How to Hold an Effective Mid-Year Review in a Pandemic

Posted on June 8, 2020June 11, 2020 by Karin Hurt David Dye | No Comments

We get it. It’s all a lot right now. Some days it takes every ounce of energy just to make it through. Who has time for mid-year reviews?

Why not just skip them this year?

After all, a great mid-year review is a lot of work.

They take time to prepare, not to mention the Zoom fatigue of all those intense conversations.

Your team will be relieved, right?

One less thing to worry about.

Safer to postpone. After all, they’re not MANDATORY. Thank goodness.

But wait…

Yes, this is certainly not the time to “evaluate” or even worse, EXTRAPOLATE performance and potential —as we overheard happening this week:

“Yeah, I guess we’ve learned who can lead during uncertainty and change and who cannot.”

What?

Seriously?

No.

This is not even close to an even playing field right now.

Don’t discount the potential of a normally high-performer who suddenly has two toddlers climbing all over them during your conference call because daycare is closed, an elderly parent in a nursing home they can’t visit, and a country in complete turmoil trying to figure out where to go from here with all this racial injustice.

Your team doesn’t need judgment, evaluation, or conclusions.

But they do need your support more than ever.

What if you started by asking them to come prepared to share their thoughts, ideas, and concerns. AND really listen.

Here are a few conversation-starters.

7 Questions to Ask in a Mid-Year Review (Pandemic Edition)

What has been the most challenging part of the last three months for you? How can I best help?
What don’t I understand about where you are right now that I should?
I’m curious about what you’re learning about how to be most productive now. Are there changes to schedules, meetings, or the way we work together that might help you be more effective in your work?
What is scaring you most right now?
What are you most excited about?
What’s the most important thing you are working on? What work do you think we could eliminate to ensure you succeed at that?
What would you add? What’s the most important question to ask right now?

Bonus: Hold a Team Mid-Year Review I.D.E.A. session

We’ve been working with a lot of teams to help them capture what they’re learning from this crisis right now. One technique that really seems to be resonating is to ask each member of your team to bring one new idea to your next team meeting and to share. Here’s a quick tool to help them vet and position their I.D.E.A.

How to Prepare for a Better Development Discussion

How to Hold a Better Mid-Year Performance Review

Posted on May 30, 2019May 30, 2019 by Karin Hurt David Dye | 8 Comments

Tempted to skip the mid-year review this year, particularly with your high-performers? Read this first.

Mid-Year Performance Reviews are the Half-Time Huddle of Business.

Imagine you’re coaching your son’s football team. They’re up by 7. What do you say at half-time?

“Well, you guys played a great first half. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Or do you just skip the half-time huddle all together and go check your email. After all, you’re busy.

No decent coach misses the opportunity for a great half-time huddle. Why would you?

Why Now?

There are still six months to impact the year.
In most companies, there’s no need to assign a rating or link to compensation. This frees you to be more real and developmentally focused–without the distraction of bell curves and merit payouts.
Since a mid-year performance review is often “optional,” conducting them shows the employees you’re invested in them and their performance.

Making Your Review More Meaningful

When Karin was working in her sales executive role, her HR team did an experiment linking performance feedback to employee satisfaction. As expected, those who had received meaningful performance feedback, were overall much more satisfied with their jobs and supervisors. But there was an interesting wrinkle. Those who received a poorly conducted mid-year review were less satisfied than those who did not receive them at all.

It’s important to not just go through the motions. If you won’t invest the time to offer a meaningful mid-year performance review, you’re better off skipping it.

What Feels Meaningful?

A mid-year review should summarize, celebrate, challenge, and inspire

When we ask employees what makes a mid-year performance review meaningful, here’s what they say.

It’s a conversation. We talk openly about what’s working and where I can improve.
No surprises. We’ve been meeting weekly, so there’s nothing new here. We talk about trends, progress and focus on development.
My manager has specific examples and focuses on behaviors.
We talk about my career and long-term goals.
I feel recognized for the extra effort and challenges I’ve taken on.
It’s an opportunity for me to share my new ideas on how to improve the business.
My manager asks great questions and really listens to what I have to say.
What would you add?

Mid-Year Performance Review Conversation Starters

If you need some help to get started, try a few of these questions to get the conversation rolling.

Questions to Reflect on Performance

How are you feeling about the year so far?
Describe what you see happening with this project.
What are you most of proud of this year?
What lessons have you learned?
What new relationships have you fostered?
How are you different now than you were six months ago?
Where are you stuck?

Questions to Challenge and Turnaround

Have you ever had an experience like this before?
If so, what did you do that helped?
Tell me about the patterns you’re seeing.
What do you think we should do?
Which habits would you like to change?
What’s the most important thing you can do to turn this situation around?
What additional resources do you need?
How can I best support you?

Questions to Encourage

What would happen if?
What’s possible?

Questions to Solicit Feedback

If you were in my shoes, what would you be doing differently?
What can I do to better support you and the team?
What have I done this year that most ticked you off?
How have I been most helpful?

Your Turn

Leave us a comment and share: What are your best practices for highly effective mid-year performance reviews?

Want more tools like this?

