A Process for Defining What the Supervisor Really Wants

Abstract

As our citation suggests, people must be provided accurate direction from those they follow, if they are to be productive. In an organizational context, there is a need to communicate to subordinates what the key performance criteria are and how important the various criteria are to the supervisor. Supervisors typically feel they know which criteria are important and what values they might assign to each (Carroll and Schneier 1982). We suggest an objective method for more accurately assessing supervisors' weightings of the performance criteria used to evaluate their subordinates. We will demonstrate how this approach can define the gaps between supervisors' actual weights, what they thought the weights were they were applying, and the weights the organization feels are appropriate.