Holding Effective Performance Reviews

After years of holding and observing performance reviews. I often have to remind myself of the purpose of their position in our process. Not because I don’t believe in their necessity, but a reminder of ‘why they are so important’. I created a list of ‘reminders’ for myself in which I have listed below in no particular order.

Performance reviews are amazing opportunities to have a focused meeting on a single person. Have in-depth and crucial conversation about their time with your team, and the expectations of the time going forward.

Energise, align and inspire.

Set the tone

Start the review reminding them of the purpose of the review. It’s about them. It’s an opportunity to address things that may be blocking them, making necessary alignment adjustments and ultimately raise opportunities for growth. By setting this up at the start, it will create a better environment to receive and give feedback.

Talk about the split

One of the first questions we ask is around their current responsibility ‘split’ in their day-to-day (coding / meetings / mentoring etc). Remember to ask them if they are happy with this split, you might find opportunities to delegate things if they are showing interest in areas you weren’t aware of.

Come Prepared

The purpose of these reviews it to retrospectively look back at the performance of the individual over 6 months. It is very hard to assess 6 months worth of work spending 30 minutes before the review countering what the team member wrote down. It is also an opportunity to put in ‘extras’ which may be outside their recent field of view. Try and take notes in between reviews or dedicate time to reflect over a few days.

Speak outside the boxes

When we have to fill out a pre-defined set of questions, typically we will answer enough to answer the question. If there was a section at the bottom of “other comments” it would also be typically empty. We need to find opportunity to ask questions outside of the set list, especially if you have any concern how the person is performing. I observed some great discussion from teams when asking previous to going through the questions “how do you feel your performance has been over the last 6 months”. These responses tend to be more emotional which the questions through the review document don’t tend to produce. It will also give you a good indicator of how ‘in touch’ they are with their performance.

Don’t accept sweeping comments.

Sometimes we need to delve a little deeper into comments made. Issues get raised as broad comments that need to be discussed in greater details. An example would be “I hate doing support”. As a general comment it would be easy to relate and move on to the next issue. However, we need to make sure why they ‘hate’ it. There could be some issue with their ability to diagnose issues. There may be tech debt issues that can be resolved. They might find they way in which support is structured in their day-to-day is really impacting their ability to perform.

Use examples

Some of the best delivery of feedback can be where you have observable examples to reflect upon. “You did this, and that happened.” It enables easy reflection by the interviewee. Especially helpful when critiquing. This will also avoid the “What do you mean?” responses to comments, which you will then have to think on the spot which may not be the best example of the point you are trying to make.

Find opportunities for growth

Find something… It can be really hard to find it in high performing people however they still crave growth, this is where preparation is important to offer yourself time to think about this. I often hear the candidate had to ask “but what is bad?” Remember its your job to find areas for growth if they cannot offer these themselves.

Give external feedback

We like to know what ‘other people think’ and how we are received in the office. Don’t leave them to ask “what was the feedback like”.

It’s important to give the feedback consensus as part of the review. Typically we have spent the time to feedback on others, so they would like to know what others are saying about us. We don’t want to name people (unless you ask permission prior) but a summary will often suffice.

Don’t water down critical feedback

When offering ‘critical feedback’ we commonly water it down.

For example: “I think you need to take more care in the code you are producing. Remember quality is better than the speed in which you create code. It’s producing more bugs then we would like. However, I do enjoy your enthusiasm and your energy brings a lot to the team”.

While both of these statements may be true, the emphasis of the main point you are trying to get across is diluted into a confusing position of where that critical line actually is and the actual need to change.

Intent is important

When critiquing or offering things to work on, we should look to give reasoning for you making that call. For example, “You should work on this, because this will mean that”.

Take notes

It’s important to capture conversation outside the defined questions. Sometimes conversations take place where there was a lot of actions and opportunities identified but we don’t record them. Don’t be afraid to take notes. Making notes around goals and opportunities make future catch ups have context and enable you to reflect on comments made and remind yourself actions you may need to take care of after the review.

The close

Performance reviews are emotionally charged. They bring out stress and anxiety in most of us. Remember to thank everyone in the room for participation and the open discussion that has taken place. Set any expectations on ‘follow ups’ or actions that will take place going forward.

This is a living document which I would love to update going forward. This is how I have been exposed to performance reviews and the tips that I often need reminding of. Obviously individual companies run their reviews differently via software, frequency, duration etc.

We use an application that cues questions for our staff to answer prior to the session taking place and are used and the basis of conversation. Some of the ‘tips’ refer to ‘boxes’, these are the literal ‘boxes’ I am referring too.