I recently completed my mid-year performance reviews for my team members. Most of the time, I enjoy the performance review season. I like allocating time for documenting the wins and opportunities for my team. It’s also a good time to review goals and discuss career aspirations. I have a few tips for performance reviews that I’d like to share.

Be Specific

I believe it is a much more meaningful performance review when you can document specific actions a team member took and the consequences of those actions. This can be done for both positive and negative actions. If the team member completed a major feature, fixed an urgent production issue, or similar, document that action along with how it helped the organization. Likewise, if the team member caused a production incident that caused non-trivial harm, document that, as well. The statements should be as objectively true as possible. Don’t oversell the impact (good or bad). Ideally, everything you include in the performance review is agreed upon by you and the team member.

Take Notes Over Time

At my company, we do performance reviews twice a year. At some companies, the annual review is supposed to be a review for the entire year, not just the last six months from the mid-year review. If your company operates like that, it is imperative that you keep notes over the course of the year so you can complete an accurate annual review. If a team member starts the year well and then struggles at the end, their annual review shouldn’t be completely focused on the last few weeks or months where they struggled. Likewise, if they struggled earlier in the year and are doing very well now, the annual review should reflect that reality.

Write Before Reading

Many companies have a practice that involves the manager and the team member writing reviews from their perspectives and then sharing. I prefer to write my review before I read the team member’s review. This gives me a chance to get my thoughts, perceptions, and biases down before I take in the team member’s thoughts, perceptions, and biases. I usually take it as a good sign when my review and my team member’s review hit the same topics. If the team member focused on something completely different than I did, I take time to reflect on that and what that could mean. I also discuss it with the team member during the review.

Do the Performance Review With Your Draft

This tip can be somewhat system dependent. I’ve used HR systems that encourage you to share your review with the team member, but once it is shared, it is hard to edit again. One system I worked with required HR to unlock the review for editing.

I prefer to share the draft of my performance review with the team member. If they disagree with something I wrote, we can discuss and I have the option to clarify my writing. During my last set of reviews, I ended up editing a review during the review meeting. I had written something about the team member making their teammates laugh with “snarky” comments. As soon as I shared this part of the review, I didn’t like how it sounded and was afraid it could be misunderstood. Sharing my draft allowed me to edit the content during the review.

After the review is discussed and up to date, I then lock it down, share it, and request their electronic acknowledgement.

No Surprises

When it comes to review time, the review shouldn’t contain any surprises for the team member. I have regular one-on-one meetings and ad hoc meetings with my team members all year. If someone is not meeting expectations, I notify them right away and set clear expectations with them. While “good” surprises might be nice, that’s not usually the issue. The issues I hear about are revolve around negative feedback being provided in a performance review that the team member didn’t know was coming. This can be incredibly damaging to the rapport you have with a team member and can destroy any trust and credibility you had. If your team members are close to each other, news of surprise negative feedback could spread around the team, eroding your rapport with your entire team.

Consider Accommodations For Delivery

Some people find performance reviews incredibly intimidating. This might be due to past experiences with other leaders, how they process information, or their mental health. For example, I had one team member ask me if they could read their review prior to meeting so they could digest it and work through some of their emotions before meeting with me face to face.

Even if you have nothing but nice things to say or you believe you’re a great, unthreatening communicator, remember that it is the process itself that is scary. It would be wise to ask your team members if they have any requests related to how the performance review is executed. Do your best to help them through the process in a way that preserves and builds your relationship with them.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share? I’d love to hear about them.

Cheers!

Tips for Effective Performance Reviews