Dee Davis (00:00)
Have you ever received a performance review and thought, This is not a reflection of what I did this year or how I'm performing. And by the way, how come you're giving me my performance review?
Good morning and welcome to the Management Under Construction podcast. I'm your host, Dee Davis. Today we are going to be talking about how to give a proper performance review. Have you ever received a performance review and thought, that was terrible. This is not a reflection of what I did this year or how I'm performing. And by the way, how come you're giving me my performance review?
We have all been given reviews and thought these kinds of things and maybe worse. And then, no, we're in a position to start giving them ourselves. I've been in some kind of supervisory position since working at Gary's Tux Shop in high school. And I have never once been given any training on how to give someone a performance review. And you know what? Neither has most of the people out there giving them.
Apparently, when you get put in charge of people, you're just supposed to know. And they hand you the form and they go, it's easy, just fill it out. Okay, here you are, sitting in your little silo, filling out the form. Is a performance review really intended to be a narrow one person's view of how someone performed their job? What if, like in construction, the people you're supervising aren't even in the same space as you most of the time?
When I worked for contractors, I was out in the field all the time, but my review was given by people in the office that I hardly ever interacted with. What if you manage a remote team? A standard performance review will have several categories, all typically rated on a one to five scale or something similar to that. One being doesn't meet expectations and five being rock star exceeds expectations, right?
There are to be categories like job knowledge and technical skills, productivity and use of time, quality of work, initiative and responsibility, customer interactions, attendance and punctuality, teamwork and relating to others, accomplishments, and hopefully some goals for the next period. No one should be filling out a performance review in a vacuum.
unless you are literally the only person that they work or interact with, in which case you have to wonder why you're doing the paperwork. The most fair and reasonable way to give a performance review is to solicit input from others. You might think people are going to be way too nice and just go, everybody's great. It's great. I don't want any conflict. I don't want Joe to know that I said anything bad. It's really important to convey that honest feedback is required.
to ensure that the person gets the right feedback and support. It's not about being nice or mean, it's about being honest. You know, I had a boss that wrote reviews for me and my staff for years and never once asked me for my input for my staff. Decided raises for them and everything without one word of input from me. I worked with these people side by side every day.
He never worked with most of them at all, yet he was the only one providing input for their review. Let's start at the top of the review. Job knowledge and technical skills. Sometimes we're put in charge of people that know things that we don't. I might be the most brilliant mechanical engineer ever. I'm not. But if you put me in charge of an IT person, I wouldn't have the slightest idea if they're any good at their job.
Soliciting input from others in their department or a similar department would be helpful here.
Productivity and use of time. Only people working closely with them can provide that kind of feedback. Project executives sitting in the office is not gonna have any idea if that field person shows up on time consistently or has used their time productively. Same with quality of work. Same classification, you have to be nearby.
Initiative and responsibility. This one might be more evident from afar, but be cautious as a supervisor because how somebody acts around you might not be how they act in front of customers or coworkers. Customer interactions. There's only one place you can get that information and no complaints is not the same thing as a five-star review. Ask the clients for feedback.
Attendance and punctuality, if you don't work in the same place as this person, you can't possibly answer this question. If you're managing a remote team, the judge for this is pretty much whether or not they show up on meetings and they show up on time. And that's really all that should matter at that juncture.
If you like what you're hearing so far, don't forget to boop the like button and share this episode with a friend.
The next category is teamwork relating to others. This is a combination of observation from afar and input from up close. What you observe on the occasional Safari outing to the job site might not be reflective of what's happening on a day-to-day basis. So make sure that you ask for that up close input. Accomplishments. This is for the reviewee to provide, not for you supervisor.
Solicit this from them a few weeks in advance.
Make sure they're including all of their achievements, both personal and professional. Don't let them shortchange themselves or be too modest. Just because somebody has a great review and great accomplishments doesn't mean that this enormous raise is gonna be expected. I think there's an expectation from employers that if the review is good, then they have to give you an enormous raise. And that is not necessarily the case.
So they downgrade you to keep your expectations low. Goals for the next period. This is something that should be a blend of input from the employee and you as the supervisor. Make the goals meaningful and reflective of something worthy. One company I worked for, these were always chosen for me with no input whatsoever from me. And it had stupid things on it that I already knew how to do, like take an Excel class.
If you knew me, you'd know I already know how to do that. There was never any follow-up, so it was a meaningless goal. And it wasn't reflective of anything that I wanted to achieve. It is, after all, the employee's career that you're talking about. Employers have a tendency to get monovision when it comes to this kind of thing and think that everything is about them and what they want and how this person can benefit their company.
and they forget that there's an actual human being involved that has things that they want to achieve. You might consider having them do a 360 review to help solicit feedback on areas of strengths and areas of improvement. If you've never done a 360 review on yourself, you gotta try it. It's a comprehensive performance evaluation that collects anonymous feedback from managers, peers, direct reports, and clients.
It's an eye-opening experience that I highly recommend. They aren't usually free, be cautious of anything that is, but they're well worth the price tag to get honest, helpful feedback on your blind spots and your strengths that you might not even realize that you have. The key takeaway here is not to do a review in a silo. Send the blank review out to three, five, or 10 different people that that person works with in the different categories.
They work with these people and interact with these people on a regular basis. They're gonna have much broader feedback than you will. You can combine the ratings and reflect an average and probably gain some serious insight along the way. Thanks for joining us. Please like and share this episode. Leave us a comment or a question. We'll see you next time.
