When I was teaching students in both regular and executive MBA programs, I was fartootst by the chutzpa of students who would demand an “A just for handing in a paper that was in reality not very well done. One thing that I always did was hand out at the time of the assignment criteria for what successful performance on the paper would look like. You know, it would include things like a clear statement of the problem, a well-thought out argument with appropriate justification and references, and no typos, misspellings, or grammatical errors. When these elements were missing , including some students leaving out entire answers to a question on the assignment , students would lose points on the assignment. Nevertheless, in the face of these missing requirements, some students would argue, “I’ve never gotten anything less than an ˜A’ in my life and so you HAVE to give me an ˜A’. You can imagine that complaints like these get tedious after awhile. Some professors however, would get worn down, give in, and leave the rest of us with something called “grade inflation.
Unfortunately, a similar phenomenon is happening in the workplace. Some employees in some organizations are demanding with increasing frequency ratings of “greatly exceeds standards when they only deserve a rating of “meets standards. And so we have “performance rating inflation.
I think this phenomenon occurs for at least three reasons. First, employees are not necessarily clear on what is expected of them. To make sure that performance expectations ARE clear is a primary management role. Second, when those expectations are clear, a manager needs to hold the employee accountable to those performance standards. And third, managers who are unable or unwilling to set clear expectations and hold their direct reports accountable make it more difficult for those managers who are willing to do it.