Knowing the core leadership skills can help you make performance reviews more productive and the conversation more fun:
Imagine that everyone in your team has intimate knowledge of the core leadership skills and have delineated their own professional development map hoping to become excellent in every area. During performance review time, you can use this to celebrate them in their progress. And if there is no progress, it gives you a visual aid to have a conversation on where you want them to improve.
Doesn’t that sound waaaaayyyy better than “you have a bad attitude and you’re ruining the vibes!” !?!?!?
Most managers hate doing performance reviews. 95% of them if you want numbers. Some find it stressful, some think it’s performance theater bs. “Performance reviews are just another stupid part of the bureaucratic Godzilla system,” writes Liz Ryan, founder and CEO of Human Workplace.
Employees hate them too. I happen to think that performance reviews can be a great tool to strategically plan your professional development and request support from your managers. Just imagine…you could look forward to your review because you get to say “hey, here is my request for support. I would like to take this training. Can you pay for the tuition? Let me show you how the organization can benefit from this investment.”
As a manager, the rubric for the elements of leadership can help you build the expectation of being on a growth trajectory from every team member. It can be a tool for them to point to the area they are committing to mastering for the next year.
THIS is how you begin raising others as leaders.
Because it’s not enough to tell your team that you want them to be proactive and participate more and have more initiative. If you are saying that it’s because 1) that’s not happening, and 2) directly asking people for more engagement means you don’t know why they are not engaging satisfactorily, and 3) join The Lift to sharpen your leadership approach so these words are not even a part of your vocabulary during team meetings. (Our next cohort starts in September. Sign up HERE to be put on the waitlist and get the deets first.)
Maybe you are “let’s get rid of performance reviews forever!” camp, but are stuck in a situation where they are not going away any time soon. Wielding this knowledge could make it less miserable and more effective. You and your employee could at least walk away with something. Even if a raise is not in the cards because money is not in the bank.
Look, I have a ton to say when it comes to performance reviews but that would make this blog post chaotic and confusing and you would check out and stop reading. So I am not going to say more. I’ll leave you with this: I think avoiding performance reviews on both ends (employee or manager) is such a missed opportunity.
For you it could be golden.
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