Performance Reviews: Drive the Right Results from Your Teams
Nothing sends shivers down the spines of employers and team members like the words “performance reviews.” No matter which side of the desk you’re on for that meeting, it always feels more like a trip to the principal’s office than a meaningful conversation about job performance.
That’s because giving or receiving constructive feedback doesn’t come naturally to many of us, and it’s not something we’ve been taught to do properly.
But if you’re looking to foster a positive growth environment and enhance team performance, you need to rethink everything you know about performance reviews.
Why Employee Performance Reviews Are Flawed
Reviews mean different things to team members and employers, and that misalignment often creates a negative stigma surrounding performance evaluations.
Standard performance conversations generally consist of rubrics (or guidelines) that assign value to each aspect of the team member’s role to measure their performance - with little room for interpretation or discussion. They also rarely involve team member feedback in discussions surrounding growth objectives and targets, which makes it harder to gain employee engagement.
For most companies, ‘performance reviews’ follow a typical format of “rate yourself using this complicated document, and then I’ll sit down and tell you how I think you performed.” These are generally an annual review, without regular scheduled check-ins or support to ensure a team member is on track with their goal progress or provide course correction, leaving them feeling alone at sea until the next review.
And often, team member evaluations are tied to compensation which completely shifts the attention away from fostering growth and puts it squarely on a dollar amount - and the perceived value of that dollar rather than the quality of work done.
Shift Your Mindset About Performance Management
As a business owner, you know that giving feedback is an integral part of managing your team's performance to ensure they're successful in their roles, your clients are happy, and your business continues to thrive.
But many of us struggle to give constructive feedback on an employee's performance because it can often trigger an emotional response or resistance if not framed in the right context.
Learning how to put that feedback into a context that will be well-received is a skill in itself. One that many of us aren't taught and can take years to master because we only learn it through experiences - both good and bad.
We've all been in scenarios where feedback from peers and superiors has been delivered poorly, causing a deep, emotional response or resistance to the information being shared.
Unconstructive feedback feels like:
You're being shamed or scolded
The work you're doing isn't valued or appreciated
Constructive feedback is:
Encouraging
Calling attention to what you've been doing well
Providing actionable advice on how to improve or grow
Shifting your mindset about what a performance appraisal should look like is a key step to reframing those conversations with team members into constructive working sessions where you can set goals instead of lectures.
Here are seven key tactics to consider when planning your performance review process:
1. Change your vocabulary
Reviews put people on edge, like a trip to the principal’s office, and make them feel like they're going to sit through a lecture about everything they are doing wrong. I like to call these sessions “feedback chats’, which are less threatening and more conducive to open dialogue between the team member and employer. It's also a good idea to use the term “team member” instead of “employee.” If you want to foster the belief that you’re all on the same team, using language that supports that sentiment is more inclusive and garners more buy-in.
2. Find a neutral setting
We all think better when we’re outside our regular environments. Not only are we free from distractions, but we’re more focused on what’s happening in front of us and more at ease. As a manager, I always conducted feedback chats in a neutral location, like a coffee shop or microbrewery. Not only are these locations much more pleasant than the boss’s office, but they’re also less threatening, putting both parties on an even playing field.
3. Make a personal connection
We spend a lot of our day working alongside others, and during those times, people offer up personal details (aka “breadcrumbs”) about themselves and their lives outside of work. Those tidbits of information are fantastic for making personal connections at the start of your meeting. Connecting with team members about their spouses/partners/kids/hobbies/pet llama, etc. shows them that you value them as a person, and not just a cog in the machine.
4. Keep it one-to-one
There is strength in numbers when it comes to sales, but not in a performance review, where uneven numbers can make it easy for a team member to get their back up. Unless your team member reports directly to more than one person and their presence is critical to the conversation, leave everyone else back at the office and do the review yourself. One-on-one conversations are more personal and less threatening and encourage your team members to contribute more to the discussion.
5. Use it as an opportunity to learn
Feedback chats should be a two-way street. As a manager, you should view these conversations as an opportunity to get your team’s perspective on what the company does well and where improvements could be made. Your team doesn’t work in a vacuum, and the discussion should also include feedback about their environment. If you are willing to listen to the people around you and their feedback, you’ll be amazed at what can learn and how that feedback can help strengthen your brand.
6. Prepare an agenda
And stick to it. Effective performance reviews start with an agenda of the topics you plan to cover and ensure that the meeting is productive and respectful of everyone’s time. An agenda also helps rein in conversations when they start to veer off course and provides a reference point for future check-ins.
