Truth 46. Performance appraisals are really about you

The irony is exquisite: The one time of year when you’re most likely to feel at most risk of conflict and confrontation with your employees is also the one time of year when you’re most likely to see eye to eye with them. This is performance appraisal season. And this is what you have in common with your people: You all dread it.

There’s no wonder. Performance appraisals have never been an especially happy time. This is when managers and employees put (or bang) their heads together to review what went wrong last year and figure out how to make the upcoming year better. This kind of conversation comes with the potential of criticisms, accusations, denials, warnings, threats, ultimatums, even terminations. If you’re as uncomfortable with the review process as your direct reports are, you can very easily lose control over the conversation, and then it becomes even more emotionally charged.

This is an opportunity to reconnect with your employees in a positive way. To engagement-committed managers, annual performance reviews offer teachable moments meant to inspire and align their employees with next year’s mission, deepening a relationship of trust and mutual respect in the process. Whether your people emerge from their meeting with you either shaking or smiling says more about your philosophy of performance management as an engagement tool than it does about what kind of employees they are—or will likely be over the next 12 months (if they stick around that long):

• The review meeting should hold no surprises—especially unpleasant ones. This is not an annual performance ambush. If your people need to improve or adjust their performance to meet your standards and expectations, tell them early and often (as promptly as you can without humiliating them in front of others, and as often as you can tolerate before deciding to terminate them). Your job as their manager is to help them be successful in their jobs all year long. So the more you dread the annual event, the more you should look closely at whether you’re doing your job the other 364 days of the year.

• Use the meeting as a way to model excellent customer service. In the context of your management obligations, your employees are your customers because, as we’ve already established, your obligation is to give them what they need to do their jobs well. One of those necessities is pitch-perfect behavior modeling. So treat them with the utmost courtesy and consideration all the time, but especially during the review process. Why? This meeting is their point of purchase with you. Whether it’s explicit or not, one of the outcomes of the meeting will be their determination as to whether they want to continue doing business with you for another 12 months.

• Remember that this is a review, not a disciplinary action. You can make the most progress by focusing on what the employees are doing right and well. This isn’t to say you must sugarcoat the entire conversation, but focusing only on what needs to be corrected or improved will just provoke them into thinking they might be better appreciated elsewhere. Talk about the wins of the past year and explore together what made those events especially successful. Then brainstorm ways that the employees can repeat those successes—maybe even best them next time.

If you must request improvements in the employees’ behavior or productivity, make your comments as concrete as possible. Abstract advice (such as “You must be more flexible” or “you need to show more respect”) are too vague to be instructive, and they’re confusing enough to damage the trust between you.

• Set your expectations high, positive, and inspiring. And then you’ll have some terrific developments to celebrate together next year! Those are results that you’ll be able to bring to your manager when the time comes for your performance appraisal. Everyone will be seeing eye to eye on what excellence looks like in your department. That will say a lot about you and what kind of job you’ve done as a people leader.