Three Tips for Better Performance Evaluations

It’s that time of year! Performance reviews are coming up and you might have a team of people you need to evaluate. That likely means it has weighed on you for weeks but sitting down to actually determine where everyone falls keeps getting shoved aside for more urgent activities and now it’s the evening before calibrations, you are tired and it’s the last thing you want to do. Sound familiar? That’s why I am here with three easy steps for determining performance results and prepping for calibrations. 

Step one is to clear your mind. If it’s late and you are mad at yourself for waiting until the last minute, not having some discussions earlier in the year to make this easier, or not having clear enough goals for your team so this was more straightforward, beating yourself up all night at the same time you are writing them does you no good. It only makes it less enjoyable for you and more likely you will avoid them again next year. 

Think of it like losing weight. If you really want to lose weight, but every time you go to the gym you spend the entire time telling yourself how disappointed you are that you let yourself get like this, you won’t want to go back and you will avoid it. This is the same thing. Allow it to be late, conditions less than perfect and that to just be part of the human experience without it meaning you are not capable of great reviews. If you find your mind wandering to self-criticism of any kind during the process, just label it as fascinating and bring it right back to the person you are evaluating. In the end, it’s not about you at all. It’s about serving the people on your team.

Step two is to get curious. Most managers come into the review process with their mind made up around where everyone is, then they build a case for each individual based on that. Or they skip the case altogether and give out ratings with no substance. Even your high performers can get discouraged when you tell them they are extraordinary but can’t list a single reason why they are, other than being pleasant to work with. Instead, I am going to invite you to explore the evidence with a curious mind and then decide where everyone lands. 

Getting curious also means getting rid of any conscious or unconscious bias you have towards the person you are evaluating. It’s not our place as leaders to believe people should be any different than they are. Come into reviews with the belief that everyone on your team is whole and worthy of performing to their full capacity. It’s amazing the difference that will make in the value of your feedback. 

Step three is to step out of the emotion and focus on the facts. There are two parts to performance reviews where you build your facts from. One part is performance against goals and the second part is behaviors against values.

For the first part, you want to look at the purpose of the role and what was actually done against the goals, which is measurable and objective. Say you manage a home healthcare team and the number one purpose of a Care Manager’s role is to meet 1:1 with clients in an effort to identify and diagnose issues that improve quality of life. This can be measured by things like their billable service hours and meeting of contractual obligations in terms of the frequency of visits. They either do the work assigned to them or they don’t. It’s just math. 

For the second part, you want to look at how they showed up against clearly defined values that are either yours or the companies. For example, maybe one of your company values is collaboration, but you are evaluating someone who is great at showing up for their own clients, but doesn’t volunteer to help when someone on the team gets sick or has an emergency. When you can relate this to a value, it takes the conversation away from being a character flaw and focuses on behaviors that are within their capacity to perform. Instead of “You are not collaborative”, it becomes “I did not see you demonstrate collaboration in a way that aligns with our company values. For example, when Doris got sick and we needed to cover her clients at the last minute, you didn’t raise your hand to help even though you only had one visit scheduled for that day.” 

If you have a structured 1:1 process, this last step becomes really easy because it means you have weekly notes from your conversations with supporting examples that span the entire year. If you don’t, see the first step and allow that to be something you consider implementing in the year to come. 

In summary, the most helpful reviews are those given from a clear and focused mind. That alone is one of the greatest gifts you can give to your team as a leader.