Your Airman Rating Philosophy and Barometer
BLUF
Rating Principles:
1. Rating is Critical to the Current Performance of a Unit
2. Effective Rating is an Investment in the Air Force
3. Airmen Effectiveness Follows a Power Law, Not Equal Distribution
4. What We Reward Shapes Culture
5. Fundamentals Matter
Rating Heuristics:
1. Rate on Strengths vs Lack of Weakness
2. Consider Potential vs Experience
3. Favor Doers vs Tellers
4. Value Learners vs Experts
5. Reward Difference vs Similar
6. Ego is a Disease
Introduction
This article will discuss different traits to consider in the people we rate on and how to best utilize “rating” in the new Air Force EPR system. Please note, that this is not a, “How to guide for commanders.” The purpose of this is not to outline a process in which a unit should rate the members of the unit. I will not discuss whether or not the new rating and EPR forms are the best system the Air Force could use, or that it doesn’t come without problems and consequences. I also will not make suggestions on the best way to give feedback, even though it goes hand in hand with rating.
Instead I will focus on how to make the rating system as successful as it can be. The simple act of checking certain blocks on an EPR delivers a much larger opportunity for promotion to some. As leaders, we need to smartly utilize the powerful tool given to us. It is important that we promote the most deserving airmen that will have the most positive impact in our current units and on the Air Force in the future. This is why we rate.
Defining the Problem
Many of you will have the huge responsibility of providing effective feedback and rating under the Air Force’s new “Enlisted Forced Distribution” system. This is a program that has been broken in the Air Force for a long time but it is certainly one we must get right. Before diving into the heart of the article, I’d first like to quell a misconception. We don’t have a new “Forced Distribution” rating process because the “old system” didn’t work. It’s because, largely, raters do not understand the difference between an “average” airman and one that is, “truly among the best,” as the old EPR put it. Instead, raters gave simple expectations and marked everyone “truly among the best” unless they failed to meet the simple expectations given to them, as opposed to rewarding those that exceeded them.
There were, however, some brave raters that tried to do this the way the system was first intended. Unfortunately, they were soon confronted by the Chief or Commander asking the rater to justify why an airman was marked down (i.e. not the best airman to ever step foot into the unit) failing to realize a score of a 4 or 5 was actually being marked up.
In general, I believe many leaders did not want to learn the issues of the personnel or issues of the unit for fear of having to confront them when one of their airmen is shown to have a problem or showed room for improvement. It is much easier to believe that everyone in your command is among the best, something statistically impossible and completely unrealistic.
Also, just as frequently, raters have been confronted by Chiefs and Commanders and asked to justify why they rated one of their airmen so high, a typical response might be, “He did everything I asked him to do.” Commanders would walk away satisfied with this answer.
I believe, this is the crux of the problem and is what I want to address here. Saying “he did everything I asked him to do” tells me the airman was simply meeting the minimum standards and exceeding none.
If the expectations you gave included statements like, “You will show up to work on time, lead by example, communicate the issues you confront, let the Air Force’s Core Values guide you and get your work done on time,” you are simply setting the minimum requirements for success. When an airman meets these standards they are doing just that, “Meeting standards.” Exceeding standards takes much more than that.
The new forced distribution process doesn’t make raters any better at mentoring and rating, it just forces senior leaders to choose a small percentage as the best in their unit. This, I will admit is a step in the right direction but doesn’t make anyone a better leader in the long run. We still must know how to determine who the best is. Is it a gut instinct? The person who works the hardest? We need criteria to determine who the best airmen in our unit are and who we want to become the future leaders. This article will give some insight on how to determine who is most ready for promotion and deserving to be rated as exceeding most, if not all standards.
Feedback Principles
1. Rating is Critical to the Current Performance of a Unit
Why is rating so important? Feedback and rating enables our current unit to operate as effectively as possible. A team operates at its best when everyone understands their role in it. Feedback gives the opportunity for the leaders to let the members of the team know how they fit into the team dynamic and mission.
