I believe Santa Claus was a modern marvel of a supervisor. He was so good that he made it look like being supervised was fun. Below is the evidence, which can be found in the classic, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."
Verse I.
Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry;
You better not pout,
I'm tellin' you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town!
The first verse is clearly a warning to employees that they better keep an eye open, behave in a positive manner, and keep their emotions in check.
Verse II.
He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town!
The second verse gives us insight into his supervisory techniques. He keeps notes -- very accurate notes -- that are checked twice. He makes no bones about what his responsibilities are to the Christmas organization he heads -- and he keeps track of who's behaving -- and how they're behaving.
Verse III.
He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So, be good for goodness sake!
Now we see Santa has some sort of office surveillance system -- he's probably checking your keystrokes on your computer, as well as viewing the office through security cameras. This verse also contains what I consider an ominous warning: Be good for goodness sake! Or, what will happen?
Verse IV.
Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry.
You better not pout,
I'm tellin' you why...
Santa Claus is coming to town!
Aha! Now we see another of his techniques -- repetition. We've already been told he's coming to town, but we're ever-so-pleasantly reminded again.
I'm not so sure working for Santa would be as much fun as everyone thinks it would be. I think I'd prefer to work for a supervisor who communicated clearly with me all year long -- not just around Christmas, which is when most of us get an employee evaluation.
Once a year, like most employees out there, you sit down and have a dialogue -- a conversation with your supervisor -- and talk about the work you've done over the past year. Then you're given an assessment. Your supervisor has a list to go by, and no doubt -- checks it twice before telling you how you're doing.
A list of generalized categories is usually somewhere in that evaluation form -- words to describe and rate your overall persona. The ratings go something like this: Outstanding, Highly Successful, Successful, Improvement is Expected, or Unsatisfactory. Some employers use a rating system using numbers. You may be rated one (terrible) to five (totally excellent). Other employers rate their employees like teachers grade their students in elementary school -- you can get an A, (which is best) all the way down to an F -- and then you flunk.
Interesting. If you're a parent and your child attends school, I suspect you get report cards four to six times a year, don't you? You don't get just one report card -- after the fact, right? I can't imagine a parent feeling good about getting just one report card after your child has spent many months in a teacher's classroom. How valuable would that be to you, the teacher, and your child?
Another interesting way to think about job evaluations is how similar they are to training a new puppy who has just become a member of your household. When a puppy doesn't follow the rules of the house, the master usually corrects the pup when the rule being broken actually happens -- not one year later, right?
Your supervisor is looking for words and phrases to describe you -- so that he/she can tell you whether or not you meet certain standards. Your performance can be described as to whether or not you're dependable, reliable, trustworthy, motivated, organized -- or it can go the other way -- you're not dependable, not reliable, not trustworthy, not motivated, and disorganized.
Here are some common goals that are sometimes used in assessing people through job performance evaluations: Employee consistently follows company policy and procedures, employee gets along with and respects the rights of fellow employees, and employee's work is completed within acceptable tolerance of error. Sound familiar?
In all fairness, performance appraisals from the company's point of view seems to be related to getting better results from their workers -- a way to get workers "fired-up" and motivated -- or may be tied to an increase in your wages. It's a way to talk about whether or not you're performing to their expectations, and can also provide the legal documentation for your personnel file to put you on probation, suspend you, or fire you for a justifiable reason.
The job evaluation meeting can sometimes be a difficult and emotional experience for the employee. There's some degree of uncertainty about what's going to happen, and some anxiety involved around the end result of the review -- particularly if you think you might wind up on the low end of the ratings scale. It's tough to get motivated in a positive way when you feel psychologically beaten-up afterwards.
Sometimes job performance appraisals can undermine a previous trusting relationship, create paranoia, or lower self-esteem on the part of the employee -- particularly when the subordinate had no clue they were not doing a good job. It begs the question, "Why did my supervisor wait an entire year to tell me what I was doing wrong?" There's no good answer to that question.
But there is a quick solution -- Evaluations can happen all during the year. So, by the time the "Yearly Review" comes along, both the employee and the employer have already worked through most of the problems by communicating along the way.
Maybe Santa isn't the perfect supervisor, but at least he's cheerful -- and a right jolly old elf!