Performance reviews are an important aspect of a business that provides a structured time for a conversation about what employees are doing, how they are doing it, and how the business can help them do it better. Employees often dread this meeting due to past experiences where they get beat up during reviews, but that shouldn’t be the case. Instead, it needs to be a time where things are cleared up, and everyone feels good about the future.
If you’ve been a part of a team, you have likely heard about SMART goals. We’ve all heard the importance behind creating goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based, and perhaps even practiced setting some of your own within these parameters.
SMART goals can be helpful, but they aren’t the be-all end-all of goal setting. By giving the explicit advice to “make all goals achievable,” this could imply that our goals need to be supported by the skillset we already possess. Although setting achievable goals is important, it’s also important to explore goals that will challenge us, and require the development of new tools.
Why Performance Reviews Are Essential
Performance reviews serve a number of purposes, both for the business as well as the employee. It provides the employee with a way to know where they stand in the business, and it’s also a great time to look to the future and set goals with the employee. Perhaps most important is that performance reviews offer critical communication and a way to deal with any small issues before they fester.
Tips for Running a Successful Performance Review
The best performance reviews happen with a dose of pre-planning, so be sure that you aren’t giving this important part of the business short shrift. Performance reviews should be done more than once per year as well, with quarterly being optimal. This helps everyone stay on target and provides a chance to update goals as progress is made on previous goals. You should also be very clear with the employee how the meeting will go, and what will be covered. If there is a self-evaluation form, that needs to be explained ahead of time. All of these will help with a successful performance review.
Related: Workforce Planning – A Complete Guide
Set Realistic Goals With Your Employees
As we finish out Q4 and move into Q1 of 2020, we move into the business season of Performance Reviews and Goal Setting. This season provides a timely opportunity for leaders to provide feedback to their team members, and for everyone to look back on their goals for 2019, and think about their goals for 2020. This isn’t to say that goals shouldn’t be flexible and constantly reevaluated, but the turning of the decade does provide good motivation for reflecting and planning.
How to Set Realistic Measurable Goals with Your Employees
When setting goals with employees, it is important that they be S.M.A.R.T. goals. If you or the employee doesn’t know what these are, be sure to define them so that you are both working toward the same end. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. All goals agreed to in a performance review should have these five aspects to them. To keep from becoming bogged down in goals, no more than three to five goals should be set at the performance review.
Providing Interpersonal Feedback
Along with personal goal setting comes interpersonal feedback. In order to set goals for ourselves, we need to communicate with and learn from people who are (hopefully) skilled at evaluating our progress and whose insight can assist us as we map out our vision for 2020. Feedback sessions help create measurable clarity around outcomes that ground a conversation between the employee and the manager.
How to Integrate CLEAR Feedback When Conducting Performance Reviews
When doing performance reviews, it is a great time to practice CLEAR feedback for employees. This helps to ensure that all parties understand the process, and it helps negate anything that doesn’t directly impact or deal with the position the employee is in. It also alleviates ambiguity for all parties.
What is CLEAR Feedback?
When providing feedback to employees, it is essential that you deal with people fairly and accurately. You also need to pay attention to what they are saying when they provide information or answer questions. All of this will lead to the goal-setting that you and the employee agree upon for the future.
Since feedback is an integral part of goal setting, it deserves its own acronym: CLEAR.
Related: What HR Needs To Know About Internal Communication
Since feedback is an integral part of goal setting, it deserves its own acronym: CLEAR.
C: Provide feedback that is CONTEXTUAL.
Feedback needs to be delivered in an agreed-upon context. That is, managerial feedback should not be a surprise to the employee on the receiving end. If the feedback session is framed within the business objectives of the company are anchored in a common framework, then both employee and manager can start from and build upon the same foundation.
L: LISTEN while giving feedback.
When giving feedback, it is important to remember that it should never be one-sided. Allow the feedback session to adapt the form of a dialogue, regardless of how you choose to structure it. Consciously and actively listening to the employee will allow for deeper collaboration and understanding.
Ideas to Help Managers Listen
Effective listening involves being an active participant in the dialogue. This is done by restating what you heard to make sure you understood what the employee has said. If the employee agrees with your restatement, they know that you have really listened to them, and it allows you to better understand their position, point, question, etc.
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E: Deliver feedback with the aim to EMPOWER.
Identifying areas for improvement is crucial in any feedback session, but just as important is collaborating to find actionable ways to improve. An employee can either walk away from a tough feedback session with a feeling of defeat or a feeling of empowerment. The same feedback could have been provided in both sessions, but simply providing tools and talking about paths towards improvement will put the power in the employee’s hands and help them identify their next steps.
How to Structure Feedback to Empower Employees
While you could dictate a course of action, it is much better to let the employee suggest how they could handle areas that they need more growth in. Ask them what they would like to do about the issue. As long as the suggestion isn’t out of line, it is best to agree with their suggestion. It might not be how you would have done it, but because it affects that person, they will likely stick with it because they have suggested the action.
A: Give ACCREDITED feedback.
Feedback is best received when formatted around accredited data. Avoid phrases like “some people feel that you…” or “I personally think you…”, and instead present fair, evidence-based, transparent data to employees. This helps to remove any bias, as well as any feelings of being personally attacked on the employee’s end.
Types of Evidence to Use for Accredited Feedback
If you can show the employee the number of defects, or missed lines, or some other concrete data that is objective (versus subjective), then they know that you are unbiased. In this way, you and the employee can both agree that there needs to be some change in order to hit the goals desired.
R: Deliver feedback that RESONATES.
By learning your employee’s feedback style, you will be able to more quickly connect with them and deliver more personalized feedback. Learning more about the individual helps to give feedback more depth and power. Not everyone receives feedback in the same way. Learning your employee’s individual language can help you structure feedback that will resonate with them.
Different Types of Feedback Styles
There are many different ways of providing feedback, but ultimately they boil down to four styles: the motivator, the charger, the empathizer, and the analyzer. Knowing how you prefer to give feedback is important, but you aren’t locked into any one of these options. In fact, knowing your employees means that you may take on one role for one employee, and then move to a different role for another employee who deals with things differently.
Related: Best Practices for Communicating in Hard Work Situations
Benefits of Using CLEAR Feedback
Using the CLEAR method for providing feedback has a number of benefits. First, it helps to streamline the performance review and keep the meeting on task. Second, it involves both parties in the meeting and keeps things from being a one-sided discussion. Third, it helps to make the meeting more conversational, and it also gives the employees a hand in crafting their future success. When employees feel valued, they are more invested in their job and doing what it takes to succeed.
Utilize CLEAR Feedback for More Productive Performance Reviews
When managers are able to engage their employees in feedback sessions that simply go a bit deeper than surface level, this creates a healthy environment of trust where healthy employee-manager relationships are the norm.
Not only will you find that your performance reviews are more effective and efficient, but you will likely find that employees are happier with their jobs. When they are invested in making positive changes that they help to craft, they can’t help but be proud and happy when they hit their goals.
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