Rating is an opportunity to give an incentive to certain types of behavior and encourage a specific culture. When we reward average performance with high markings, it discourages the best performers. It will make them question why they are working so hard or why they care so much about the unit’s problems when they can get the same reward for meritocracy or simply meeting the minimum requirements.
As much as it discourages superior performance, it encourages mediocre performance. The mediocre performers are consistently told they are among the best and do not strive to become any better or worse decide they can do less and still get by. Getting rating right is critical to the performance of your unit.
2. Effective Rating is an Investment in the Air Force’s Future.
When we are rating, we are choosing the people who are going to lead our flight, squadron, group, wing, etc. after us. The people we choose to rate in the Promote Now or Must Promote categories must be done only after long consideration. Remember that people will work with and for these individuals in the future. In some cases our lives will be put into their hands in our profession.
When we are good at being able to identify the airman that consistently exceed expectations and rate them accordingly, we are giving the right people, with the most to offer, the best chance for promotion. Thus, only the ones ready for additional responsibility earn it. Accurate rating is an investment in the future of the Air Force.
3. Airmen Effectiveness Follows a Power Law, Not Equal Distribution
The Bell Curve represents what statisticians call a “normal distribution.” A normal distribution is a sample with an average and an equal distribution above and below the average like the curve below. This model assumes we have an equivalent number of people above and below average and that there will be a very small number of people far above and below the average.
A “Power Law” distribution indicates that people are not “normally distributed.” In this statistical model there are a small number of people who are “hyper-performers,” a significant amount of people who are “good performers” and a smaller number of people who are “low performers.” It accounts for a much wider variation in performance among the sample.
The really big difference between the bell curve and the power curve is that the power curve reflects the fact that a small number of people deliver an inordinate amount of contribution (usually the top 10%-15%). This means that “most people” are below the mean. It does NOT imply that most people are lower performers, only the fact that the variability of performance is high and that the curve should not be equal above and below the mean.
Our mind finds it easier to think in terms of efficiency and normal distributions rather than power law distributions. So we mentally squash the employee power law curve into a normal distribution curve.
We underestimate the most effective airmen and overestimate the ineffective ones. Therefore we perceive airmen’s performance to be much closer to one another than it really is. This is shown in the following graphic.
We rationalize this behavior with “lies we tell ourselves.” Here are a few lies people use to highly rate an ineffective airman:
• He is trying really hard
• She deserves another chance
• People really like her
• I feel bad for him
• He’s good at other things
• He has stuff going on in his personal life
• She is in the wrong role
Conversely, we should dramatically expand the responsibility of the ultra-performers. Most don’t…and rationalize limiting their most effective airmen by saying:
• She’s great but not ready for a promotion
• He’s good but I’m not blown away
• She doesn’t have the right background
• He’s never done this job before
To sum all of this up, in the Air Force there are few shades of grey. Many airmen are great. Some are not. There are surprisingly few in between and our hyper-performers (top 10%-15%) should be recognized as such or we will begin to discourage and lose that talent.
4. What We Reward Shapes Culture
For those we decided have earned the “Promote Now” or rated as “Exceeds most if not all expectations” under the new rating system, it means we also must recognize we are selecting the people who we want others in the unit to emulate. Rating is a tool used to encourage the type of behavior and attitude you want in a unit.
One of the often criticized fallacies of a forced distribution system is an incentive for people not to work together in attempt for the person with “the idea” to get ahead. They believe if they prove they were the sole reason for success, they will be rewarded with higher markings on their performance reports.
People like this are often obvious to peers but not as obvious to managers or ones accomplishing the ratings. It is the manager’s responsibility to be in tune with what is really going on in the unit and reward the right type of behavior. This means you should solicit feedback from the peers of the individuals you are rating on. If you are an additional rater or a senior rater, this is even truer as you are farther removed from the individual and the work being accomplished.
Never underestimate the value of the people in the unit who are always looking for ways to enable others and the team to succeed. When you do this you will be promoting a positive culture of teamwork in your organization and rewarding the individual who others will want to work for when that individual is promoted.
