Performance Reviews

It’s That Time of Year Again…

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Let’s get one thing straight: nobody likes performance reviews. They’re essential yet unpleasant; a trip to the proverbial dentist. Yet, despite the unpleasantness, they’re the best opportunity that you have to push your top performers further and course-correct those who are underperforming. Use these reviews well, and your staff will only get better. Use them badly, and you’ll be in for some very awkward conversations. It’s time to prepare, so let’s get started.

Preparing for Performance Reviews

A performance review should be roughly an hour together in a private room. But what happens in preparation for the meeting? Good preparation is essential, both for you and your direct report. These review meetings carry lasting weight, so they deserve at least an hour of your time in planning for each of your staff.

Being unprepared can result in you delivering a message that isn’t quite what you wanted, or missing the opportunity to give some very precise critique. Even worse, you might say something you regret or look like you have absolutely no idea about what they’ve been up to. Being unprepared can make your direct report feel neglected. They’ll wonder why you didn’t take the time for them. You have only a few opportunities in the year to give reviews, so make sure that you bring your A-game both before and during the meeting.

Planning properly does have ramifications for your time. If you have six or seven direct reports, you’ll need nearly a full day of preparation. Making the time around other commitments and meetings can be a challenge, but is necessary.

When it is time for performance reviews, they are your most important commitment. Everything else, within reason, moves out of the way.

Sharing Reviews Prior to Meeting

Write your reviews early and share them before the meeting. As the person on the receiving end of the review, it’s deeply unpleasant to turn up with no idea of the direction that the meeting is going to take, especially if it hasn’t been a stellar year. These meetings are not an occasion for a big reveal, and that’s true for both good and bad news. Save that for the magician at the Christmas party.

It goes without saying that the bad reviews are much harder to stomach than the good ones. Delivery of critique, especially when there is a lot to criticize, can put people in a spin. By sharing what you’ve written for them beforehand you give your staff time to mentally prepare.

To frame why sharing the written review prior to the meeting is useful, consider the five stages that people tend to go through when receiving bad news:

1. Ignore
2. Deny
3. Blame others
4. Assume responsibility
5. Find a solution

Staff reading the document before the meeting have the chance to move through steps 1–4 in their own minds. The meeting can then focus on step 5, which is a much more productive use of both of your time.

Getting Feedback from Others

Incorporate at least two pieces of peer feedback per member of staff. My approach: select two key people who work with them, either inside or outside of their team, and then send an email asking for candid feedback. You can get skip-level feedback if you ask one of their direct reports, or peer feedback if you ask someone else they work with in the organization.

Some people require very little guidance to write you a very long and detailed response, but some need prompting, especially if they haven’t done it before. As a place to start, ask the following questions when requesting feedback from others for a performance review:

• How have you found working with this person over the time period?
• What are the main strengths that they bring to the organization?
• What do you think that they could improve upon?
• What’s your favorite memory of working with this person recently?
• Would you like to keep this feedback anonymous?

On that last bullet point: I always ask whether people would like to maintain anonymity. In my organization, most people don’t mind their name being attached to the feedback — a positive sign that shows people want to be accountable for their critique and feel comfortable doing so.

Deciding Who Should Write the Review

Many organizations approach performance reviews by asking staff to write the majority of their own performance review. I will make a controversial point here: this practice is very lazy.

Managers doing a good job should be able to readily summarize the performance of their staff and outline some of their main achievements. Also, a self-review written by an underperforming member of staff about themselves will not be as negative as it needs to be — and that makes contradicting it even more difficult in the meeting. If they were wrong about their own performance, then what was the point of them writing it all in the first place?

Instead, the review should have equal input from both the manager and the direct report. The focus for the direct report is to summarize their achievements and feelings about their performance over the period, and the manager should do the same. If there is conflict in the two summaries then that is an excellent talking point for the meeting: why didn’t they know about the anomaly earlier?

My own approach to researching a performance review follows this pattern:

• Review what the whole team has achieved in the period since the last review.
• Review 1 to 1 notes for the period to pick out personal achievements, struggles, and themes that we discussed.
• Think hard about how they have been over the period — were they mainly stressed, motivated, happy, neutral? Why?
• Think about the forthcoming period. How would you really like that person to improve and excel? Are there upcoming projects they could contribute to? How do they want to grow for their own career goals to be met?

With this information to hand, begin writing the document.

Using a Performance Review Template

You may find that your workplace has a standard template, but the following are suggested sections:

• A summary of the main achievements for the period. (Looking backward)
• Areas to grow and develop over the next period. (Looking forward)
• A summary of peer feedback: either verbatim if they did not ask for anonymity, or paraphrased snippets if they did.

Write 500–1000 words for each person. This may seem a lot, but it shows you have taken the time and that you care about them. Under each section, include space for the person to write their own additions. The space is for things that you missed or a rebuttal to comments. We are all wrong at times.

Once done, share the written review with them at least one day before the review. Include a note to take some quiet time and digest it and to come to the meeting ready to talk through each point in the review.

Conducting the Meeting

Before the meeting, check to see whether they’ve commented on anything you’ve written. Then, it’s time to become your best self and step through the meeting room door.

When it’s time to sit down, you should have plenty to talk about. Resist just reading through the document. You’ve both already done that. Instead, steer the conversation towards the positives, where you can dish out ample praise and thanks, and to the negatives, where you can discuss the situation and how to improve it.

Spend about 50 percent of the meeting looking back at the work that has been done, and 50 percent of it talking about the future. In the document, draft the goals that you both want to work towards in the coming period. Goals can be taken away for additional thought and then signed off on later.

If you’ve done all of the necessary preparation beforehand, these meetings typically go well. However, sometimes that all goes out of the window and there are heated arguments or tears, or both. In these situations just listen and care for the person, but stick to the critique that you wrote.

Offer your support to help them improve and grow, and let them know that they’re reacting because they care, and you equally care about them doing well.

Don’t be afraid to step out for a bit to give both of you some time. Performance reviews are hard on you as well.

Sticking to Performance: Leave Money Out of It

When performance reviews are at the end of the year, they have another piece of pertinent information attached: salary increases. Money complicates things.

I’ve had performance reviews that acted as the grand unveiling of my salary increase. I wholeheartedly recommend against talking about salary increases during a performance review.

As soon as compensation is on the brink of being revealed, people stop engaging in the performance discussion, which is what these meetings are really about. In the lead-up to the pay rise surprise, people are preoccupied with wondering when you’re going to tell them. As soon as you’ve told them, they’re either extremely happy and begin thinking about what they’re going to do with the extra money (a holiday in Spring? overpay the mortgage? invest more? start shopping in Waitrose?) or they’ll be seething because it’s not what they expected. All the while, the useful conversation floats on by and doesn’t land.

Instead, inform people of pay increases at another time. Don’t let money distract you from a focussed conversation around performance. Personally, I inform staff about salary increases by email. Communicating this way gives people time to digest the news. If anyone wants to discuss salary further, then they’re invited to take some time with me whenever they want.

In Summary

Performance reviews are quite difficult — but with preparation, they can become slightly less so. Frame performance reviews in your mind as your ideal forum to dish out in-depth praise and critique that will have a lasting impact on your staff. Your stars will leave feeling motivated and wanting to achieve even more, and those who need improvement will leave with knowledge of how to do much better.

For all of the gigs that a manager does each year, performance reviews are your headline show. Rehearse, be calm, and it’ll be alright on the night. Good luck.

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Further Reading

Also by James Stanier:

Become An Effective Software Engineering Manager on Medium:

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