Changing Your Mindset Around Performance Reviews

It’s that time of year for many organizations – performance reviews! Three of my clients are in the middle of performance reviews and for each of them it is a dreaded project!

How you behave as a manager impacts your mindset around performance reviews. For example, if you see yourself as a partner with your employees – working together with them to accomplish goals of the department, setting direction and vision and providing them what they need to achieve those goals, you likely have a good mindset around performance reviews and see the process as a partnership with your employees to set goals for the upcoming year.

However, if you believe you are the ultimate boss and therefore will make all decisions and your employees goals should be to do what you say, you don’t have the right mindset around performance reviews. You may see the performance review as a way to focus your employees on what is not going right that must be changed or to berate them for not doing as good a job as you expect.
Managers who have the right mindset around performance reviews do the following:

Tackle performance management as a project to be done in collaboration with their employees. This means that you plan for, communicate effectively and evaluate performance in conjunction with your employee. It is a collaborative effort rather than you, as the manager, filling out a form that the employee then signs off on.

Have performance conversations year round. Even if performance reviews are done once a year formally, you are having regular conversations around performance with your employees throughout the year. There is no surprises during the formal performance review process because you have been discussing performance year round and addressing issues as they arise rather than waiting to address them later.

Collaborate to set goals. You collaborate with your employees to set goals for the year and check in regularly (during one-on-one’s) regarding progress toward those goals. Goals set are a combination of goals needed to meet department objectives but also goals that the employees personally would like to achieve. For example, leading a new project that is above and beyond daily work responsibilities.

You use the performance review process to highlight successes during the year, goals for the future, and learning and training opportunities for the employee to take advantage of to further develop their skills and increase their knowledge.

What about you? Do you have the right attitude and mindset about performance reviews?