The Metiss Group's Blog

Focal reviews, also called common date or scheduled reviews, have organizations evaluate all of their employees at one set time; the process usually takes 1-2 months to complete depending on the number of employees and the complexity of the process.

Prior to the review, have the direct report complete the performance review on themselves. There are many reasons for having direct reports complete a self-review, but perhaps the most important is to allow sufficient time to discuss the truly important items.  If the leader and direct report both complete the reviews, and exchange copies a day or two in advance, both can digest the comments and identify the areas in which perceptions differ the most. 

After general conversation about the overall performance, the leader can then guide the discussion into those areas.  Example: “Jim, I believe your overall performance for the last quarter/year was strong, generally meeting all the success factors of your accountabilities and your commitments on quarterly goals, but there were a couple of areas we seemed to have a difference of opinion, so let’s talk about those.”

Simply beginning at the top of a form may not allow sufficient time to discuss the areas of greatest value.

Empower direct reports by allowing sufficient time to discuss performance review discrepancies and the performance management process will be more successful.

This entry was posted on March 6, 2015 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Communication, Leadership, Performance Acceleration. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.