4 Things the Best Managers Do to Prepare for Performance Review Season
As a manager, it’s frustrating when you can’t accurately portray your team’s accomplishments to your peers.
Why? The wrong people get promoted, and the wrong people get demoted.
There's no need to stress about performance appraisals. We asked top managers how they prepare for performance appraisals so that you can save time, minimize stress, and get the results your team deserves.
See more: Subscribe to The Thoughtful Leader newsletter to discover exceptional leadership insights to elevate your team's performance.
Here are the four steps:
Step 1. Ask your team to prepare a summary of their key achievements
The achievements need to be short, concise and easy to remember. Ask your employees to quantify. Estimates are absolutely okay.
In short, they need to sound like crisp resume soundbites.
Source: Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
Step 2. Match the accomplishments to the key competencies for their role
Ask your direct reports to categorize their wins by competencies in table format. It’ll serve as your cheat sheet when you’re looking for a specific example.
To save time, you can use my wins by competencies template.
Source: ManageBetter
Step 3. Ask your employees to collect feedback from colleagues
As a busy manager, don’t feel like you can’t delegate peer feedback collection to your team.
And feel free to specify who they should solicit feedback from (not just their friends) and what competencies they should comment on.
Note to employees
If you’re an employee that’s reading this and thinking — “Wow, I wish my manager would ask me for this information. This would be a great cheat sheet for her when it comes time for performance reviews.” — there’s no need for you to wait.
You can proactively prepare these materials for your boss and send her the information in an email. She will thank you for making his job easier.
And one more thing: Ask if there is anything else you can do to help your candidacy during the promotion period.
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