Performance reviews beyond ratings
Posted on February 13, 2025 by Neelima Chakara, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
Performance review is not a once-in-a-year event but a continuous dialogue. As a manager, it is a way for you to give attention to your team.
Is it the performance review time in your organization?
As I coach managers, I see that a lot of them are focused on -
1. Ensuring that the top performers receive the highest salary hikes and promotions. After all, it is only fair, they think. Some of them also believe that the person they believe to be the best is the best from everyone’s perspective; hence, selecting them will result in the least discord in the team.
2. Providing constructive input to team members about what they need to fix/ do better because it is their job to elevate the team’s performance and push them to do better.
Do you see yourself in any of the above scenarios?
How are you feeling as you go through this process of performance reviews?
How do you think your team is feeling during this period?
If words like stressed, fatigued, or anxious come to your mind, let me share a reframe that might help you.
Performance review is not a once-in-a-year event but a continuous dialogue. As a manager, it is a way for you to give attention to your team. This attention includes –
• Acknowledging what somebody did well and helping them lean into it for more self-discovery. What worked that resulted in good performance? What did they love about it? What were they challenged by? In what other scenarios can they replicate this performance? What does doing even better look like? Who can they help learn what they are good at?
• Delving into what they missed or overlooked when they did not get the optimal result. What were they hoping to achieve? What assumptions were they working on? Discussing what would have been optimal and double-clicking on the alternate behaviors or actions that might have worked.
• Identifying the support your team needs and how to facilitate that.
What performance review is not -
• An assessment of the person. It is an assessment of the performance.
• Continuous attention to what needs to be fixed.
If you adopt the abovementioned approach to give attention to your team members, the year-end performance review discussion will likely cause less stress. These reviews may be data points for who gets promoted and receives how much salary hike, but your data points would be based not only on your perception of team members’ performance but evidence of results, consistency in performance, growth mindset displayed, improvement shown over the year and quality of interactions within and outside the team. It would align with your role as a manager to make each team member feel seen for who they are and help them do their best work.