5. Fundamentals Matter
For an individual to be considered someone who exceeds expectations, they first must become experts in the fundamentals of the organization in which they belong. In the Air Force the most important key factors are:
• Duty performance
• Awards and decorations earned
• Scope of responsibility
• Completion and performance of PME
• Significant additional duties
• Community and base involvement
Nothing will outweigh the significant contributions in the areas the Air Force recognizes as most important, especially duty performance. However, there are times we need to look at our airmen beyond this. What does it really mean to excel in duty performance? Are the individuals most deserving of awards the ones earning it? Is someone able to handle their scope of responsibly not just have a high one?
We expect our airmen to not only be able to handle all of the responsibilities but excel at them and as previously mentioned we can’t make excuses for them when they don’t excel.
When we are considering someone who may be one of the best performers in the unit but don’t have the fundamentals down, we must ask ourselves if we are doing our job to set develop them correctly. Did we give the individual the opportunity for award they deserve? Did we develop her with the right job at the right time? Are we challenging him enough at his current job? We may come to the conclusion that we are doing a poor job of setting someone up with a lot of potential, for success. If we realize this to be true, it is never too late to begin to focus on developing and investing in someone.
Rating Heuristics
1. Rate on Strengths vs Lack of Weaknesses
Rating in the Air Force is not a democracy. We do not vote. The commanders make the decisions. However, there is a leadership team to help the commanders triangulate a good decision. They should help by looking for and discovering strengths. One thing the leadership team has to answer is the question, “What is this airman amazing at?”
Someone who is amazing at one thing will often become amazing at other things too. Sometimes, the airman hasn’t been trained yet. We can train them. As an organization we are generally good at that. We know this by comparing our effectiveness to other militaries as well as the success prior military members have in the private sector.
When discussing the performance of an airman we tend to overvalue the lack of weaknesses rather than value their strengths. The slightest negative can deter from an otherwise high rating. This may give the edge to mediocre airman that don’t “make waves” in an organization because at some point along the process, an airman, trying to make a difference, made a mistake or upset someone.
When deciding who the top-tier performers are, ask yourself if a particular airman had such a large impact, even in one area of the mission that the organization wouldn’t have been as successful without them. If the answer is yes, they did make that sort of impact, there is a good probability they are a hyper-performer or at-least have the potential to be.
People can be molded and mentored. The airmen who are trying innovative things will make mistakes but often have the highest potential and will continue to do amazing things, so reward them for their boldness and strengths. Rate on strengths vs lack of weakness.
2. Consider Potential vs Experience
It is important to note that potential and experience are not opposites. Potential consists of someone’s work ethic, emotional intelligence, leadership ability, education, etc. It continues to grow and become more useful as one gains more experience in their field. Most airmen have both and both are important. But potential is far more valuable. Our job is not to rate for experience. Our job is to rate airmen highly, whose potential will explode when they reach that next rank and position, pulling the unit along with him.
Rating for experience is easy because you are only considering what someone has done. Rating for potential is hard because you are predicting what they will do. The best indicator that someone will have high potential is if they value potential over experience. What’s the giveaway? They get excited talking about what they could do rather than what they have done. Have you ever talked to an airman excited by his or her future? The positivity and ideas are motivating and you can’t help but want to make it your job to support them in getting there.
3. Favor Doers vs Tellers
The best way to differentiate great airmen vs average airmen is they get their hands dirty, whether it’s changing an aircraft engine, building a spreadsheet, fixing computer problems, or re-racking the weights in the gym. This is true at every level. The best airmen and leaders in the Air Force are hands-on, care about details and are not afraid to roll up their sleeves.
Watch your airmen closely, one way to find doers is to ask your Airman how to do something and then ask them to do it. Try asking a Pro Super the factors she considers while building a weekly flying schedule. Ask a Lieutenant how to change a main landing gear tire. After you ask them how to do it, watch them do it. You’ll know instantly if they are a doer or a teller. Be wary of seductive tellers. Rate highly doers, not tellers.
