We are coming to the end of the calendar year, which is a natural point to pause, reflect on our successes and lessons learned. For many organisations, it also means the start of end-of-year performance reviews, increased level of feedback and time of sometimes challenging conversations. If you are a manager or a leader who has had a mixed success with giving effective feedback and maybe feeling worried or overwhelmed by it, I would like to offer you a few points to reflect on that can help you to mentally prepare for this season.
1. Check in with yourself
When preparing for the performance review process, it is good to first start by having a clear understanding of what has been happening to you this year. I would like to encourage you to take a pen and write down your answers to two types of questions. The first type is linked to the general external factors:
- What adjectives would you use to describe 2024?
- What successes and failures have you experienced?
- What challenges have you overcome this year?
- What has been the overall situation in the organisation and how has this impacted you, how you feel about the organisation and your team?
Once you have your answers, then consider internal factors:
- What are your thoughts and beliefs about giving feedback to your team? For example: “My job is to keep my direct reports happy, so I avoid criticism” or “I don’t want them to think of me as a micromanager, so I won’t give detailed feedback” or “They are solid performers, so there is no need to give them feedback”.
- How have these beliefs and thoughts been serving you so far?
- What beliefs and thoughts could support you better in this task ahead of you? For example, “Effective feedback enables growth.”, “If the issues are not addressed, they can be repeated or even escalated.” Something to be aware of is that well-intended and specific feedback can increase someone’s self-awareness, build another level of trust and help them to grow as an individual.
Having an understanding of how you are feeling will ensure you get into the right mindset for your performance review 1:1s and leave any unhelpful thoughts behind.
2. Potential bias check
We all have unconscious cognitive bias, these associations or beliefs that we hold outside of our awareness or control are shaped by our past experiences or social conditioning. Our brain uses them as a shortcut to make decisions or formulate judgments, unfortunately they can sometimes be unfair to others. Performance reviews can be a minefield for different types of biases. To ensure you are as fair and unbiased as possible in your feedback sessions, I would like to share a few (limited) types of bias:
- Halo effect bias. This is where you favour someone based on one attribute, characteristic or success for example, one effective presentation in front of the senior leadership team.
- Horn effect bias. This is where you judge someone by one negative characteristic or behaviour, perhaps they made one wrong suggestion during an important meeting, for example.
- Similarity bias This is when you favour someone who is similar to you.
- Confirmation bias. This is where you are searching for, interpreting or focusing on information that confirms an earlier belief or assumption.
3. Psychological safety
Psychological safety is highly desired in modern organisations. When we talk about psychological safety we mean that we wish to create an environment whereemployees feel safe to speak up, share ideas and disagree with others, without negative consequences. This has many advantages and can improve innovation, communication, performance, engagement and job satisfaction. Giving effective feedback is a just part of building this trust which helps to create psychological safety, it provides your direct reports with the message that you care about their growth, can recognise their achievements, support them in learning from their mistakes and work together on their development.
In the article ‘Psychological Safety & Giving Feedback’, published on the Psychological Safety website, they share a checklist to help you provide effective feedback and create a safe space for your teams to be open and honest. My favourite elements are: asking for consent – “Are they ready to receive feedback?”, stating your intention, keeping it specific, actionable and about the behaviour, not the person. The most important ingredient of this feedback success is being able to have a two-way conversation eg: checking their understanding, clarifying, looking at the situation from their perspective, formulating actions and discussing the support available.
4. Visualise your success to effective feedback
As part of your performance review planning cycle consider what you would like the successful outcome for each 1:1 to look, sound or feel like. Perhaps you would like them to say: “I will take your feedback on board and take action to improve. I also want us both to feel OK at the end of it.” As part of the review process, you might need to challenge their thinking or perspectives.
Consider what is in your control to influence as part of providing effective feedback, based on that knowledge, perhaps you might like to take another look at your definition of success. You may realise that you cannot control someone else emotions, they may process feedback differently or may need another session to get ready for the discussion about actions. Based on your knowledge of the person, you may need to plan how you wish to communicate your feedback.
In conclusion
If you need some support preparing for the end-of-year performance reviews, giving feedback or managing your team, please reach out to me and let’s discuss how we can work together.