1. Employee review phrases
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employee performance review.
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Performance review guides
Performance review time can be an opportunity to help your employees understand their past
performance and prepare for a year of high performance – or it can be a complete bust that eats up a
lot of time with little benefit. Fortunately – you can decide which it will be. In this tutorial, you will learn
how to become a powerful reviewer – how to help your employees understand how they are perceived
and how to improve their own performance. You can prepare for the next year so the annual
performance evaluation is an enjoyable experience which yields benefits for your team. Too good to be
true?
4 Secrets to a Great Performance Review
It’s unfortunate that many managers don’t know how to hold a great performance review and can’t
teach their employees how to hold great reviews as they are promoted. Many MBA schools fail at
teaching the nuts and bolts of great performance reviews. A great performance review can be achieved,
but you need to understand the secrets of a great performance review.
1. Understand Why You’re Reviewing Your Employee
I’m amazed at the number of management resources that completely miss the most important point of
the employee performance review process – understand why you’re reviewing the employee.
This might seem like an obvious point. We’re reviewing the performance of the employee so you can
identify his areas of weakness and help improve for next year’s review, right? Right?
Probably not. The real reason you’re probably writing that review is so you can decide on compensation
increases for your staff. There may be a great performance management process in place at your
company, but chances are the underlying reason why you’re writing a performance review is to manage
the compensation process, not the performance process.
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2. Now that you understand why you’re reviewing your employee, let’s work on changing the perception
of the performance review process.
2. Disconnect Compensation and the Employee Review
If you know the real reason why you’re writing a review for an employee, she knows the real reason as
well. The trick for you – and the reason you’re paid to manage your employees – is to shift the thinking
about what an employee evaluation is from compensation to a performance management process. How
do we disconnect the two?
We change the annual performance review to a quarterly checkup.
I know this is easier said than done, but you’re not here reading this tutorial because you want to just
breeze through your performance reviews just to get them done (but if you are here for that reason, let
us help you – here’s a link to a bunch of sample performance review phrases you can use to speed up
the process).
You can reset expectations for the review process by explaining at the start of the process that you are
going to do quarterly performance checkups with the employee and that this is just the current
quarter’s review process. Explain that you will be also doing a compensation review for the employee
which will go to HR, but that the performance management process is separate and the purpose is to
help the employee improve and excel at their job and career.
Disconnecting the performance evaluation from the compensation evaluation will reduce the stress of
the process for both employee and manager. Now that you’re set the ground rules for the evaluation
process, let’s work on including the employee in the process.
3. Engage With Your Employee for a Collaborative Employee Performance Review
No, we’re not just throwing out some fancy management doublespeak here – we are serious about this
one. In order to have an excellent performance review with your employee – not an ok or mediocre one
– you must engage with your employee and work on the review together. I’ve known a number of
managers who take one of two tracks: write all of the performance reviews and deliver each one to the
appropriate employee or have the employee write the performance review and use that one. Both are
common tactics for delivering a performance review, but unfortunately, both are incorrect. The best
way to actually engage an employee in the process and to have him buy in to the process is to work on
the review together.
This doesn’t mean sitting down together to write the review, but each putting your thoughts together
for the review, then meeting to discuss those thoughts and refine what the review should say together.
This will help ensure there are no surprises in the process and that each employee feels respected –
even if you think she is a poor performer. As you prepare the performance review, you can also work on
the employee’s goals for the next year. We’re going to focus on an employee’s strengths in this process.
4. Focus on Excelling with Strengths, Continuous Improvement for Weaknesses
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3. What was your least favorite subject in school? Are you good with numbers but not very creative?
Excelled in English and grammar, but struggled in science? If you struggled in a subject in high school,
did you find you excelled at it in college? Not likely. Most of us are strong in one area while weak in
another.
Now think about your job. Impress others with your sales ability but weak in day to day management?
Genius with the numbers but problem solving is not your strength? The same principle with your
strengths and weaknesses in subjects in high school and college applies today – you have areas you are
very strong in and areas you are very weak in. Chances are, those areas have improved somewhat since
in the early years of your career, but the chances you flipped your weakness into a strength are pretty
slim.
So why do many of us focus 80% of our time on an employee’s weaknesses when the proper focus
should be 80% on their strengths?
We still need to focus on helping an employee identify and work on their weaknesses. We want them to
be functional in those areas, but if I have an employee who is incredibly creative but lacks people
management skills, I’m going to harness that creativity and not spend all my time trying to make him
into a manager.
When you’re working on the reviews for your employees this year, think about how you can help an
employee invest 80% of their time improving their strengths.
II. Performance review tips
1. The employee should never hear about
positive performance or performance in
need of improvement for the first time at
your formal performance discussion meeting,
unless it is new information or insight.
Effective managers discuss both positive
performance and areas for improvement
regularly, even daily or weekly. Aim to make
the contents of the performance review
discussion a re-emphasis of critical points.
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4. 2. No matter the components of your performance review process, the first step is goal
setting.
It is imperative that the employee knows exactly what is expected of his or her performance.
Your periodic discussions about performance need to focus on these significant portions of the
employee’s job. You need to document this job plan: goals and expectations in a job plan or job
expectations format, or in your employer's format. Without a written agreement and a shared
picture of the employee’s goals, success for the employee is unlikely.
3. During preparation and goal setting, you need to make how you will evaluate the
employee’s performance clear.
Describe exactly what you’re looking for from the employee and exactly how you will evaluate
the performance. Discuss with the employee her role in the evaluation process. If your
organization’s performance review process includes an employee self-evaluation, share the form
and talk about what self-evaluation entails.
4. Avoid the horns and halo effect in which everything discussed in the meeting involves
positive and negative recent events.
Recent events color your judgment of the employee’s performance. Instead, you are responsible
to document positive occurrences such as completed projects, and negative occurrences such as a
missed deadline, during the entire period of time that the performance review covers. (In some
organizations, these are called critical incident reports.) Ask the employee to do the same so that
together you develop a comprehensive look at the employee’s performance during the time
period that your discussion covers.
5. Solicit feedback from colleagues who have worked closely with the employee.
Sometimes called 360 degree feedback because you are obtaining feedback for the employee
from his boss, coworkers, and any reporting staff, you use the feedback to broaden the
performance information that you provide for the employee. Start with informal discussions to
obtain feedback information. Consider developing a format so that the feedback is easy to digest
and share by the manager.
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5. 6. If your company uses a form that you fill out in advance of the meeting, give the
performance review to the employee in advance of the meeting.
This allows the employee to digest the contents prior to her discussion of the details with you.
This simple gesture can remove a lot of the emotion and drama from the performance review
meeting.
7. Prepare for the discussion with the employee.
Never go into a performance review without preparation. If you wing it, performance reviews
fail. You will miss key opportunities for feedback and improvement and the employee will not
feel encouraged about his successes. The documentation that you maintained during the
performance review period serves you well as you prepare for an employee's performance
review.
8. When you meet with the employee, spend time on the positive aspects of his or her
performance.
In most cases, the discussion of the positive components of the employee’s performance should
take up more time than that of the negative components. For your above average performing
employees and your performing employees, positive feedback and discussion about how the
employee can continue to grow her performance should comprise the majority of the discussion.
The employee will find this rewarding and motivating.
9. The spirit in which you approach this conversation will make a difference in whether it is
effective.
If your intention is genuinely to help the employee improve, and you have a positive relationship
with the employee, the conversation is easier and more effective. The employee has to trust that
you want to help him improve his performance. He needs to hear you say that you have
confidence in his ability to improve. This helps him believe that he has the ability and the
support necessary to improve.
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