Leaders, for many of you, it’s time to write those (dreaded) performance reviews. Such a time suck, right?
Want to know the trick?
If you’ve been giving feedback all year, AS YOU SHOULD BE (yes I’m yelling at you), the actual act of writing the review isn’t hard.
Tedious, perhaps, but not hard.
Your comments sections look like this:
“As we’ve discussed this year…”
“As we’ve talked about at multiple points over the year…”
“The feedback I’ve given…”
And then you briefly summarize the previous feedback and discussions.
As for the tedium, I’ve found that a glass of wine helps.
This only works, of course, if you’ve been giving them feedback all year.
If you’ve been giving them feedback all year, you DO NOT have to write War & Peace in each of the comments sections of the review.
You also do not have to be concerned about how they’ll react to the review. You know how they’ll react because 1) you know them and 2) you’ve been giving them feedback all along.
But if you get into the review and they either don’t understand it or are surprised, that means YOU WEREN’T DOING YOUR JOB throughout last year. (Yep, yelling again.)
It means you weren’t giving them in-the-moment feedback.
(Unless they’re a narcissist and disregard feedback when given. But since experts estimate that only 5% of the population is narcissistic, chances are pretty good it’s you, not them.)
So if you’ve been doing it right and giving feedback all year, pour that beverage of choice, sit back, and whip out those reviews. You got this.
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PS – Do leaders in your organization struggle with giving feedback? Reach out to learn more about my workshop, “There’s No Good Feedback Sandwich.” I teach an effective framework for giving feedback AND techniques for how to receive feedback well.
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