Want a Stress Free Performance Review Meeting? Go Old School!

One of the most recurring stressful events at work is the employee performance review meeting.
Stressful for the employee because there always seems to be some mystery as to what the results may be and equally stressful for the manager because of uncertainty of how the employee will react.
The most common reason for this mutual anxiety stems from two sources:

• Failure to have periodic meetings through the assessment year to review progress to date
• A lack of objective performance goals.

Although there are thousands of articles with tips, strategies, and buzzwords, there are few (if any) that remind you that you have already been through a performance review process and apparently did reasonably well because look where you are today!
So let's take an Old School approach to the situation. Ask yourself these questions about your days as a student:

• Were you ever surprised about what your report card would look like? (Of course not. If it was going to be good, you began planning the big presentation to Mom & Dad. If it wasn't going to be so good, you started doing extra little jobs around the house, made sure you didn't do anything to irritate them, and planned your defense for the questions you knew were coming.)


• How were you able to figure closely what your grades would be? (You tracked all of the test & quiz scores, the class work grades, & homework results. You didn't know it then but that is called "feedback".)


• How often did you get report cards? (Usually every six weeks in my schools. Yours were probably a similar, regular, and predictable time period.)


• How did your teachers, your parents, and you use them? (They were a means to track progress toward the ultimate goals of getting into the next level with the best scores we could manage.)


• Did you have to wait until the end of the school year to learn whether you had passed that grade? (No, we could always predict very closely what the actual grade would be because we had tracked the feedback all along.)


• What differences are there between report cards you had in school and performance assessments you get (and do) at work? (In theory, there really is no difference. In practice, the teachers were able to define the performance criteria and grading system much better.)


• Did you have more anxiety about what the grades would be or about your parents' reactions? (My friends and I were always pretty sure about the actual grades but weren't always so confident in predicting our parents' reactions.)


• Do you think the teachers had much anxiety? (No. I used to be a high school science teacher and let the grades speak for themselves. What's hard about that?)


• What is keeping you from creating that same "report card" environment in your department with your employees?

Now, let's apply the familiar school model to the workplace.
1. There must be an objective performance management system in place just like the grades we had. (If there isn't one now, why not design one?)
2. Make sure the employees get feedback on their progress toward achieving annual goals. (This is like getting back tests and homework grades.)
3. Schedule periodic formal performance reviews. (This is the reports cards we got throughout the school year.)
4. Then schedule the periodic meeting. Give your employee sufficient notice and invite them to bring documentation that supports the rating they think they should have. (Were you not ready with your test scores and other grades to argue with your teacher at report card time in case you did not get the grade you expected?)
5. Conduct the meeting. Take an approach that they are going to tell you how well they did on meeting their goals by presenting supporting documentation. In the meantime, you have prepared your view of what they have accomplished. (Remember that the teacher had her grade book, too.)
Compare the documentation of performance the employee provides with the goal setting worksheet's definitions for success. ("Here is what you are paid to do and these are the different requirements for a 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, and a 5.0 rating. Using our organization's scale, what scores do you think you earned this period?")
During the first meeting of a performance year, there are only two essential questions to ask. Everything else is just conversation. The two questions are:

• What are your goals for this first period of observation?"
• "How can I help?"

There are only three additional questions that must be asked in the rest of the performance meetings:

• "What were your goals for this past observation period?"
• "How did you do?"
• "How do you account for the gap above or below your goals?"
• "What are your plans for the next period?"
• "How can I help?"

Remember, your teachers did not give you good or bad grades, you earned them. You showed your teacher what grade you wanted by the way you performed! It can be the same way with your performance assessments: let your employees' performance tell you the scores they want to see!
It does not have to be more complex than this!

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