It’s a well-known fact that performance reviews are universally disliked and dreaded by both the reviewer and the reviewee and for many valid reasons. But it doesn’t have to be this way and I’m on a mission to help employees, leaders and organizations leverage the true power of an effective performance review process.
In this blog post, I want to talk about how to use (and enhance) your company’s performance review process to build better relationships, support your talent pipeline and be better as a leader.
So why do performance reviews have a bad name?
People don’t like performance reviews for a few major reasons. They tend to be overly templated, which doesn’t allow for leaders or employees to provide expansive feedback. Years ago, I discovered this isn’t just a corporate problem. When my oldest child came home from second grade with his report card and comments that didn’t make sense to me, I went to the parent-teacher conference with curiosity about how my kid was actually performing. His teacher said, “You know, Vicki, for report cards, we’re told what to say.”
This formulaic approach is frustrating for leaders who genuinely care about their people and want to give more context as to why a team member was evaluated in a certain way.
Performance reviews are often also tied to annual salary increases in an inconsistent way which may not make sense to the recipients. Plus, it’s common for people to feel blindsided by a bad review. Or the proverbial overrating that can happen with self-reviews in the hopes if I rate myself higher I will get a better increase. And finally, performance reviews have a reputation for being a waste of time as nothing gets done with them after a perfunctory review meeting.
If this sounds like performance review season at your organization, don’t despair! It can be better and that starts with you.
How do we make this process better for both the reviewer and reviewee: Start a file for each of your employees
A 365-day performance cycle is a long time. Leaders can’t be expected to keep every win, loss and challenge in their heads. That’s why I recommend having a file for every employee. This could be in OneNote or Evernote or even in a Word document. When something happens–for example, your employee oversaw a project that led to a 20% reduction in expenses and a 10% increase in client retention–add a note about it to the file. Same thing for performance issues. These notes help you keep on top of what’s going on with each employee and they can fuel your regular conversation.
You are having regular conversations with your employees, right?
Better performance reviews: Make them a year-long project (trust me)
Performance reviews shouldn’t be a once-a-year thing that everyone dreads as the spring rolls around. They should be supported by quarterly or monthly conversations between leaders and their staff, with no surprises. These check-ins are for reviewing what’s working, what’s not working, how your employee wants to grow and in what areas and how they’re doing as a person.
By having regular check-ins that cover real workplace issues, leaders avoid blindsiding their employees with “does not meet expectations” on their performance reviews.
Better performance reviews: Ask better questions
Now that you’re taking a more holistic approach to preparing for performance review “season” all year round, it’s time to make those regular conversations count. While there are many ways to do this–including honing your conscious leadership skills–a great place to start is by asking better questions.
For example, if your employee is struggling, ask direct questions such as:
- Andrea, why are you struggling with the follow-up?
- What’s preventing you from meeting those timelines?
- What do you think you need to manage this situation?
Asking better questions leads to better answers. Maybe the solution is around helping your team member become better at a specific task. Or maybe that work isn’t the right fit and working on different things is the road to excellence.
And always ask yourself big questions like, “As a leader, how do I help my team members become better?”
Better performance reviews: Make better connections
As a leader, one of your roles is talent management. Performance reviews give us an opportunity to concentrate on the development of the people we lead and connect them with the organizational talent pipeline.
For example, what if you have several great taskmasters on your team, but the team is lacking in financial acumen? Maybe one of your conversations reveals that a team member wants to expand her knowledge about reading and understanding financial statements and how to have a significant impact on the financial statements. You might put financial acumen training as an objective for your whole team.
Through this training and learning, you build more well-rounded employees. The next step is figuring out how to best leverage this newly developed talent. Where do your employees see themselves and how can you connect them with the people who can help them achieve their professional goals? What are the needs of the business and how do your team members fit in?
These connections could include informational interviews, arranging sponsor or mentor relationships or simple coffee chats.
Under-developed leaders can fall into the trap of keeping all their talent to themselves, but this is a mistake. Instead, why not use the performance review process to make useful connections, keep employee engagement high and build your own reputation as a leader?
