The Talk

As we ease into the last weeks of the year, Americans everywhere will engage in a ritual as predictable as the growing darkness, and too often as pointless as shopping at midnight this Friday.  Across this great land, in organizations of all sorts and sizes, supervisors and employees will sit down to annual performance reviews.  How often do you hear people credit their annual review with providing meaningful insights or prompting real performance improvements?  Not nearly often enough, I suspect.  And yet, countless hours are spent preparing for and conducting these evaluation processes.

The concepts behind an annual performance review are entirely sound: have a structured conversation to evaluate performance.  Recognize achievements and learn from failures; identify key strengths and areas for improvement.  Check in.  Plan.   Somewhere in the execution, however, the process too often fails to meet the expectations of supervisor or subordinate.  But, each firm or agency has its process.  By this time, the forms are distributed, the deadlines are set, and the process established.  What is a supervisor or employee to do?

Let’s do something different this year.  Regardless of the forms we use, let us turn performance reviews into creative, constructive, substantive discussions.  Let us engage, be candid, and learn from one another.   Ramsey County Sheriff Matt Bostrom shared with me one way that he creates meaningful conversations.  As he concludes his first year in office, he will ask each of his team members to commit to one thing that they can do to improve their organization in the coming year.   He also uses the meeting to learn more about his people, and to address their questions, comments, or concerns.   “It’s about them, and making sure we are giving employees what they need to be successful,” Bostrom observed.

Feedback must be timely, and so an annual review is, by definition, not often enough to matter.  These conversations must take place throughout the year.    One fire chief with whom I work carries a small notebook around, recording observations that merit feedback both positive and corrective.  He makes sure to talk to people while the matters are still fresh.   Not every comment or direction is welcome, he admits, but each conversation demonstrates that the chief cares about his people as well as their performance.   His annual reviews are simple discussions, focusing on the employees’ goals as well as their performance.  No five-point scale for him: “Either people meet expectations, or they don’t.  There’s always something to praise and something we need to be working on.”  He, too, understands the limits of an annual review, noting that “there should be no surprises.  My supervisors gotta be talking to their people throughout the year.”

Whatever their limitations, annual reviews are an established practice.  Since we’ve scheduled the time and prepared the paperwork, let us make the most of these meetings by engaging in real conversations, and by demonstrating that we care about one another as people, and as teammates.  Let us keep those conversations going all year long.  Let our performance evaluation processes truly “exceed expectations.”