Performance reviews don’t have to be stressful! In this video, Hone coaches share their top performance review tips for employees and managers to help you navigate these conversations with confidence and ease.
Whether you’re giving feedback or receiving it, you’ll learn how to make reviews more meaningful, productive, and even inspiring. From setting clear goals to using strengths-based storytelling, these tips will help you celebrate wins, tackle challenges, and create a roadmap for growth.
Watch now to transform performance reviews into a powerful tool for building trust, motivation, and success in your workplace!
Transcript
Performance Review Tips for Employees and Managers
Svetlana Saitsky: Performance reviews can be so tricky for the reviewer, for the one getting reviewed, so here’s a few quick tips. One, remember, direct is kind. It’s not even what you say, it’s how you say what you’re saying. Most of us forget to acknowledge the good stuff and we’re afraid to acknowledge the places where people need to improve.
But if you’re heading off a cliff, wouldn’t you want to know? Also set your intention, let people know you want to have a conversation because you care about their growth and ask questions. If you’re speaking more than you’re listening, consider that as well. And check in with, is now still a good time?
Especially if you’re having a more challenging conversation, making sure that it’s a good time for you and for them can set you up for success. Because remember, we’re human beings. We’re not human doings. So the more humanity you bring to this conversation, the better it’ll go.
Sabrina Creighton: As we get ready for upcoming performance review season, I would just encourage managers in this way, your employees have been working for the year for 365 days, most likely, before you write this performance review.
And so it really goes a long way with employees to know that you have had a depth full and thoughtful approach to their performance review. So sometimes it can be really hard. We’re all busy to sit down and write a good performance review. And we might be tempted to jot down a paragraph or two about this person, but it goes a long way with your employees
if they see that you have thought about their performance over the year, that you remember what they did. And that you have put a lot of concentrated thought into their performance review. I promise you, you won’t regret it. And I hope you have an amazing performance review season and that all of your employees walk away understanding what are the options and, what can come out of this, and how they can get better, what they can continue doing, and just how they can grow.
Giselle Timmerman: I’m excited to share my transformative tip for your upcoming performance reviews that will uplift and inspire your team. It’s about using the power of strength psychology to bring out the best in your employees, and I call it a peak performance story.
So you share a story that highlights when your team member was at their best. This is inspired by the reflective best self exercise that I learned during my studies in positive psychology, and it helps us to see how our contributions are perceived and valued by others. Here’s how to do it. When you start discussing strengths in your review, go beyond a simple list to share a really vivid story of where your team member truly excelled.
So you can start with, here’s what I think you’ve been doing exceptionally well, and then dive into that specific instance, time they led the project to success or went the extra mile to support their colleagues. And this doesn’t just celebrate past achievements. It gives a really vibrant tone for future aspirations.
It helps to boost the other person’s confidence and shows how crucial their skills are to the team’s success. Plus, it’s backed by research to enhance self-awareness and improve performance. I also find that it can be very rewarding to tell, and it really makes you look forward to kicking off that review.
Sheeba Varghese: If it is time for performance reviews, my encouragement to you is to take the time to consider the work that your direct reports have done, to interview the individuals that might be valuable to creating this performance review. And although, we all have biases. As much as possible, it’s important for us to table that in favor of really ensuring that we’re giving feedback based on the job description that has been outlined for this position. But take the time to review what has been done over the last, perhaps 6 months or a year, depending on how many times you all do a performance review.
This is an important time and people are looking for feedback and make sure that feedback is actionable. All right, take care and make it a collaborative process.
Rea Rotholz: My biggest tip is to remember that performance reviews are about the work. Not about the person. So as long as your feedback is very specific and behavioral based, and you’re able to describe the impact that had on the organization, on others that individual is working with, you can keep the feedback, not personal, but about the work. Because that’s really what it’s about.
Miki Johnson: Thinking about going into performance review season, obviously, part of what we’re doing is giving feedback. And hopefully it’s not feedback that is new to people. Hopefully it’s feedback that they’ve heard before.
That’s the first and biggest thing. But knowing that feedback can be challenging for some people to receive, especially constructive feedback. I’ve always really loved this tip from Adam Grant, the organizational psychologist, who it comes from another study, but he’s the one who I heard it from. Which is that if you use the phrase before you give feedback I’m giving you these comments or I’m giving you this feedback because I have very high standards for you and I believe that you can reach them, achieve them.
It really sets the tone for the feedback that it’s not that someone’s in trouble. It’s not that they need to get defensive, but it’s that you actually really think they’re amazing and you want to see them do great things. And that’s the reason that you are going to help them move in that direction.
Caelan Cooney: As we head into the new year, I think one of the biggest gifts that we can give ourselves when it comes to performance reviews, is taking the time to set and communicate goals really intentionally at the beginning of the year. These are goals that you will anchor your performance conversations in throughout the course of the year.
Bring them up often as you check in on projects and then also take the time in your one on ones to help your employees to set really strong goals for themselves. Anchor them in a model like SMART goals so that the goals are specific, so that they’re measurable, so that they’re easy to describe and come back to.
And then make sure that you are documenting those things, making them highly visible to both you and your employees, and then that you’re really intentional about going back and reflecting on those goals as you have performance and development conversations. Make sure you’re giving feedback on how goals have been achieved, how goals could be improved upon, coaching through ways that those things could be achieved.
So that is the best way I think you can set yourself up to have a continuous performance conversation with your employees throughout the year.
