When performance review time rolls around, it’s important to treat everyone fairly, and to try to motivate people with feedback. This can be harder than it might sound, especially if certain people are at the top or bottom of the scale. Here are some strategies to keep your reviews positive and effective.
Top Performers — Respect the Value of High-Performance Work
Obviously, you’re going to want to mention the value of your best people in your reviews. This can take many forms, but there are numerous ways to include kudos and congratulations inside a review. If people are top performers, put that praise into the ‘performance’ category of the review. Make it clear that you’ve recognized the work that top performers have done, and that you value them within the company.
Avoid Over-the-Top or Unqualified Enthusiasm
At the same time, you don’t want too much praise to go to someone’s head. You also don’t want to be accused of favoritism, or of being a kind of cheerleader for any one person on the team. So it’s important to cut that enthusiasm with some constructive criticism in areas where even the top people can still improve.
Bottom Performers – Keep it Friendly
When it comes to doing reviews of people whose performance hasn’t been great, one of the first cautionary steps is to avoid making reviews seem punitive. Too many managers take the bottom people, Glen-Garry-Glen-Ross style, and start stepping on their past performance, to try to make them improve. This usually just makes things worse. Modern businesses should not be Hunger Games-type competitions. They should be places for people to grow and improve and expand their careers.
Give Concrete Feedback
Be clear and to the point about how someone could improve their performance at work. It’s also important to look at those who are below the curve and reflect on whether that is because of a deliberate choice to underperform, or whether they’re simply last in a competitive race to the top. If you see the former situation occur, you can urge people to step up their game. However, if they are just having an unlucky month and they happen to be at the bottom of the ladder arbitrarily, giving criticism is not going to have a good effect. Be generous with the positivity in these reviews, and you’ll see your future role as a manager or supervisor improve, because people trust that you will stick with them, even when they’re not at the top of the charts.
The above tips can help out when you’re getting out the red pen for reviews, and stumped by a big gap in performance across a team. Remember to take a thorough, balanced and judicious view of people’s work, and you’ll become a more valued and respected boss. For more, keep an eye on the Full Steam Staffing blog as we talk about that all-important link between people in an enterprise.