Those who know me know how much I value performance management. I believe that it can be a key contributor to the company’s sustainable success, individual and team performance, and the company’s culture.
It is also pretty hard to do well. Sometimes I talk to clients who want to review employees’ performance, but run into the issue that there are no goals. In some cases, managers or HR teams don’t want to wait a full performance cycle before discussing performance. They want to talk now, and start discussing immediately. Sometimes, the team finds out that managers haven’t really kept up, or the team has been too busy.
I applaud the desire to have these talks, but a lack of goals makes a discussion pretty difficult. It is hard to review performance objectively without clear, set expectations. However, it’s not impossible. Follow along if you find yourself with a drive to have insightful and productive reviews, and wonder how you can conduct performance management reviews without goals.
- Change the why of the meeting.
Without giving your employees the opportunity to review their performance against set goals, the discussion will be more of a future-focused session, or aimed at coaching. It will be more of you asking questions, such as what goes well, where they’d like to be and how you can help them get there. - Review the Basics
You don’t need goals to discuss performance, but I t will be more basic. Take the job description as your guiding document, to discuss if the core duties and tasks have been performed, and how. Chances are that the job description fits into the broader department and organization, and you’ll likely be able to tie the performance into the organization’s goals. - Employee and Company Core Competencies
You may have competences, skills or knowledge listed in the job description, and you may even have organizational core competences (for instance, “customer focus”, “learning agility” or “communication”). Evaluate how the employees stack up against these competences, and where the employees exceed the requirement, or where they might fall short. - Recognize Successes and Wins
Regardless of goals, there will be achievements and successes, and if they’re not as clear cut, ask your employee what they are most proud of this year. Not only will this act as a handy jumping-off point for next year’s goals, it is also nice to discuss, recognize and celebrate the positive achievements of employees and teams. - Pivot to the future
Next, discuss what goes well, and what needs to be improved. You can include questions such as what is working well for the employee, where do the employee think they could improve, and the kicker for an interesting discussion, what’s the one thing you as the manager manager, could do better. The more open you are to (constructive) criticism, the easier it will be to build trust, and learn how you can help your employees maximize their performance. - Set goals
Use the opportunity to discuss, set and agree on goals for the next cycle (whether you set the goals per quarter or per year, or any other time frame). While there are other goal setting methods, the SMART method (making the goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) helps with setting goals that are clear, actionable and exciting. Allow the employee time to prepare for these for an efficient meeting.
Obviously, these discussions are documented, and the employee receives a copy as well. It is good to log great achievements and performance, but especially in the cases where you discuss areas of improvement, ensuring the documentation shows that you’ve addressed it early on helps in case of sticky situations later.
As you see, it is not impossible to conduct comprehensive and effective performance reviews without goals that were set in advance. Prepare well and take this discussion seriously, and you lay another crucial block building your relationship, trust and momentum. I believe that the only worse than a bad discussion is no discussion at all (with exceptions). The goal is to make your employees feel supported and challenged, not blindsided.
Reach out to us if you would like to discuss how to set this up effectively in your organization. We can help you with talking points, forms and a complete performance management cycle, so you’re ready for this meeting, and the next year.