4. Value Learners vs Experts
This doesn’t mean expertise isn’t important. We are a military force of specialists, not generalists. Each of us is an expert, or becoming an expert, in our domain. You cannot be successful in the Air Force without being an expert at something.
Honestly, the velocity of change in the Air Force is low comparatively to the private sector. This has its pros and cons; however, it is one of our Chief’s priorities to innovate. To survive and grow we must be a learning force. That means we need people who are awesome at learning. As Paul Graham says, “When experts are wrong it is often because they are experts on an earlier version of the world.”
The clearest signal of a learner is curiosity. Curious people, by definition, love to learn. While experts talk about what they know, the curious talk about what they don’t know. When you provide feedback and watch your airmen, verify expertise by discovering strengths. And then look for curiosity.
5. Promote Difference vs Similar
In my short time in the Air Force, my best airmen were very different from the others in the unit. They don’t seem different now because they shaped our unit’s culture. They changed what different looked like.
There is a deep and natural human bias to rate people the highest who are “like us.” Fight this bias. Rating others highly similar to us means we value consistency and efficiency over creativity and innovation. Rating someone highly who is different encourages new skills, paradigms and ideas in the unit.
You will naturally want to rate highly people you “connect” with. Fight your instincts.
A quick side about diversity: Diversity is fundamentally about valuing people who are different. If we view our culture as the sum of our people and a broader group of people creates a broader and better culture, then diversity, as defined by promoting people who are different, is a competitive advantage. Notice I say nothing about race, gender, religious preference, sexual orientation, or any of the categories typically ascribed to diversity. Diversity in the Air Force starts with a self-awareness about personal bias and a conscious effort to recalibrate. Promote difference vs similar
6. Ego is a Disease
For most of this article I have talked about signals to rate highly. I’ll conclude with a signal to rate lower. Confidence and ego are opposites. Modesty and humility are traits of the strong. Ego and arrogance is a disease of the weak and insecure. The truly confident don’t need people to know they are great. They are happy to know it themselves. The truly great use their greatness to make those around them even greater.
The military doesn’t have a “no ass-hole” rule even if they did many people would pass the asshole test but not the ego test. And ego is the far more dangerous of a disease. Assholes are not contagious but ego is because it creates an arms race of competing egos. Anyone can be a victim but SNCOs and Officers are the most susceptible making it an attack on our central nervous system. I would rather highly rate the humble asshole than the arrogant nice guy.
The good news is egos and assholes are highly correlated…but not always. There are nice people with huge egos. They just disguise it well. Your job as the rater is to figure that out. Always reject ego.
Conclusion
If nothing else, I hope this article has invoked at least one thought that you haven’t had before. What has driven me to put this article together, is the fact that even after the new EPR system has been implemented, I can’t help but feel the system is being inflated. I see a majority of the reports, especially reports on members who are not eligible for promotion, rated as they were exceeding most if not all expectations and I wonder if performance really is that high.
Before giving your highest possible endorsement in the form of a rating, I urge you to remember some of the things you thought about while reading this. Ask the tough questions. Is this person really the “hyper-performer” you are telling the board they are? Do they have the different characteristics that push the unit forward? Do they have the personal traits that others should want to emulate? Is there no-way your unit could be as successful and progressed as much as it did without him or her? What does superior performance really look like?
In the military, more than any other job, the leaders will have a direct impact in life or death situations. Do not take your responsibility of grooming and choosing the next leaders in the Air Force lightly. The simple act of checking a box on a performance report does change more lives than just the person you are rating on.
Finally, I want to make it clear this article was more than inspired by a piece written by Henry Ward, the CEO of eShares in an article titled, “How to Hire.” The thoughts and perspectives in his article got me thinking that the qualities of the type of people a company strives to hire should be the same qualities that would define the best performing airmen in the Air Force or any other organization. Therefore a large part of the thoughts, ideas, format, pictures and some of the writings are directly from the article. I’m hoping Mr. Ward doesn’t mind so I can avoid proper citations but in consequence am happy to admit he’s done most of the work and deserves credit for the his original ideas.