Storytime: Push for growth
When I was president at the Bombay Furniture Company, I had a team member who liked to keep her team close to her and she didn’t include them in a lot of our bigger conversations. She had a very smart employee and I started inviting this employee to senior leadership meetings. This upset my team member who didn’t understand why I was bringing her team member in. I said we needed to groom her to take on bigger roles and my team member told me, “No. She's in the role she should be in.” I believed this woman could play a bigger role in the company instead of staying where she was, making her boss’s life easier while becoming disengaged and frustrated and not getting credit for her work. I ended up moving her out from under that person when I went on maternity leave. I stretched her in this new role, and it ended up being a huge growth opportunity for both her and her leader, who also had to step up her game.
Being able to see potential and put it to use is an important skill for leaders to have. And the performance review process is a great opportunity to hone this skill.
Better performance reviews: Lead the whole person
Don’t be afraid to take a holistic approach to leadership during performance reviews and check-in meetings. Your employees aren’t robots; they have lives and struggles outside of work that can–and do–affect the workplace.
Leading the whole person can include asking questions like:
- How are things going for you outside of work currently?
- How are things overall with your personal development, community work, etc?
- What’s the most important thing you’re handling outside of work these days?
By initiating this type of conversation, you can learn what’s really going on for your team members. For example, if your employee, Jane, says she’s struggling with her own health and well-being, this gives you insight into her risk of burnout, presenteeism or mental health concerns. You can then explore support options for Jane, such as getting help through the employee assistance program, adjusting work hours or responsibilities, etc. Many leaders are hesitant to bring the personal into professional conversations, but it’s already there. Let's bring the whole person to the surface, create a safe space where someone can say, “I’m struggling,” and put ourselves in a better position to manage these important relationships.
Better performance reviews: Bring out the bragging
Self-reviews are often part of the performance review process and many people don't like to brag about themselves or the flip side emphasize skills they don’t actually have. This can be a huge miss–being humble doesn't get anyone promoted! And over inflating can be a career killer if you are not aware of your true skills. Help your team members get comfortable with sharing their accomplishments and what they’re proud of achieving, but also have a keen awareness of their opportunities with a game plan to work on.
As mentioned above, it can be a good idea for everyone on your team to start an accomplishment list or folder to keep track of these things throughout the year. I call this a Brag Book, compliments of my friend Peggy Klaus.
With these accomplishments documented, people can be specific during performance reviews, using statements such as:
- I led a multi-million-dollar project that came in on time and on budget.
- I created a new opportunity for the company by identifying that our people weren't trained in this specific area. And by training everybody, we improved efficiency by X% over the last X months.
- Here are the things that I'm most proud of when it comes to X…
- Here's what I excelled at in the last 90 days, 120 days, etc.
It's amazing to me how many people can't articulate their accomplishments, including senior leaders. Help your team members avoid this fate by teaching them how to brag effectively.
Final thoughts on reinventing the performance review experience
I didn’t always think this way about performance reviews. But my experiences as a leader, a mother and later, as an employee and mother who struggled with her health, my perspective shifted and I started taking a much more human approach to things, including performance management. The results have been amazing personally and professionally.
If you want to take a more human approach to performance reviews and develop your skills as a leader who fuels the talent pipeline, don’t hesitate to reach out to me for a meet-and-greet discovery call.
----------------
Hi, I’m Vicki Bradley, an executive coach in Toronto and the Founder and CEO of Women in Leadership Empowered.
I work with women pursuing success in executive leadership roles and the presidents and CEOs who understand that strong businesses are built with strong, diverse leadership.
WIL Empowered is a group coaching program where we focus on all four aspects of leadership development through coaching, networking, peer-to-peer mentoring and developing soft skills. Our mission is to help women develop the skills, motivation and accountability required to succeed in their business and personal lives.
Take our five-minute leadership quiz to discover where your leadership skills are now and where you’d like them to be this time next year.
To learn more about WIL Empowered, visit our website at WILempowered.com or reach out to Vicki@wilempowered.com for a discovery call.