How To Conduct A Successful Employee Performance Review

Next to employee discipline, the formal employee performance review and appraisal sessions are probably the most dreaded leadership activity. In the past, traditional performance appraisals:

• put the leader in a position of being the expert on the team member's past performance
• Had the leader acting as a "Judge"
• Were often more about assigning blame than focused on the team member wanting responsibility for fixing future performance
• more often than not were adversarial, or ended up with the team member feeling disgruntled, reacting with passive resistance or noticeable defensiveness
• weren't timely
• didn't enable performance improvement
• were generally despised by most people

"I'd rather pull a tooth than endure
an employee performance review!"

No wonder leaders were often hesitant to deliver performance appraisals to team members and team members feared receiving them - most would rather pull their own tooth out than have to endure the annual employee performance review!

Fortunately over the years the ways in which appraisals are conducted have under-gone some major re-thinking.

In fact you will notice that instead of using the word appraisal the terminology now often used is Performance Feedback and Development which better reflects what it is you should be aiming to do when you are sitting down with your team members at review time!

An employee performance review -- in a high performance organization that is focused on bringing out the best in people -- looks like this:

• Is an ongoing series of discussions between the team leader and team member rather than an annual event


• Gives more focus to the future than the past and seeks ways of improving the way work is done by establishing the systems/procedures that are getting in people's way and need changing to enable improved performance


• Identify skills and abilities that are a strength for the individual and those that need to be developed or worked around


• Leaves fixing mistakes (made by team members) to the performance management process and instead focuses on improving overall performance and career direction


• Understands that development isn't just about assigning people to training courses - much development is done through in-job-assignments and special projects


• Has been designed to meet the specific needs and culture of their organization


• Teaches all team members how to build stronger relationships during, and get the most from the feedback after the performance review


• Promotes candid two-way communication between the leader and the team member and assists the latter to take responsibility for improving his or her performance


• Separates the compensation conversation from the performance appraisal


• Encourages the team member to share their perspective on how both the organization as a whole and you the leader are going

The most important purpose or goal of any employee performance review is to improve performance in the future ... and not just for the team member. Leaders can get valuable information from team members to help them help the team member to make their jobs more productive and rewarding. For example, you may well identify systems or procedures that hinder terrific performance.

You can make the employee performance review (whether you are doing it on a regular basis throughout the year or you are leaving it to the 'old' way of an annual review) far more effective when you involve team members right from the get go AND you have the mindset and intention that the team member feels responsibility for enhancing and improving his or her own performance -- they don't abdicate their success to you 'the boss'!

Go to the next article in this series: Which provides a sample performance review process - and shows you just how to do this.