Learn to Love Performance Reviews

It’s rare to find people who really love performance reviews. Managers often see them as time-consuming, with their efforts not driving long term change. Employees may become defensive, feel it is a punitive or empty process, and leave with the impression that review results don’t accurately sum up their performance.

In these scenarios, performance reviews can become simply boxes to check, or worse, disheartening and demotivating.

But if you’re managing people, managing performance is your job. Avoiding it, delaying it, or not spending time to master the art of providing feedback can mean success or failure in your role.

For the giver of feedback, the process is key to getting people to practice the right things, prioritize opportunities, and clarify accountabilities owned by the individual versus the manager or the company. It’s also key to effective leadership.
Frank V. Cespedes Harvard Business Review

Feedback is an ongoing process

Feedback in performance reviews should never be a surprise. If the only time you evaluate performance with an employee is during an annual review, you’re doing it wrong. Employees should always know how they are doing – always. If they don’t, that is on the manager.

If an employee’s behaviour is disruptive or their work needs improvement, pause, reflect, and address. Not necessarily in the moment – emotions on both sides may get in the way. But soon. Waiting for an annual review will not make the situation better.

Here are PCM’s quick tips to providing ongoing performance feedback:

Set weekly 1:1 meetings

One key to effective feedback is consistent communication. Check in regularly with employees to review projects and update status. This allows you to see where they may be struggling, and provide support before work goes off the rails. Also ask beyond project updates – get to know them. Find out what they did on the weekend, how they slept this week, where they are feeling good, and what is getting them down. Ask how you can offer support to them.

Balance your feedback

Providing only negative feedback is discouraging, especially for top-performers. Recognizing good performance can reinforce positive behaviours, and help your employee understand expectations.

And balance doesn’t mean always providing a good point for every bad point, or couching a bad point in a “praise sandwich”. It means that your feedback should be reflective of their overall performance.

Be specific

“Do better” is not actionable. What does better look like, and how can they achieve it? While you don’t want to be prescriptive, you DO want them to be clear on expectations and how to improve. If they walk away not understanding this, they may struggle to find the goalpost vs. scoring the goal.

Allow for two-way communication

Feedback shouldn’t be top-down or one-way. Listen to your employee. You may find they are being harder on themselves than you or have the answers already…especially your top performers!

A good way to start is to ask hero questions like “what did you learn from this,” or “what strengths did you find useful on this project?”

If you have to do a formal review…

If a formal performance review must take place, make sure the process adds value to your employee, to you as a manager, and to your organization.

Spend Time and Prepare

Schedule time in your calendar to prepare your feedback. Get feedback from the employee’s colleagues and other managers. And review development over time – performance reviews should reflect on the whole duration of time that has passed since the last review, not just on the previous week’s effort.

Align feedback with department goals and organizational values

The most effective feedback helps both your employee and your organization succeed. Aligning your feedback with your organizational values gives weight to your feedback and demonstrates consistency.

Be future-focused

Allow the performance review to be future focused. Yes, you are “reviewing” past performance, and that’s important. But what is even more motivating is to make it about growth – where do they want to be in one year and what new skills they wish to develop.

Set a positive tone

Performance reviews should be about how an individual is effective – or can be even more effective – in their role. A starting statement like “Over the past year, you’ve really mastered X and that has allowed us to Y. Over the next little while, our focus will be Z,” is both future-focused, and helps provide context for the feedback.

End with actionable items, and schedule follow-ups

Feedback should always end with actionable goals. And they shouldn’t be left until the next review. Agree on next steps, schedule follow-ups and strive for continuous improvement.

Excellent feedback drives excellent results

Performance is about setting expectations and holding people accountable to their deliverables. Developing excellence in your feedback will help motivate your top performers, and identify and deal with challenging situations more quickly.

Be brave – don’t be afraid to address issues when things didn’t go as planned. If an employee is not meeting expectations, discuss and move forward from there. Avoid being too harsh when mistakes are made, instead, watch for improvement and congratulate as they grow and change.

Ready to rock your next performance review? Print off a summary of these tips, follow them, then watch how your employees respond and ignite new discoveries.

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Resource: How to Conduct a Great Performance Review | Harvard Business Review