Most performance reviews are annual evaluations of how you’ve done your job in the past. They are historical accounts of completed projects, and are usually tied to salary adjustments for the coming year. Performance reviews are one-way, mini-lectures where you’re judged.
Sound familiar? If so, I’m sorry and I’m right there with you. Performance reviews stink.
Will you join me on a crusade to end performance reviews, and instead turn them into true conversations that allow managers and employees to share knowledge, ideas and opinions? Here’s what I propose:
- Name change. Partner for Performance (P4P) is a better description of the role of manager and employee.
- Two-way. Rather than a one-way communication lectures they should be conversations with each person having equal footing.
- More frequent. Too much time passes if you conduct performance reviews every 12 months. Rather than an annual review there should be formal progress checks either every six months or quarterly.
- Purpose. Ask your direct reports questions to determine how to help them grow. What do you want to be when you grow up? What are your career aspirations? What are the three things you like most about your job? If I could eliminate one thing that frustrates you what would it be? As a manager, once you know the answers to these (and other) questions, you can get a better picture of where the employee wants to go. It is then your job to help them get there, and P4P is the vehicle to make that happen.
- No adjustments. The P4P should center on growth and charting the employee’s career path. Focus should be placed on the individual instead of on bonuses, raises or promotions. Those conversations should be held separately so as to not interfere with professional development and personal growth.
- Fly. As you develop your employees and help them reach their professional goals, you might reach a point where you can’t assist them anymore. The employee’s only opportunity to grow may be to leave the nest and find another flock to hang with. That’s OK, because if you didn’t help them grow they’d have left anyway.
- Sell it. Think how powerful this statement is to a potential employee, “Together we will build a customized, career-development plan that will help you grow and reach your maximum potential. Your professional journey begins the day you start.”
These are only a few of the changes I’d make to performance reviews. Give it some thought. What else would you change?
Posted on
Wed, August 5, 2009
by Sean Taylor Simpson
filed under