Yin-Yang and the OER

It may be natural to worry about your own OER, however the highest performing officers recognize this focus as counter-productive, and thus spend little time and energy worrying. In this article, we gain understanding on what the OER is and is not, what the most important part of the OER is, how to write an effective recommendation, the difference between the OER and performance feedback, and how to consistently get great OERs.

First, it helps to understand what the OER is and isn’t. Your OER is:
o A snapshot of your performance, professionalism and leadership capabilities at a point in time,
o A summary of your achievements and potential as rated by the two officers who see you most: your supervisor and your reporting officer,
o Used by your selection boards, panels and detailers to determine if you get promoted, assigned to command/advanced education and what jobs you compete for,
o Governed by chapter 10.A of the Personnel Manual,
o A time-tested and legally sufficient exchange between the officer and the Coast Guard, with built in protections for those who believe or suspect they may be “vicitms of the system.”

Your OER is not:
o Feedback on job performance
o An opportunity for charity or a reward for your subordinates
o A numeric assessment of your success
o A good place to surprise the reported on officer (either with marks and comments better than, or worse than, he or she expected).
o A perfect surrogate for talent – which is what it is trying to measure

It is no exaggeration to say that the OER is the most important annual or semi-annual document you will receive. That said, excessive focus or worry about your OER is unhealthy. Your job as an officer is to exert your efforts taking care of your subordinates and your command. Time spent worrying if you will get a five or a six in “professional competence” is time when you should be taking care of real Coast Guard business. By focusing outward instead of hand-wringing inward, the OER will take care of itself, because your supervisor and reporting officer will see that you have your priorities straight.

A good OER is more than just a herky-jerky list in broken English of all the things you did this year (or half year). A good OER leaves the reader with no question about how hard you worked, how capable you are, how effective as a leader you are and exactly what challenges you are capable of overcoming in the future. But like a work of art from the skilled hands of a professional practitioner, a great OER paints a picture of who you are, leaving no question unanswered. To do this, you have to spend some time. How much time? A great OER can take upwards of a week to write…and requires several drafts and a great deal of editing. Before you start writing, think about the subject. What is she like, what does he do well, what traits and characteristics come to mind when one thinks of that officer? Military, professional, upbeat, enthusiastic, focused, exacting: different adjectives will steer the reader’s mental imagery as appropriate, and will humanize and make real your OER commentary. On the other hand, twenty-five to thirty-lines of text saying how perfect, incredible, superior or how many myriad tasks the officer performed flawlessly will inevitably come off as excessive, overblown and faintly ludicrous. In this case, “keepin’ it real” is really good advice.

If the OER is the most important part of your record, the potential block is the most important part of the OER. The documentation in the other blocks is a summary of what you did and the circumstances in which you did it. By contrast, the potential block is more free form and captures what you can do in the future. In Boards, every potential block of every OER will get dedicated scrutiny. If you are one of the many officers who write your own OER, you should never repeat wording in your potential block from another OER. And if you are writing OERs on a number of subordinates, never use the same phraseology in more than one officer’s OER. Humans are masters of pattern recognition, and your board members may not remember the exacts words in your OER, but rest assured they will recognize patterns of identically worded phrases in different OERs.
Regarding recommendations, they should be scaled, appropriate to the officer and paygrade, and exceedingly clear. Boards, panels and Assignment Officers like nothing better than a clear recommendation or a clear non-recommendation.

For example, contrast these potential-block recommendations:
o Strongly recommended for O-4 command afloat.
o Should be considered for a command opportunity.

The first recommendation is clear, and appropriate both to the officer’s paygrade and experience. The second is called a “soft-kill.” The recommendation is positive, but is so passive and ambivalent as to be construed as a negative.

Now compare these:
o Clearly tracking towards a strong endorsement for post-graduate education.
o Not recommended for post-graduate school.

The first leaves the reader wondering if the officer is or is not recommended. The words “clearly” and “strong endorsement” are undercut by the words “tracking towards” and the intent is muddied as a result. The second is unambiguous, and while we would not want to be the officer earning such a recommendation, it makes the PG Panel’s job easier.

