Creating a Positive Performance Review Experience
A Guide for Emotionally Intelligent Leaders
One of the Four Frameworks of The Humanized Leader System is Performance Leadership. Putting command and control to the side, this type of leader uses vision, communication, collaboration, and agreements to elicit high performance from their teams.
A key tool is the performance review. Many have a love/hate relationship with this tool, yet when it is done well, it is an effective way to assess and establish performance criteria.
On the one hand, the review conversation enables business leaders to connect with their team to foster growth, motivation, clarity, and realignment with core values. Done poorly, reviews are dreaded and viewed as top-down criticism. Humanized Leaders realize this and embrace the review protocol as a chance to strengthen the bond between leaders and team, driving productivity and employee satisfaction.
The Pitfalls of Performance Reviews
Many entrepreneurial business leaders struggle to give performance reviews, and the process becomes a source of frustration and stress for both giver and receiver. Accurate and honest self-assessment is required as the performance review can make or break engagement.
Here are 6 key assessment questions to ask of yourself:
- How well have you prepared? Lack of preparation leads to a superficial conversation and lack of relevant data leads to assumption and judgment.
- How much time have you allotted for the conversation? Insufficient time allotment may lead to a focus on recent events, rather than considering performance holistically. Lack of time creates shortcuts.
- How well do you negotiate expectations and agreements? Creating agreements around performance goals is a dialogue and brainstorm leading to agreement. Neither you nor your employee can afford to leave a review with ambiguity.
- How do you feel about the tension of healthy conflict? If you are conflict-averse, you may move to positional power. Get used to being curious. Get comfortable being clear. If there is an issue, this is the time to nip it.
- How willing are you to suspend your assumptions and hear the other’s point of view? Poor reviews are top-down heavy, leading to a need to be right or certain. Play with the ratio of 40% to 60%. The 60% is the employee doing the talking.
- How have you offered regular feedback or coaching throughout the year? A big miss in performance reviews is the employee who is experiencing the feedback for the first time in this conversation. Coach and offer feedback throughout the year.
Use Performance Reviews to Empower the Employee
After a good self-assessment, the leader will experience a pivot in perspective that places the employee in the empowering position. To create the optimum opportunity for performance leadership, employees take the reins in their own evaluations. As the leader, you must become the best listener on earth so that the team member wants to share their perspectives, challenges, aspirations, and where they find meaning in work.
Ask team members to conduct their own self-review and then truly consider what is important to them. From here, collaborate on not only professional goals, but also personal development plans that align with their awareness and desires.
As you offer feedback, let your insights also be driven by the employee. What are they celebrating in the review period? Where were mistakes made? What did they learn? How do they want to adjust in the coming period? This allows you to pivot from boss to coach – a key skill in humanized leadership. Further, the employee who drives this conversation owns the results of the conversation. This elevates agreements and accountability.
Practice Your Humanized Leader Skills During Performance Reviews
The skills you’ll use to deliver powerful performance reviews are the same skills you’ll use as a Humanized Leader – a heart-centered business leader who recognizes that people are at the heart of business. Developing EQ (Humanized Leadership) is a series of repeatable skills practiced over time. Seek opportunities to strengthen these skills in particular:
- Listen. It goes without saying that people who feel deeply listened to offer their extra effort, trust, and engagement. This generally results in elevated performance and goal achievement.
- Empathy. Consider the individual concerns and challenges faced by the team member so that you can understand and share in the feelings of your employee.
- Feedback Delivery. Effective feedback has 3 characteristics: it’s specific, focused on behavior that can change, and produces agreement on a plan to change. The leader who offers feedback as a conversation with clear agreement at the conclusion are most successful and most trusted.
- Align Individual Goals with Company Goals. Realistic and measurable goals are great. However, the BEST goals are those where the employee understands their contribution to the overall good. Be willing to offer resources and support and then let them loose to perform.
- Vulnerability and Transparency. When learning and mistakes are owned, employees see their leader as compassionate and human and are more willing to own their own issues and cures.
Approach Performance Reviews with Confidence
Creating a positive performance review experience is essential for The Humanized Leader. By focusing on the emotionally intelligent skills of feedback, collaborative goal setting, empowering employees, and listening with heart, performance reviews are transformed into a useful and motivating experience. With a quick glance at the past, and a long look into the future, bonds can be strengthened between leader and team, a shared journey of growth and development ensues, and productivity and satisfaction can soar.
Mary Pat Knight is CEO of Leaders Inspired an executive coaching and consulting agency devoted to the development of emotionally intelligent leaders. She is also the author of the Amazon #1 International Best Selling book, The Humanized Leader.
The ground-breaking new book, The Humanized Leader: The Transformative Power of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership to Impact Culture, Team and Business Results, is now available in Kindle, paperback, or as an audiobook. To get your copy or extras for your team, click the button below.
