Conduct Performance Reviews with Ease Using this Guide

When you read the phrase "performance review," what feelings or images come to mind?

I asked people of all different levels, functions, and industries, and here were their answers:

Dread. Tension. Tears.

Arguments. Heart racing. Clammy palms.

Having to choose which battles to fight. Pick your poison.

Uncertainty about what to say and how to say it.

Just a formality. Something to just "get through."

Doesn't really impact your job or your experience.

Political. Manipulative. Fake.

Not helpful. Not about the employee. Shortsighted.

Head spinning. Too scared to say anything. Too nervous to prepare properly.

Feeling sick beforehand.

...Yikes.

Clearly we need to do a bit of an overhaul on performance reviews. Even if everyone emerges feeling fine, the fact that people are heading into conversations feeling so nervous about being attacked or having to deal with conflict that they're sweating and crying is a problem.

Let's address it.

Managers, You Have Work to Do Before Performance Reviews Roll Around

Before the actual review meeting starts, a few ground rules should already have been laid. There are certain principles you should have already nurtured and exemplified for months before annual review season was even a thought:

1.) No surprises

There should be nothing new or surprising popping up in your annual performance reviews. These should be extensions of the conversations you already have quarterly, monthly, weekly, or even daily.

Additionally, you cannot judge someone on expectations you aren't both aware of. You can't tell someone they did a bad job at Thing A if you never discussed the importance of and process for performing Thing A well. Expectations should be set far in advance and discussed throughout. Then, during review season, your judgment should align with those expectations.

2.) Recognition should already be happening

How do you recognize your team members on a regular basis? You need to establish a practice for ongoing recognition separate from annual review meetings. If your team members feel confident that you already recognize their strengths when they happen, they will be less afraid that the review meeting will consist of you berating them about mistakes they made eight months ago. Catch people doing good things and celebrate those achievements in the moment with context and validation. When people make mistakes, address them in private in a timely fashion, and be constructive with your feedback. If you act this way year-round, people won't feel they have to tell you everything they did all year in one annual performance review meeting. When people don't feel seen, they use their performance reviews to try to jam everything they've done into one document or meeting, which could actually backfire, because the manager might interpret their approach as egocentric. If you, as the manager, set up a regular cycle of recognition and constructive feedback, people won't feel pressured into making performance reviews their one chance to vouch for themselves.

3.) You're on the same team

People shouldn't be entering into review meetings feeling defensive. If they are, that means they don't trust that you're on their side. You need to already set up a team culture whereby your team members know they can trust you to vouch for them, support them, and listen to them. Then, when you're in those conversations, find ways to show your team members that you are on the same team.

4.) Sincerity is key

You have to mean what you say, do what you say, and be consistent with your words, values, and actions. This cannot only happen during performance reviews. You need to be consistent in all moments, from the seminal situations to all microinteractions. This doesn't mean you're allowed to be a jerk and just write it off as "authenticity." This means you can embrace being human in a way that connects sincerely to your mission and your team members. It means you should empathize where they are in their journeys rather than thinking about your own goals or experiences. It means you should work to ensure your values are consistent with your words, your words are consistent with your actions, and your actions are consistent across situations.

Once you've established a team culture where recognition and feedback are part of an ongoing learning environment, sincere alignment across values, words, and actions are key, and your team trusts you are upholding your duty to support them in big moments and small, performance reviews will stop feeling so scary.

Now that we've established a more consistent drumbeat across the year, let's look specifically at how to make performance reviews more constructive and beneficial to all involved.

Shift the Tone of Your Performance Reviews

Focus on What Matters

Many people are afraid of performance reviews because they expect conflict, unexpected negatives, insufficient positives, misaligned vision, a lack of clarity, and zero benefit. Managers need to shift the tone of performance reviews to focus on what matters most.

Tips:

• Frame everything from the employee's perspective. If you are writing or saying "I think" or "I need" too often, that is a red flag. Instead, make the subject of the sentence your employee. Sally will benefit from doing xyz. Paul will be more successful at A if he does B. Emory was successful at C when she did D.
  

