An Actionable Tweak to Make Performance Reviews Have a Meaningful Impact on Your Team | Ep 11

Ready to elevate your team's potential and turn performance reviews into a catalyst for growth? I'm breaking down how self-assessment can revolutionize the way you evaluate and motivate your team. I'll share a simple strategy that promises to transform any mundane performance review process into a dynamic tool for fostering self-awareness and professional development. By integrating self-assessment frameworks that align with your company's core values and metrics, you'll learn how to empower your employees to reflect on their strengths and areas for improvement before stepping into the formal review. 

Gear up as we walk through the nuts and bolts of measuring performance, encouraging team members to rate themselves and delve into their personal achievements and challenges. Imagine the value of having your team come into reviews prepared with self-reflection on what they've excelled at, where they need support, and how you, as their leader, can help them soar. It's not just about giving feedback; it's about creating a dialogue that leads to actionable growth. Tune in for this game-changing approach that's sure to spark meaningful conversations and a culture of continuous improvement within your team.

Connect with me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitlindmitchell/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, you guys, today's episode is gonna be pretty quick and easy. We're going to be talking about performance reviews, but I'm going to give you just one simple way that you can have a much greater impact with your performance reviews what that is and why it's important, and then how to implement it with your team. So hopefully, your performance reviews are coming up here soon. I typically do mine in April. If you haven't done them ever in the history of your business, that's totally fine. This is still something that you want to think about, and then, in a future episode, I will also share with you the entire structure of how I set up my performance reviews for my team. But today is all about one simple thing that you can do to have a much greater impact with your performance reviews. All right, let's get started. All right, so I'm just going to come right out and tell you exactly what the one thing is that you can do to have a greater impact with your performance reviews, and that is to have your team work through the performance review themselves first and rate themselves first on the metrics that you include in your performance reviews, and there is there are so many different reasons why we should be doing this. I'm going to walk you through a little bit of that and then also kind of how to structure this into your company with your team. So the first thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that you have a self-assessment framework in place so you can work with your team. You can do this on your own, but you want to have a structured self-assessment framework that aligns with the key metrics of your business, the objectives of the performance reviews. I also include my company core values into this as well. So I have a variety of different things that are included on this self-assessment and again, I can do a separate podcast episode about that. But this is something that the entire team is well aware of. Like, this self-assessment framework is the basis for the conversation of our performance review, and what I love about this is you want to ensure that you have a framework that allows your team to rate themselves for every single metric and they can really start to evaluate and think about their performance from an objective perspective when they're working through this framework. So I use a scale of a one to five scale. I talk, I give a key as to what each number represents, what a one would be what a two, et cetera is and again, we can do a whole separate episode about this.

Speaker 1: 2:22

But having the self-assessment framework is going to allow my team to do their own self-assessment before we meet together for our performance review. That's very different than if I go into a performance review and I just sit down with a team member who's had no time to do any sort of self-reflection on themselves from the last year and I sit down and tell them all of the things that they did well and all of the things that they didn't do well. That is not going to be incredibly helpful for them and their own growth, their own self-awareness, which is incredibly important for our team to be able to be self-aware. So I send the framework or, I'm sorry, I send the performance review out to my team. They all complete it before I sit down to have my performance review with them. So prior to that formal meeting with each of my team members, I asked them to complete it using the framework, using the kind of grading scale, if you will, the way in which I'm asking them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to measure each of these items within the performance review, and when they do that they're not just saying, okay, on interpersonal communication, I'm a 5. Well, I want to know why. Why are you a 5? I want to know. Have them reflect on their achievements, like, what are you really good at? And like, let's be honest about that, let's really lean into your talents and what do you struggle with, what are your challenges, what are your areas of growth? And then I also want them to think about like, what areas within these things that I'm measuring you on, do you need more support, do you need more resources? Do you need more coaching from me as your leader in order to be more successful there? So I send that out to them, I ask them to complete it.

