Do you hate giving or receiving performance reviews?
As a person who loves planning and aligning to outcomes and metrics, I personally love giving and receiving feedback. I frame feedback as an opportunity to better myself and help grow others.
As someone receiving feedback,
- I would always create a plan for myself, ask or clarify what I needed to do get to the next level in my career or jump the next level of performance
- I loved pulling together a deck for my reviewer(s) so that they had all the information they needed to populate feedback into whatever system
- My goal was to differentiate myself by making the performance process easy, painless, and be the reviewer’s favorite (at least during this process)
As someone providing feedback my style is to be unbiased, direct, simple, and actionable. I am not a person who prescribes to the Feedback Sandwich method.
For this post, we are leveraging a modified version of ‘Helping Heuristics’, one of 33 Liberating Structure Methods developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless.
But what is a heuristic?
A heuristic is an approach to problem-solving or self-discovery that is quick and easy. It is how people come to decisions, come to judgment, solve problems, and clarify ambiguity. For example
- if you are having difficulty understanding a problem draw a picture
- if a problem is too abstract, provide a concrete example
- if a problem is too complex, break it down into pieces
‘Helping Heuristic’ is a Liberating Structure method which provides a systematic way to help others, receiving help, asking for help. We use it as a method for providing feedback and performance reviews.
Now back to performance reviews. So how do I do this?
Own your destiny, as a giver or receiver of performance feedback (quarterly, bi-annual, or annual) I align expectations with my team or reviewer at the start of the annual review cycle. If you are in the middle of your cycle, it never hurts to reset.
Be thoughtful, document and align
As the person providing feedback I
- align on what the persons’ goals are (monthly, quarterly, annual)
- understand the areas of development and opportunities (some of this should align to team or client feedback)
- understand what major activities they have self-mandated to hit their goal
- gather evidence from people that they have worked with
- understand what their metrics are, how this data is being captured and how they personally define success
As the person receiving feedback, I put a deck together to help me think through, collect, and document my goals, plan, activities, milestones, evidence, and metrics.
Helping Heuristic method instructions
As the feedback provider, I traditionally schedule 1-hour sessions for feedback sessions. We do not use the Liberating Structures language (bolded below) during the sessions.
Quiet Presence. For 10–15 minutes I give the reviewee time to review their performance document with me. I do not speak. I nod, take notes, make no judgments, do not offer any advice, or react at all as I am listening.
- My assumptions it that they are sharing a quick recap of their plan
- The reviewee provides evidence of how they stayed on track, where they are not on track, and where they need help
- The data documented and reviewed is both quantitative (revenue, cSat/NPS, # of x tasks completed) and qualitative (quotes, work examples, etc)
The QP method ensures the reviewee feels heard and gives the reviewer time to jot down notes, NOT react verbally, and be more thoughtful about their guidance and suggestions.
Guided Discovery. For the next 10–20 minutes I then in sequence, go through a list of questions I have jotted down as I was listening to the reviewee. Ideally, this list of question help not only clarify as the reviewer but also enable the reviewee to get to answers on their own. Both of us are taking notes during this process.
- I ask the reviewee to dig deeper into areas where I would like clarification.
- I ask the reviewee to share examples or share stories to help me understand better the situation or scenario(s)
- I ask them what made success possible or why they think something did not work or go well
- I look for patterns/assets/conditions that led to success or failure and jot these down
The GD method enables and empowers the reviewee to come to the right conclusion for themselves on their own, and the enables the reviewer to identify behavioral patterns, approaches, and conditions that lead to the success and detriment of the reviewee.
Loving Provocation. For the last 10–20 minutes I give the reviewee a combination of additional clarifying questions, generation ideas, suggestions, and advice. Reviewee is taking notes during this process.
- I will ask ‘what do you think you want to focus on next?’
- I will ask ‘ what kind of help do you need?’
- I will provide guidance as to options and highlight which are suggestions and which are requirements for change to meet their personal goals
The LP method enables the reviewer and reviewer to brainstorm and generate ideas together. In this method, the reviewee listens more and is not allowed to say ‘But’ or ‘No’. They are instead recommended to respond with ‘Yes, and’ statements. The top executable ideas are then added to their plan of action and will be the first part of the next performance review meeting.
In closing, we hope this is helpful to exponentially jumpstart your feedback and performance review process and keep you and/or your team members on track.
Resources
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We are The SIX, a women-founded and owned strategy and innovation firm. Feel free to ask questions, challenge, and share new ideas and frameworks in the comments section below. To learn more about us visit us at www.the-six.co
