Who's to Blame for Poor Performance

It’s that time of year again. Final exams. Grading. More grading. Some students make me proud of how much I taught them. Those are the ones who convince me that I’m a great teacher. But then there are the others.
Why didn’t they try harder? Why didn’t they pay attention in class? Why did their parents bother sending them to college? Did you notice how I took credit for the successful students and shifted the blame for the others?
I see a lot of this behavior among organizational leaders as well. For that matter, I see a lot of this among parents, students, and politicians too. I think we’re probably born with the tendency to take credit for success and avoid blame for failure.

When teachers abandon all responsibility for student failure, we ignore the possibility that we could have done something differently to motivate more students or inspire greater interest. When students do it, they convince themselves that the teacher was unfair or incompetent. The truth is often somewhere in the middle.

This is a great lesson for managers to learn as well. I once asked one of my professors in graduate school why he did so little management consulting. He told me that he often got calls from managers and business owners asking if he could “fix” their unmotivated employees. My professor’s first response to this question was always: “What will you do if I find out you’re the problem?” This question made him very unpopular as a management consultant.

Anyone who wants to improve their performance as a teacher, as a manager, or as anything else, must be honest with themselves. They must be willing to face the possibility that they need to do something differently.
This possibility is why it’s so important for teachers to give accurate feedback to students throughout the semester. This feedback should help students figure out what they need to change. Likewise, teachers should seek feedback throughout the semester to find out what they might need to change.

The same is true in any organization. In many organizations, feedback is supposed to occur during the performance appraisal process. Unfortunately, performance appraisal is hated by most managers because it is also used to make administrative decisions. Research shows that most managers give employees higher ratings than they deserve. They do this to avoid conflict and avoid acknowledging that their own performance may have been below par. In education we call this grade inflation.

Inaccurate performance feedback, however, helps no one. Inflated feedback perpetuates mediocre or poor performance. It also perpetuates overconfidence that can be dangerous in a variety of ways.
Would you go to a doctor who deserved to fail medical school, but was passed because his professors wanted to avoid conflict? Neither would I. That’s why I don’t pass students who deserve to fail. That’s also why I constantly give and seek feedback to try and keep students from failing.

I wonder what the world would be like if teachers, students, parents, managers, politicians, spouses, and drivers received accurate feedback about their performance and honest advice to help them improve.