It’s that time of year when workers and their respective managers take time to formally sit down and engage in mid-year performance reviews.
Many managers dread this time, and it’s no wonder. In a 2016 national survey conducted jointly by the National Management Association (NMA) and Bright Enterprises, 67 percent of managers reported receiving no training in how to give or receive criticism. Of those who did receive some training, 52 percent found it completely inadequate.
When it comes to the “what you did wrong” part of the review, and to help managers who may be eager to fine-tune their communication and coaching skills in order to have a more honest and productive exchange, here are three guidelines to keep in mind. Incorporate them in your learning programs and coaching where criticism or corrective dialogue is required.
1. Think before speaking.
Regardless of how comfortable a manager is with his or her employee, it’s crucial to think before speaking. While this is always important, it’s especially important during a performance review discussion, when employees take every word to heart.
For example, a manager feels comfortable with a high-performing employee and at the end of the mid-year discussion casually suggests, “You could do a better job of working more closely with your peers.” Hearing this feedback, the shocked employee immediately asks a barrage of questions, ranging from who said that was a problem to wanting specific examples. The manager tries to respond but pulls back from giving specific examples.
2. Before delivering your message, be sure you can support it with believable facts.
Providing specific examples helps to validate the criticism and, importantly, lets the employee know that the manager took the time to understand the circumstances that prompted the criticism. However, to avoid receivers’ interpreting the examples as trivial or as a one-time event, managers should step back after gathering the facts and specific examples and consider the broader meaning.
For example, instead of pointing out how Jerome, a customer service representative, occasionally omits vital information on customer forms, loses his chain of thought when speaking or inconsistently passes key customer calls to internal sources, his manager pools these points into a broader perspective and asks herself what the information really means. She concludes that Jerome needed to be more focused in general. When presenting this perspective to Jerome, the manager is surprised by his receptiveness. Besides being open to the criticism, Jerome admits to being nervous when going about his work. After a brief discussion, they develop a workable plan for Jerome to move forward.
3. Avoid “who’s right/who’s wrong” exchanges.
Most managers know they need to have facts and examples to support any criticisms delivered during a performance review. However, facts don’t always adequately tell the story, especially when employees doesn’t agree with them. Once the employee starts disagreeing and the conversation shifts from the issue to a personal debate of who’s right or who’s wrong, the boss needs to halt the conversation and reposition it to the issue at hand.
It could be as simple as disagreeing over how many sales calls were made on any given day. The point is that the frequency of call activity is key to making sales, and the manager needs to re-focus the conversation on what the sales rep should do to increase sales.
What each of these guidelines shares is the recognition that preparation is important, because it’s the receiver, not the giver, who has the control. It doesn’t matter during the actual exchange if the giver is the boss. The receivers of the feedback decide whether or not they agree with the criticism and whether taking action is warranted.
So, managers need to think before speaking, consider what the facts and examples mean in the bigger picture, and focus on being effective as opposed to being right.
