The dreaded performance review: 5 habits for better conversations with your team

It’s that time of year again. You can almost hear the collective sigh as leaders and employees sit down to prepare for what many view as one of the most ineffective and time-wasting company-mandated processes of the year – the annual performance review.

Despite efforts to make these reviews more rigorous with the addition of complex rating matrices, detailed competency frameworks and SMART KPIs linked to corporate goals, it seems many employees and leaders struggle to see the value.

And, when reviews are linked with remuneration and bonus schemes, the level of scepticism about performance reviews skyrockets.

When it comes down to it, have we forgotten the point of it all?

In Nine Lies About Work, authors Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall challenge the widely held beliefs that people need feedback (particularly feedback about their weaknesses) and that we can reliably rate other people. 

Buckingham and Goodall assert, ‘People don’t need feedback. They need attention, and moreover, attention to what they do best. And they become more engaged and therefore more productive when we give it them.’

So, as leaders, what would happen if we stripped away the process, got back to basics and focused on giving our employees our full attention? What would be possible if we helped our employees develop their strengths?

Indeed, what impact could we have if we did this often?

Here are five habits you can develop to get more from your conversations with your team.

#1 Be where your feet are

Do you check your phone during meetings? What about when you’re having a one-on-one conversation with a team member? Do you answer emails while participating in Zoom catchups?

We can all justify to ourselves why we divide our attention. The thing is, every time we choose the interruption over the person in the room (or virtual room), we are saying the interruption is more important than the person we’re with.

If you don’t buy the impact, think about how you felt the last time someone pretended to listen to you or stopped a conversation to check their phone when a message notification came through.

Your attention is everything. There is nothing more important than being present for the person you are with.

Take a breath, clear your mind and be where your feet are when you are with your team members.

#2 Make it safe

Whether you like it or not, there’s a power and status imbalance when a leader meets with an employee. You might feel like you operate in an egalitarian way and are just one of the team, but I guarantee on some level your team members are on their guard because you’re the boss.

Trust is earned over time. You can speed up the process by extending trust before its earned. Be vulnerable. Show it’s okay to stuff up. Be as interested in hearing about what’s not going well as you are in success. Ask for help. Say sorry if you make a mistake. Keep confidences. All these things help make it safe for people to be more open and honest with you.

#3 Speak less, listen more

Sounds easy, but many of us find it incredibly hard to just shut up and listen. That’s because we spend most of the time the other person is talking working out what we’re going to say next. If you catch yourself doing this, refocus your attention.

Listen with everything you’ve got – be absorbed in what the person is saying and what it means to them (not you). Listen for what’s not being said – what’s behind the words? Keep in mind the 7-38-55 rule - 7 percent of meaning is communicated through spoken word, 38 percent through tone of voice, and 55 percent through body language. Embrace the awkward silence. If the person becomes emotional, hold back. Allow them to sit with their feelings and work through them. Just be there.

#4 Ask open questions

You’ve been chosen to lead because you’re skilled, talented and experienced. You’ve got a track record of success and generally know the best way to get the job done. So naturally, when an employee comes to you with a problem, you share your experience and give them your best advice.

Sure. That’ll work… if you want the team to come to you every time they hit a roadblock.

As tempting as it is to offer advice and solutions, that’s not the primary role of a leader. Your job is to ask great questions that enable your employees to tackle challenges and resolve problems.

Open questions invite people to think and give more than a one-word answer. They start with ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘who’ and how’. You’ll notice ‘why’ is not on the list. ‘Why’ questions can be loaded with judgement—Why did you do it that way?—so, it’s best to avoid them.

You can also use statements to encourage the employee to dive deeper; ‘Tell me more about…’. Avoid statements starting with ‘you’ and ‘but’. Again, these words imply judgement.

If the employee is stuck talking about the problem, help them to move forward by asking a future-focused question; ‘In an ideal world, what would you do?’ or ‘What would it look like if this was resolved?’.

Your focus is on the speaker – what are they thinking and feeling. It’s not about you. Your aim is to spark insight.

#5 Focus on strengths

Sadly, the formula for performance reviews often looks something like this:

Step 1   

Warm-up small talk.

Step 2   

Review of the paper or electronic appraisal form (with both parties quickly descending into a conversation about the difficulty they had filling out the form).

Step 3

Review of the employee’s achievements against the set KPIs (with some brief congratulations for outputs achieved and more time spent on mutual justification of all the things that did not get done).

Step 4 

Review of the employee’s ‘opportunities’ over the next 12 months (‘opportunities’ being a code word for weaknesses or gaps, which gives rise to a more lengthy discussion about all the things the employee needs to work on to be better and potential courses or conferences that might fix them).

Step 5 

Agreement to have more frequent conversations about performance during the year rather than waiting for the next annual review (which deep down both parties know is unlikely to happen).

This pattern of focusing on outputs set at least 12 months earlier that now no longer seem relevant and homing in on an employee’s weaknesses to come up with a development plan, really misses the mark.

All of us have strengths – things we are great at; things that add value. They are unique to us. Research shows if we build and develop our strengths, we can contribute more. And we’ll enjoy doing it.

Rather than focusing most of our time and energy on weaknesses, we need to rewire our thinking to look for what people do well and then call it out.

By recognising strengths – not just with a ‘great work today’ or ‘good job on that project’, but with specific feedback on what the person did well and what impact it had on us and others, we reinforce those strengths and help the person grow them. Positive feedback builds confidence and encourages people to stretch themselves. As Buckingham and Goodall point out, people ‘grow the most under positive attention and the least under negative feedback.’

If we want to help our people be their best, we need to pay attention to what they do best and how they do it.

For your action

The great news is we don’t need a performance review process to do any of these things. Giving people our attention, making them feel safe, listening and asking open questions, and focusing on their strengths requires no performance management system, competency framework or star rating appraisal paperwork.

We can do it anytime, anywhere.

Let’s make our next conversation count.

Liz Kearins is a leadership, culture, change and communication consultant who helps organisations engage, inspire and empower people to be their best.  

This article will appear in the July edition of The Leadership Review. Subscribe for more great content to help you be the best leader you can be.