How to Lead a Productive Performance Review

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Do you dread performance review meetings or breeze right through them?

It probably depends on whose performance you're reviewing. When you review your most stellar performers, it's a piece of cake. Others gnaw at you, as you anticipate an emotional, defensive, or confrontational response from your lower-performing team members.

Though you may prefer the piece-of-cake variety, neither is likely to be productive.

Ideally, there's some creative tension on both sides. If there's anxiety-inducing tension, that's an indicator that agreements are unclear or that there haven't been enough feedback conversations. If there's no creative tension, then it might be a sign of complacency.

Here's how to address all three of those problems.

Clarify Agreements

Most leaders are put in the uncomfortable position of having to evaluate someone’s performance for which?the criteria are not mutually agreed upon, or when the standards are vague and subjective.

It's worth fixing this! When you establish clear, objective, mutually agreed-upon criteria from the beginning, performance review conversations can be straightforward and unemotional.

Sound like a dream? This isn't just an interesting hypothesis--it's true.

For my clients with unionized employees,?performance standards are pre-negotiated at the beginning of the performance period. The union (and thus employees) and management have agreed to the evaluation criteria at the outset. As you can imagine, performance review conversations tend to be really simple!?

But what happens when chaos (read: COVID) strikes and?those standards get thrown out the window? The conversations get hard! Leaders have a sense when someone is performing well or not, and they need to have a conversation about it, but how?

My guidance to them: Be as clear as you can about the new criteria by focusing on observable behaviors and quantifiable results.

Here’s the question that opened an insight for my client.

Me: “You have a sense that the employee’s performance isn’t where you’d like it to be. Besides intuition, what data tells you that?”

Client: “It’s low compared with her teammates’ average.”

BINGO. It’s not perfect, but it’s something tangible that he can provide feedback on and they can have a performance (maybe even developmental!) conversation about it.?

Intuition is a valuable source of information, but it's tough to have a performance conversation rooted in anything other than data.

Bottom line: Define a meaningful point of reference from which deviation can be measured. Then, have regular status conversations. This enables you to reset expectations as needed and gives the employee ample opportunity to change behaviors.?

Have More Feedback Conversations

Making feedback part of your regular interactions makes it more productive and less awkward for everyone. Using a coaching framework integrates feedback into a developmental conversation driven by the recipient's autonomy, mastery, and purpose. For the more difficult conversations, learn how to deliver hard feedback that people actually appreciate.

Explore Areté with Your High Performers

Just because you're satisfied with their performance, doesn't mean that they're feeling fulfilled. And if they're not fulfilled, high performers are not going to stick around.

It's time to introduce creative tension into your star employees' performance reviews by exploring their untapped potential. Ask them to set an ambitious goal, and then challenge them to 10X it. For those with a deeper sense of purpose, offer to support their 100-year goal. Inquire about the area of mastery that most motivates them, and invest in their development.

These team members are perfect candidates for coaching. Hone your skills as a leader by integrating coaching into your own toolkit. Or hire a coach to help them take their talent and experience to the next level.

Which of these tips will you try (and with whom) in your next performance reviews? Let us know in the comments below!

Let’s talk about this!

Join me next Tuesday at 1 pm PT/4 pm ET for a?LinkedIn Audio Event, where I’ll be discussing the topic of this newsletter:?How to Lead a Productive Performance Review.

An Audio-only event is like a podcast that you can participate in. You can listen while you eat lunch, drive home from work, or walk the dog. You can raise your hand to ask a question…and get it answered LIVE! The downside is that it WILL NOT BE RECORDED, so you can’t play it back. If you’re not LIVE, you’ll miss it.?

I’d absolutely LOVE to have you there.?Register for it today!

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This post originally appeared on the blog at?Academy of Areté.?

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