CHAPTER 15

Define New Goals for a New Cycle

Performance management is an ongoing and continuous process, so the appraisal conversation should not serve as a hard stop. Start the cycle anew by following up with your employee for a performance-planning session after the appraisal to discuss the new goals they’ll start working toward, and embrace the opportunity to evaluate your own approach to performance management by soliciting feedback from your employee.

Identify New Goals, but Be Flexible

Now that you’ve assessed your employee’s work against past goals, what new objectives should they be pursuing in the coming months? Many of your direct reports will have grown or developed over the course of the past year, mastering new skills and taking on new challenges. Think about updated goals in the context of previous conversations. Your employee’s new targets should reflect any expanded abilities, development plans, and new departmental or organizational initiatives or priorities that have arisen since they last set goals.

Closing any performance gaps and tackling lingering issues should be the focus of your C players, but your solid and star contributors can have more leeway in setting their objectives, perhaps aligning them with developmental interests. As you did when you set goals in your previous performance-planning meeting, clearly define how the employee plans to reach their new objectives and set appropriate metrics for gauging success.

The beginning of a new cycle is also a good opportunity to establish or revise an employee’s development plan. Determine what coaching, training, or other support will best equip them to reach their demanding new objectives and achieve even greater success in the next year.

While goals and development plans may have changed for your employee, keep your ongoing performance management processes in place. Continue your check-ins to assess progress toward goals, adjust plans, offer feedback and coaching, recognize good performance, and head off any burgeoning performance gaps.

Evaluate Your Approach

Effectively reviewing employees’ performance takes practice, so use the transition time between cycles to evaluate your own performance as a manager during this process and consider how you might make improvements. Ask for feedback from your direct reports: How did the review process go? Were the feedback sessions effective? What was useful, and what wasn’t? For instance, perhaps you didn’t provide enough specific examples of performance gaps or give the person enough time to change based on your feedback before you followed up. Ask for suggestions for ways to do things differently in the future. You’ll build trust when an individual sees you acting on the things they mention.

You can also evaluate yourself to assess your effectiveness. Consider the following questions, and take notes on your performance:

• Did you create an open climate for communication?
• Did you listen carefully to what the employee said? Did they feel heard?
• Was your feedback clear and specific? Was it useful and future focused?
• Did you spend enough time coaching?
• Were there times when you let bad performance slip, rather than giving immediate feedback?
• Did you focus sufficiently on employees’ future development, or were you more focused on the present?
• What worked well, and what could be improved upon next time?

Compare your self-evaluation with any feedback from your direct reports, and determine what changes you can make in the future. Review your notes when preparing for performance reviews and periodically throughout the year as you prepare for ongoing development and check-in conversations.

Managing performance isn’t easy, but with practice and thoughtful reflection you can become more comfortable with the process—and more effective in helping your employees succeed. But as with any process, there are always issues that need special attention. These obstacles are the focus of our final section.