• Ask questions to help your employee reflect. You don't need to lecture. Instead, ask your employee to reflect on a topic or situation first, and give them space to think, process, and respond. Then, you can add coloring on top, based on how aligned their response is to the team's goals.
  

• Ask questions to learn more about your employee. Admit that there will be things you don’t know. You can’t know how the other person thinks every second of every day. You may not always know their motivations or reasoning or context or history or ideas. Ask them when appropriate, given the situation (make sure everything is applied to work in order to funnel the conversation in the right direction and prevent it from going off the rails).
  

• Align topics to your shared strategy or vision. If you're harping on one example of output that isn't even relevant, you're wasting everyone's time. Be sure to align topics with the team strategy, the corporate vision, the employee's role, and the individual's potential and interests.
  

• Attune to the future. If you address the past, make sure it's in the context of setting your employee up for future success. Don't harp on mistakes. (If you addressed them in the moment, you wouldn't have to bring them up again now.) Always look forward. What do you want your employee to bring into the next year? What lessons do you want to see them learn? What new skills do you want to see them apply? Last year happened so that next year can be better. Make that clear in your communication, and be positive about the future. Believe in your team members' growth and success.
  

• Document everything. If your company's formal system isn't sufficient for your needs, create a supplemental document with a few job- or person-specific questions and ratings. Empower your team member to create a chart of their OKRs for the next time period and manage their progress themselves. People document what they care about. Show that you care about reviews by documenting them sufficiently.
  

• Balance positives and negatives. You're not here to ruin someone's life. What good will it do to anyone if you sit there and harp on everything that person did wrong? You'll erode trust, engagement, and motivation. Beware too much "red ink." Along those lines, it's not your job to only point out negatives. Some managers think they "shouldn't" give scores that are too high or they "need" to be tough on their employees to help them grow. You can have high expectations for someone without being overly negative. Be sure to call out the positives and help your team members figure out how to do more of what's working well.
  

• Add concrete examples where possible. Clarity is always of the utmost importance and has no downside. If you are going to make a claim, be prepared to back it up with evidence.
  

• Empathize, empathize, empathize. This is not your story. It's theirs. Try to empathize cognitively to figure out what they're thinking and why. Work to understand your employee's motivations, goals, and interests. And if you don't know, which you probably don't, then ask. Use curiosity as a tool to better empathize and connect with your team members. See things from their perspective so you can better understand what happened last year and what needs to happen for success in the coming year.
  

• Be human. I don't know who needs to hear this, but you're not a robot, and you shouldn't pretend to be one. You're a human, and so is the person you're talking to. Connect with them authentically. Tell them you want the best for them. Be explicit about your hopes and perspectives. Ask them questions and open up a dialogue. Laugh about something you both experienced that was silly to lighten the mood. This isn't life or death. Take it for what it is.

Next, let's dive deeper into a few key areas.

Pay Attention to the Specifics

The Logistics

This may be getting in the weeds, but make sure you know how your systems or tools work. If your company uses a performance review system like ADP, Bamboo, or Kin, learn the system beforehand.  If your company uses a double-blind system, so you complete your review of each team member blindly, and they complete their self-reflection concurrently, and then the two documents get combined before the actual meeting, follow the process. Submit your reviews on time. Grant your team access to the appropriate files if your process requires that. Follow the timeline your company has provided. Schedule meetings on time, preferably separate than your typical weekly one-on-ones, so you can focus solely on performance in the allotted time.

The Prep Work

Do the prep work. Give your team members your attention before and during the performance meeting and throughout the entire performance review process. Don't show up and read your documents word for word, proving you hadn't read anything beforehand (that behavior sends a message that your time is too valuable to focus on your team's professional development, which is completely misguided and erroneous). We give our attention to the things we care about; show your team you care by putting time and attention into their reviews. Summarize your findings and theirs; look for trends to make the most of your time together in the meeting. Look for discrepancies to discuss; look for commonalities to celebrate.