One of the hardest things to do is not recommend someone who is truly nice, friendly, or hard-working. Most of us don’t want to hurt the feelings of others, and our conscience can wrestle for weeks on how to recommend an officer for promotion, command, advanced training, flight school, etc, who is not clearly exceeding our expectations. But if in your heart you suspect the officer is not cut out to command others at sea, doesn’t follow-through on assignments, lacks the attentiveness needed to succeed in detail-oriented situations or lacks the requisite fitness or military bearing for a particular high-profile assignment, honesty is the best policy. Making your recommendations realistic and appropriate will allow the system to work the way it is designed. Inflating the marks or recommendations serves no one, and in fact jeopardizes the officer, perhaps the future command to which he may be assigned, and the fairness of the promotion system. It can also detract from your own credibility. Make sure you can live with whatever opportunities come from the OERs you sign for others.

Objective, timely and honest feedback is the high-octane fuel that drives the best-performing organizations, and is most important thing you can provide as a leader to improve and increase the performance of your team. Encourage subordinates who are doing well. Give them harder challenges as they improve. Let them know you appreciate their efforts, and help them get better. When objective, timely and honest feedback is a frequent occurrence, the end-of-period OERs are easy to write, because we will have created a team of capable and high-performing subordinates, one task at a time. The feedback may not always be a “pat on the back.” It may be corrective, and perhaps at times, stern. But if the coached officer comprehends the feedback and works harder to improve, there will be no reason to document the learning event for all time in his or her OER at the end of the marking period.

Again, the OER is not so much about the things we do right or wrong, it is showing a pattern of performance and capability with specifics. As such, the OER is not a feedback and counseling tool. OERs that contain examples of performance remediation are appropriate only when it is clear that the officer is unable or unwilling to perform his duties in a manner necessary for success. In that case, however, it should not be a surprise to the officer when the OER documents his or her failings. It is good leadership to have that discussion with your subordinate before completing and submitting the OER. This is even more important in the case of a special or derogatory OER, as Chapter 10.A of the Personnel Manual allows the officer to reply to an OER. While there is a presumption of fairness and propriety on the part of the rating chain, nothing weakens this presumption like the rating chain failing to follow the guidelines set out in policy. It may be hard, but it is only harder if we don’t do it right.

Here are three ways of saying the same thing:
o The reward for a job well done is usually a harder job,
o In an ideal world, the person with the strongest record would go, not to his or her first pick, but to the hardest job,
o There is a constant tension between what is best for us, and what is most appealing to us.

Phrases like these echo in the board room. The officer with the strongest record is not usually the one with the highest numeral scores, or the strongest recommendation. It is usually the one that shows the most successively greater challenges overcome, for the officer who consistently put others first, and always accomplished the mission but never at the expense of the crew. Hard work is always rewarded, but it also shows that you are ready to tackle bigger challenges. When strung together over a series of assignments, those strong performances make for great records. However, the phrase “the circumstances make the man (or woman)” is also true. Many officers are capable of performing even better than their records would indicate. Therefore, when your detailer calls with the challenging assignment that wasn’t on your e-resume, think hard before you attempt to wriggle off that hook. The move to another part of the Service, another coast or as a liaison to another agency may not be the offer you want, but the opportunity to showcase your ability may be just what you need.

In the end, the sum of your OER is an imperfect proxy for your capability and talent. As humans and social animals, we can sometime act irrationally or counter-productively, and in the work-environment, our success or failure in acting rationally will ultimately affect our OERs. The best approach is to be the type of follower you’d like to lead. Underpromise and overdeliver, make your boss’ job easy, look out for your boss, take care of your people, and never sacrifice your subordinates’ needs for the sake of your own. Officers who consistently put the needs of others ahead of their own, who achieve and maintain alignment with their supervisors and who exceed their supervisors’ expectations regularly don’t worry about their own OERs. How rational!