book to discover and find specific competencies. Nevertheless, the good things overweight the bed ones. Performance Appraisal Phrase Book is a real help to managers in saying what needs to be said.

Concluding remarks.

When conducting employee evaluations, almost everyone has got tired of saying the same, boring, routine phrases. Ever wish they could leave new and exciting feedback for their staff during the performance review process, but just cannot seem to find the right words. So, Corey Sandler and Janice Keefe can help everybody with that. Their aim is helping employers to say “good-bye” to surface phrases and “hello” to thoughtful feedback. The book will tell about powerful phrases for successful reviews, appraisals, and evaluations. The reader discovers how managers should communicate in today’s society and offers readers a collection of thousands of ready-to-use phrases that will allow managers accurately review their employees.

 

References

Sandler, C., & Keefe, J., (2004). Performance Appraisal Phrase Book: The Best Words,  Phrases, and Techniques for Performance Reviews. Canada. Adams Media. 21-25, 200.

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
Available at:

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]
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