As a disclaimer, you can certainly go into the meeting with a few key points you want to make, but you should also be openminded, in case your employee wants to discuss something they didn't feel comfortable putting in writing. The meeting isn't to sync over the document itself; the meeting serves as a chance to discuss performance, goals, and professional development from your team member's perspective. Keep that in mind as you prepare.

The Questions

Whether your company uses a formal system or you create a document yourself, be careful about the questions you ask. As is always the case, questions indicate what matters: If you ask someone how often they took chances that year, you're communicating the importance of taking chances. If they know you're going to ask that question again next year, your question will implicitly guide your team's behaviors toward being able to answer that question favorably. Select questions that align with important behaviors you wish to see repeated based on your team members' jobs.

Examples of questions I've asked team members:

• Name three times you took initiative over the last year. Explain the context, any conflicts or obstacles, lessons learned, and the outcome of each example.

• Name one way you’ve used your strengths to add value or improve over the last six months.

• How can you use your strengths to add more value or improve over the next six months? Name one way. Where do you need extra support from me (if anywhere)?

The Tone

Are your reviews reflective? How do you balance sharing feedback with asking questions? Do you want your employee to feel afraid (no no no) or excited (yes yes yes)? Is the conversation mostly you talking about what the CEO wants (hopefully not) or are you fostering a dialogue so you can your team member can form the best plan for success on individual, team, department, and company levels (bingo!)?

Try this activity:

• Choose three adjectives you'd like the employee to use to describe the perfect performance review. How can you help them feel that way? (Examples: Supportive, forward-looking, understood.)

• What mindset do you want to have during reviews? How can you bring that mindset to life? (Examples: Constructive; optimistic; positive; strategically aligned; empathetic.)

• What mindset do you want your employee to have going into review conversations? How can you cultivate that mindset for them? (Examples: Excited, engaged, creative.)

• What do you want the outcome of your performance review conversations to be? How can you bring that about? (Examples: A clear plan for my employee's success; work that aligns with our strategy; optimism for the future; my employee feeling increased trust and support from me and their network; my employee understanding how they can use their skills and interests to add concrete business value.)

The Goals

As you set goals for the next period, wonder what your employee might need to feel engaged:

• What goals are just a bit out of their reach so they'll feel challenged in a good way?

• What goals are directly related to their jobs so they can have a positive impact?

• How can I create goals that match their role to the overall strategy?

• How can we make our goals concrete and measurable so they can prove their success at the end of the period?

• How can we name goals that help them develop their skills in a way that is interesting and meaningful for them?

You're here to help your team be successful. Set a few select, specific, strategic goals with that in mind.

And of course, reflect on the goals you set over the last period and explore whether those were too lofty, too easy, or just right. Discuss why the old goals worked or why they didn't. Then work together to create goals that work for each team member. I include a section of goal-setting in a supplemental document I create for each team member. We each complete the document (double blind), then I combine our two sets of answers into one document that will guide our subsequent discussion. That way, the employee has a say, but you're still in charge of setting the right goals, aligning to strategy, and coaching your team members toward meaningful success and growth.

Lastly, here's a quick note on dependencies (a common pitfall): I don't like dependencies in goal-setting. Ever. Set up each team member's goals such that they are sole party responsible for achieving them. That might mean whittling down a goal into something more specific and refined. If so, do that. You want your team members to feel they have complete control over achieving their goals. They'll feel better about the process and the outcome, you'll be able to monitor their progress more effectively, and next year's reviews will be a breeze.

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Performance reviews don't have to be stressful. Once you nurture a supportive team culture throughout the year, your team members will look forward to a constructive, strategic conversation about ways they can add concrete value. They'll look forward to connecting on a human level with someone they can trust. That's your goal. Put in the work to make the review process a positive experience from each employee's perspective, and practice reflection and exploration so you can show up in a way that is supportive, optimistic, and consistent. Your team members will trust you to guide them along their journeys toward success, and everyone will repeat the benefits.