Read Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results–Without Losing Your Soul. And Download our FREE Winning Well Book Group Facilitator’s Guide.

3 Ways to Prepare for a Better Performance Review

Posted on December 12, 2014December 12, 2014 by Karin Hurt | 4 Comments

It had been an insane but productive year of game-changing projects and really long hours. I was proud, but exhausted. We had our final push just as the holidays were approaching, and I was more stressed then ever. My phone rang and Laura, my boss, told me she needed my accomplishments a week earlier than expected. I was beyond annoyed. Laura knew what we had done. I didn’t have time to write it all down.

But she was the boss so I slapped something together and sent it to her. Ten minutes later the phone rang again. “Karin this is crap. There is no way this is a good summary of what you’ve done this year. Here’s what I need…” Laura then gave me a long list of metrics, correlations, and ROI calculations to do.

Now I pushed back, “That’s going to take all night! What do want, my other deliverables or all this? I can’t do both.”

“Find a way.”

I did.

What I learned a month later was that she had submitted my name for a big award that came with an all expense paid trip for two (and a week’s extra vacation) to Puerto Rico. She knew I needed the rest. Boy was I glad she’d pushed me so hard. As I sat on the beach sipping my chardonnay, I vowed to never blow off preparing for a performance review again.

Here’s what I learned from Laura about showcasing your accomplishments. Give it a try as you prepare for your own performance review, or share with your team to help them prepare for their meeting with you.

3 Ways to Prepare For a Better Performance Review

1. Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

Don’t just say what you did, calculate the business impact. If possible calculate the ROI on your projects (of course this is a lot easier if you do it along the way versus pulling an all-nighter). If ROI is too much of a stretch calculate percent improvement in key metrics.

Even the soft stuff can be reported in terms of numbers. Don’t say you invested in developing your team; instead share that three of your team members were promoted. Don’t say you conducted three teambuilders; share that absenteeism went down 20% and that you have a 10% YOY improvement in the employee survey metrics.

As you plan for 2015, be sure you’re also planning which measurements and correlations you’d like to be using to showcase your performance this time next year.

2. Write Down Where You Need to Improve

Nothing impresses me more than when employees come to their review with a spot-on list of what they could have done better, areas for development, and how I can help. Approaching your review with such confident humility immediately puts your boss in helping mode. I guarantee the review will feel better and go more smoothly from both sides of the desk.

3. Gather Additional Perspectives

The end of the year is a great time for a Do It Yourself 360. Knowing where you stand with others will lead to richer discussion with your boss.

Often it’s the best performers who are too busy to “toot their own horn” and document their accomplishments well. It’s not bragging, it’s useful. Make life easier on your boss this performance management season, and invest the time to prepare properly.

Who's Really Writing Your Performance Appraisal?

Posted on November 29, 2012November 29, 2012 by Karin Hurt | 3 Comments

The best leaders I know have one song stuck in their head as they enter performance appraisal season.

“I can’t get no satisfaction? Nope

“You can’t always get what you want?” I sure hope not.

I see them humming, that old Christmas classic, “Do you Hear What I Hear?”

Where The Input Begins

Great performance appraisals are not written in a vacuum.

Chances are your boss is looking from a good bit of input into your performance appraisal.

Great leaders know they only have one perspective.

They go for more, and ask around. Hopefully, that starts with you. Here’s your chance to influence the situation. There are at least four places your manager is looking to for input.

You

The tangible results are the most important part of the performance appraisal. You are in a position to highlight some of your key accomplishments. Hopefully you had a performance agreement, or list of goals and measures you agreed to near the beginning of the year. If not, take the lead and share tangible results with your boss. Position it carefully as helpful input to lighten the load.

Focus on outcomes. What is the % improvement over last year? What is the retention and success rate of the new hires you mentored? Avoid highlighting results that just measure activity. “I visited 25 locations.” “I trained 15 classes.” It’s also fine to share some of the behind-the-scenes work your boss may have missed– particularly work you did for other workgroups or special projects.

Your Peers

A recent study by TribeHR of 20,000 employees found 85% of the recognition employees receive throughout the year comes from peers, not bosses. And, the amount of recognition correlates to end-of-year raises. I don’t know the ins and outs of the study, but I believe the premise. While employees are not supposed to talk about ratings or pay, I always assume something will leak out. It’s important that the people rated at the top are viewed as key contributors, and their peers would smile and say, ‘well deserved, that makes sense.”

Other Key Stakeholders

This is important no matter what kind of role you are in. Are you in HR? You boss will likely ask those you support about your style and impact. Are you in a field job? Your boss may go to Finance and ask how you are to work with. No, it’s not time to go buy pumpkin cheesecakes for all your staff support. However, it is good to know that others may be asked for input and to consider that in your interactions throughout the year.

Their Peers

Not everyone does this. I always do. Before anyone submits a rating, I always meet with my direct reports as a group to go through anyone being rated on either end of the performance spectrum. It always leads to interesting dialogue about perceptions and hidden interactions. Ideally, you do it a few times a year, so nothing new surfaces this late in the game.

You want everyone in that meeting nodding enthusiastically when your boss submits you for a top rating.

Who’s Really Writing Your Performance Appraisal?