The Trick to Performance Reviews

As promised, here’s the first in (hopefully) a long and interesting line of guest posts. Mike King shares his performance review mojo…

Most managers dread performance reviews, but not great managers.

Making performance reviews easy requires a few specific things as well as great management through the rest of the year. You can’t be great at performance reviews if you’re not a great manager. And that is why so many managers dread them. If you get great at doing performance reviews, you will love them and they will be even MORE valuable!

The Review Process
The review process needs to be in place in a structured format that works best between the manager and direct. Any other party directly involved simply gets in the way. Yes, that includes HR. Now Human Resources is often involved, have specific forms and templates to use, suggest specific rating criteria and even expect a manager to rate a specific number of people above and below predetermined ratings. These unfortunately seem like a lot of restrictions to a manager but they don’t have to be. Just ignore them, seriously! HR is there to help you do your job, not tell you how to do it. Make your own process and then find a way to work with HR and keep them ‘happy enough’ as well.

Common Process Tips
All reviews at the same time of year is a bad idea. Its competitive, comparative and generally much less time gets spent per person if all done at once. So, even if HR expects this of you, space them out over at least a couple of months so you can focus on individual directs, one at a time.

Whatever criteria or categories you use on your review, have your direct rate themselves and bring that to the review for discussion. This is extremely powerful for a manager to see if you are properly setting expectations so that the ratings you give are similar to how a direct rates themselves. If they think they are a superstar in one area and you have the opposite review, its quite obvious you are not understanding one another on the level of expectation. This part of the process lets you identify and address the gap as quickly as possible after the review.

Make your own review form that is specific to your expectations and to the job itself. The most important thing here is to keep it simple and relevant. The best form that I can suggest for any review is the absolute simplest:

Performance Review
Employee: Joe Smith
Date: January 23, 2008
Manager: [Yours Truly]

What you do well:
* point 1
* point 2
* point 3

What needs work.
* point 1
* point 2

Writing the Review
Put some time into each review. This is needed to spend some time just thinking about the person’s performance. What is expected for their job description and your expectations? What have they done well during the year and what needs work. What strengths do they have and are they using them effectively? Keep asking your self questions about the person before ever starting to write the review. This will help you to identify the most important topics since you want to focus on them and not get sidetracked writing the first things that come to mind and then later realizing you missed some critical points after the review. I suggest spending around 3-5 hours thinking and writing one review.

Make sure you have specific evidence and examples for ALL YOUR COMMENTS. This is extremely important and should not be taken lightly. If you do this, it will make the entire review more useful to the employee and help make the next point much much easier.

Ensure your comments are behavior based and focused entirely on the direct. Nothing about yourself, nothing about others, no assumptions, no inferences, no generalizations and definitely no comments or criticism if you have nothing to back it up. You need to ensure that a written review can be acted on and you want to ensure that that is as easy as possible for your direct. This will help them AND it can save you from getting into bigger problems with HR or your own boss. If your review is based on behaviors and observations about the direct and specific around the expectations on how they do their job, you will avoid almost all arguments and serious conflicts that can come up in a review.

The Review Meeting
Here are some general rules to ensure an appropriate performance review.

• Give yourself lots of time to prepare (and your direct) when scheduling the review. Schedule it at least 2 weeks prior to the meeting.
• Book a meeting location in private, where you can close the door and eliminate distractions.
• Book an extra half an hour than what you expect to need. 1.5-2 hours is generally good and you can always finish early.
• Keep your own schedule open for an additional 1/2 hour before and after just in case. You never want something to interrupt a review, its the most important meeting your direct has all year!
• Have water or a drink available for you AND extra for your direct.
• Have tissue in the room. It is an emotional meeting and you should be prepared.

Include the impact of any comments, both good and bad in a review. Simply stating a behavior obviously highlights points and brings them up, but it doesn’t mean it is understand WHY that item is on the review. Also, you can’t expect your directs to always ask, this is the most difficult meeting of the year for them and they are not always thinking clearly. They are more likely scared! So, saying the impact for positive comments and how it helps the organization really re-enforces that feedback and makes it something easy to remember and to continue to act on. Exactly what you want. For things to improve on, it is important they understand why you expect some change. Ensure they understand by having them paraphrase or repeat back in their words the impact of the items on the review. This ensures they understand and you can proceed much easier with level expectations.

Good, Bad and Ugly Reviews
You’re likely to have all of these types of reviews as a manager at some time.

Good Reviews
Good reviews are by far the most enjoyable and easiest, but they should not be taken lightly. A good review is generally for a top performer so you ought to spend the most time on it. You want to ensure you re-enforce the behavior and truly show and demonstrate your appreciation and care for the employees hard work. You want to ensure they stay, progress in the company, get paid well, help others and take on more responsibility from you. You do this by telling them that, exactly that.

Bad Reviews
Bad reviews are reviews where a direct is not meeting your expectations and you need them to make noticeable improvements to keep you satisfied. If they don’t improve by some specific measure in a given time frame, then there will be specific consequences. This is something that will be written but you again need to tell them that, exactly that. They need to hear it from your mouth while you are looking at them to make sure your point gets across. Its important to be very straightforward and not wishy washy when it comes to expectations. Explain to them what the gap is between what they are currently doing and what you expect them to be doing so you can work with them (yes, that is still your job) and help them eliminate that gap as quickly as possible. A very poor performer should NEVER be let go or fired at a review. A review is exactly that, a review. There is always a chance to turn things around after a review, otherwise it is not worth doing. If you really have a direct performing so poorly, you need to let them go, this should already be after at least one review and a number of follow up meetings with them to address the problems. NEVER surprise an employee by laying them off in a review unless they already know about a serious performance gap, have been giving ample time to turn things around and it won’t be a surprise to them. It is also perfectly acceptable to hold a review early if you see performance slipping so they have time to address the gap before some ultimatum.

Ugly Reviews
Now, the ugly reviews. These are the reviews where you as a manager have done a poor job. Something is said, written or discussed that your direct doesn’t agree with, understand, gets angry or defensive about and you struggle in explaining your comment. Its a surprise to them and not expected in the review. A direct will often be emotional from a surprise, either in a positive way where they feel and understand and take it to heart or in a negative way and get defensive, unresponsive and closed, angry, upset, hurt, etc. This is almost always caused by poor preparation, not having specific data to back up your comments or by not basing it on behavior and impact to the company.

Final Tips for Performance Reviews

• Performance reviews should simply be a focused conversation and forward thinking. What needs to continue to happen and what needs to improve or change. No surprises if you are doing a good job throughout the year of provided continual feedback.
• Performance should be discussed on a regular basis, not just in yearly reviews. Weekly one on one meetings are the best place to do this.
• Quarterly informal reviews should be held and scheduled. It can be a separate short meeting or just in one on ones. This helps address gaps and focus throughout the year, and keep a forward mindset.
• A manager should always be striving to ensure their reviews have NO surprises. To them or their direct. A great manager deals with and gives feedback on performance constantly to every member of their team.
• Keep your reviews mostly positive. Look for progress and coaching areas to help or get others to help and ensure your direct knows you want to make them a success and bigger contributer to the organization and are committed to doing so. Be straightforward and speak from the heart about how important each team member is and their career development within the organization.