Managers Perception while on the job?

Manager A," for instance, can interpret the fact that an assistant is slow, disorganized, and afraid to make decisions. "Manager B" with the same assistant, might interpret the approach as evidence that the assistant is thoughtful, thorough, and deliberate.


1. What do you believe would be the difference in the evaluation performed by Manager A and the one performed by Manager B of the same employee?
2. What are some of the factors that influence perceptions?
3. What role could the following have on judging others:
a. selective-absorbing bits and pieces of information that are not chosen randomly; rather, they are selectively chosen depending on the interests, background, experience, and attitudes of the observer.
b. assumed similarity-the like me effect, the observer's perception of others is influenced more by the observer's own charactristics than by those of the person observed.
c. sterotyping-we judge someone on the basis of our perception of a group to which he or she belongs.

the main difference is the human factor involved.

when you're dealing with employee ratings you have to remember humans (in this case the rater) are not infallible and are susceptible to several biases among which include: the halo effect, prejudice and partiality, over leniency, central tendency biases, contrast errors, association errors, confirmation bias, availability hueristic, etc. etc. etc.

you touched on a couple of these with the third part of your question. my advice if you're interested would be to read the following

Ilgen, D.R., Weiner, I.B., Klimoski, R.J., & Borman, W.C. (Eds), (2003). Handbook of Psychology: Industrial and Organizational Psychology, John Wiley & Sons Inc

I give a class to my clients on perception. it is important in not only dealing with employees, but vendors and customers as well.
one way i deal with the perception issue with employees and managers is:
I have the employee review / evaluate his / her self.
I have the manager review the employee using the same criteria. we then sort through them and analyze the data. it will point out the communication faults and distinguish the oppurtunities both sides need to work on to bring their views closer together. we also have more than one manager review the employee to distinguish the individual perceptions.