7. Be consistent with follow-through
The goals of a performance review are to evaluate past performance, identify good work and the areas of skill development needed, and engage in goal setting for each team member to create an action plan to help them succeed. This is why follow-through is the most important part of growing your team’s skill set and why a performance review shouldn’t be treated as an isolated annual event. It should be an ongoing quarterly meeting to ensure your team members feel supported and are making progress toward the mutual goals you set together.
Two Stars and a Wish
So, as an employer, how do you frame performance review conversations to be open, positive, and focus on development plans for employee success?
The answer is actually child’s play.
Recently, a client shared a method her daughter's grade 3 teacher uses to frame feedback conversations with their students. It's called Two Stars and a Wish, and educators commonly use it to help students learn to accept or give feedback without getting defensive or taking it personally.
But it has great adult-world applications too.
The main concept of "Two Stars and a Wish" is to front-load constructive feedback with positives in order to lower the receiver's emotional resistance to hearing about where they need improvement.
When you start the conversation by highlighting things a person has done well, it lets them know their work is being recognized by the company and opens them up to hearing constructive feedback about specific ways they can do better.
The stars call attention to things the team members have done well in their roles from either a client or team perspective, how well their work is aligned with company goals, or something they’ve done that’s really stood out in craftmanship, leadership or such.
The wish is where you and your team member discuss past goals, acknowledge and celebrate improvements made on them, and outline the next steps for their improvement plan.
For example:
First Star: I hear from clients all the time about how professional you are and that they feel confident in how you listen and respond to their questions and concerns.
Second Star: You've proven time and again that you can be counted on to get the job done - even when material or schedule delays cause issues on a job site.
Wish: If I could make one suggestion moving forward, it would be to continue thinking of the jobsite as the client's home and using that lens as it relates to the set-up and ongoing organization/cleaning of the space. We want our clients to feel like things are clean and organized during this chaotic time for them. Is that something that we could make into a weekly goal?
A great tip for ensuring the “wish” conversation is received positively is to get employee feedback on whether they were given the tools they needed to achieve those goals.
Ask them: “Did I (or whoever your direct report is) provide you with the right tools and support to take the steps needed?“
Positioning it this way helps you:
Identify the issue
Recognize and remove any obstacles
Take an extreme ownership approach in your team member’s development
Outline actionable and achievable steps that you can reference at the next check-in (which should be done at quarterly intervals, not just yearly)
Separate Performance and Compensation
Annual performance reviews are commonly known as the time for employers and their team members to discuss their pay rates.
But there’s a problem with this approach.
Think about any time you’ve presented a scope of work and budget to a client. What’s the first thing they do?
Skip to the last page where the price is.
And after that, your words turn into the ‘wah wah wah’ sounds of the Charlie Brown teacher because they can’t focus on anything you’re saying about WHY you got to that number. They can only fixate on WHAT the number is.
The same thing happens to team members during compensation discussions, which is why I recommend not discussing compensation during a performance review.
That's because their perspective changes based on whether or not they like the number they hear, much like the client reviewing an estimate. As soon as you have the “money conversation,” everything else is viewed through the lens of whether they are satisfied with the pay bump or not. And the feedback goes out the window.
We want to ensure we’re getting the compensation correct for our team and getting that conversation out of the way, but it’s better to do this when setting the annual budget instead of tying it to a performance review. When doing this, we also change the purpose and intent for these meetings by focusing on their goals and growth instead of just feedback and a raise.
Excelling at Performance Reviews Takes Time
Giving feedback to team members doesn't come naturally to everyone. It certainly didn’t for me for a very long time. Using techniques to help frame those conversations positively helps get the message across in a way that focuses on your team member's excellent performance and growth.
To keep performance reviews productive and positive for you and your team, and to avoid them becoming highly charged emotional conversations, remember to:
Change your vocabulary and mindset about performance reviews and team members
Have an agenda to keep the conversation focused
Incorporate the Two Stars and a Wish method to ensure you’re effectively communicating feedback
Remove the compensation element from performance discussions
Make the conversation a “two-way street”
Be consistent with follow through on improvement plans and provide continuous feedback throughout the year to keep team members on track and course-correct where necessary
I created the RECRUITING AND TEAM DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM to help remodelers like you ensure you have everything you need to successfully attract, hire, and retain star players in your residential construction business.
Click the button below to BOOK A CALL to see how the RECRUITING AND TEAM DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM can help your remodeling business.