Speaker 1: 4:01

I have them do their own, like their own pre-performance review self-assessment, so that when they come to the performance review with me, we can have this rich conversation together because they've already done the work up front of really self-assessing. Then when we meet for the performance review, we have a discussion and kind of like an alignment around how they self-assessed and we use their own self-assessment as that starting point for a discussion. So this is really interesting because I'm able to compare their own self-assessment with my own evaluation of them and I look at what are the areas in which we're aligned. So, let's say, one of the things that I'm looking at is communication, and they rate themselves a five and I do two. Well, what is it that they are really great at when it comes to communication? How can I give them praise and reinforcement around the things that they do really well with this particular skill? Well, where are their discrepancies? Where do we get to have a discussion?

Speaker 1: 5:04

I remember a meeting with one of my team members where they thought that they were really good at what's the word I'm looking for Not being on time, but something to that effect and to me, when they said that, I was like oh, clearly you have no self-awareness around this area of your skill set, and that was really interesting to me, that they didn't have the awareness to know that that's actually not a strength of theirs. That's actually an area where I saw them as a place of struggle, a place of improvement, and so that opened up a really cool conversation for the two of us, for me to be able to share my feedback, for them to be able to think about OK, how does my feedback align with their view of themselves. So it allows for Just a really rich discussion where no one's at fault, no one's wrong. This is just an opportunity for us to reflect together, because my goal at the end of the day, as your leader, is to help you be the best version of yourself, and my team knows that. So when they come into the performance review, we're not expecting all rainbows and butterflies and 100% across the board. Some of my team members might just because of their personality types, they might want to get all 100%, but I wouldn't be doing my duty as their leader if I'm just like, oh, you're great at everything, there's no area of improvement. Well, I want to be able to give my team perspective, to provide feedback, to now raise the bar of expectation of what a 10 out of 10 greatness could look like for them and these key metrics and areas in which we measure them. So that next part of discussion and alignment together is incredibly important for the success of your team member to be able to grow in their own leadership within your team.

Speaker 1: 6:45

So now the other thing that I include on my evaluation is goal setting, and I actually this is again where that key concept of having them complete the performance review and rate themselves in advance and do this reflection in advance comes into play because, before my team members even come and meet with me for their performance reviews, they've already sat down, they've reflected and now they've set new goals for themselves that they want to achieve based on their own understanding of their deficits, areas that they get to get to grow in. Well now, because they've done that self-assessment beforehand, now we've had a conversation about that together that wasn't superficial or surface level at all. Well, now we can see we'll do their goals that they had put in place before we met still align, or other areas that they want to work on that they want my help with that. They want to set goals around together and that's a really neat conversation because we can ensure together now that these goals that they've set are those smart types of goals right, you know, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. So we want to make sure that those goals and objectives that they set align for them in the areas that I want them to improve upon and focus on in their own growth. So that is like a very simple strategy and I can talk to you all about the way in which I structure my performance reviews, what I rate people on and how I set that up. I'm happy to do.

Speaker 1: 8:08

Maybe that's next week's podcast episode is probably a good idea that might be helpful for you. But that is just a very simple way that I don't think enough people utilize with their team is to have them do that pre-review self-assessment first. They send it to you beforehand. You have a chance to reflect and look at their answers and understand where they're coming from when they come to sit down with you. And the thing that I love about this, too, is that nine times out of 10, our team is a lot harder on themselves than we would ever be. I actually found this to be true when I was a teacher in the classroom and I would have my students grade themselves on their essays. They grade themselves so much harder than I did, and that gave me kind of insight into who they are as a person, or if they didn't and they do the opposite. That also gave me insight into hey, we get to really work on self-awareness and reflection and ensuring that we're always setting the bar higher for ourselves so that we continue to be the best version of ourselves possible.

Speaker 1: 9:06

I actually saw a quote on Instagram today that said something. Let me find it really fast on my phone. Hold on, I want to share it with you guys. It said the goal is simple better than yesterday. I think that should be the same for our team. We always want to be continuously growing them and helping them, and this is just one other tool to add into your CEO tool belt. So hopefully that was helpful for you. If you have any questions, feel free to message me over on Instagram, and if you do want another episode to follow this one that is all about the structure of my performance reviews and how I set that up, everything that's included on that assessment, all of the things let me know over on Instagram, caitlin D Mitchell, that that would be helpful and I'll make sure that that is the next episode that comes into queue for you. All right, you guys have a wonderful rest of your week and I will see you next week on the podcast.