Most performance management systems require a rating to be agreed, and whilst organisations tend to explain what these ratings are, few explain how to reach a decision.
Here are a couple of exercises that enable you to introduce the complexities of rating performance and ranking people in an accessible way. You’ll need some packs of Top Trumps cards to run this exercise, but you CAN run it more generally by asking people to think about the best film, book, song etc.
You can follow up with more specific case studies/discussions to really drive the learning home.
Firstly, here’s a model – the ORCE model that can be a useful framework for managers to follow when having to reach decisions and (more importantly) justify them. This is possibly a model that I made up to suit a clients needs as I can find nothing on the internet!