Your supervisor has just told you that it is time for your annual performance review, and to help her prepare she has asked you for a list of 12 things that you have done over the past year that you are most proud.  What goes through your mind?  “Well it’s about time – my review was supposed to have been done 2 months ago”.  Or perhaps its, “I bet I get a big raise!”  Or, “12 things I am most proud of? Doesn’t she know what I have done?  How stupid… sounds like she wants me to do my own review”.

Without a doubt the formal annual review process is one of the most ineffective and consistently demoralizing corporate rituals.  I recently visited with 10 bankers from 10 different institutions and asked them to recall the last time their manager gave them any specific one-on-one feedback.  Eight out of the ten could not remember the last time – each guessing it was perhaps a couple months back.  The other two employees had recently had their annual review, yet remembered mostly the criticism or excuses given for why their raise was so low.  Unfortunately as a manager, you can tell an employee 10 great things during a performance review and discuss only one “need to improve” and months and even years later the employee will only remember the one negative comment.  Why does this happen?   

Well for most of us, we exist in a state of over inflated self worth believing that we are secretly being targeted for an employee cloning project because we are so great.  Most people are seldom shocked by compliments – in fact we are taught to be humbly embarrassed by compliments.  So when someone does receive criticism it is generally taken personally.  I don’t know about you, but personal criticism hurts. 

There are really many simple things that can be done to make the review process a productive and motivational process. 

1.  The first thing that must be done is to separate the raise discussion from the feedback discussion.  Employee pay is an economic proposition taking into account budgets matched up against supply and demand.  A raise or a discussion about compensation is a transaction – how much are you going to pay me to do a job.  While a raise is a transaction, feedback is an ongoing discussion with the intent to change or reinforce behaviors.  If you want to link pay and performance have an incentive plan, otherwise you mix apples and oranges.

2.  Develop a relationship with your subordinates of respect and trust.  If they believe you are their advocate they will be more likely to listen to your feedback and not take your comments as a personal attack but a genuine attempt to help them be successful.

3.  Useful feedback is not a “once a year” activity.  It should be a weekly, daily, hourly, minute by minute activity.  Could you imagine a football coach only providing feed back to the players at the end of the game?  No.  He is yelling from the side lines constantly, “great tackle, nice pass, watch out for the blitz”, etc.  My son and I recently gave our Chocolate Lab some obedience training, sit, stay, come, fetch, - pretty simple.  Do you think we could have changed the dog’s behavior if we gave him dog biscuits and praise an hour after the training was over?  I know, people are not dogs – but to a certain extent we are wired the same. 

4.  Ask for feedback.  You can not control your supervisor.  However, you can control yourself.  Don’t wait for feedback, ask for feedback.  How am I doing?  What should I do more, better, different, or less?  Ask for advice and then take it.  Do not assume that no feedback from your manager means you are well thought of.  There has been many an employee that thought he was clone material, the boss never gave any specific feedback.  So no news must be good news.  “She would surely say something if she was displeased- right?”  Then, “What?? Out of ten peers I am being laid off?  But I thought I was doing a good job”.  You thought, but you did not know.  Annual reviews are best when they are not top down but bottom up requests for assistance. 

5.  Provide specific feed back to specific people.  Don’t chastise your employees gathered in a group about the sins of a few.  Everyone will be demoralized by it.  Be direct.  If someone has screwed up, pull them aside and slap them around.  Don’t hide your reprimand in memo or speech to the group.   

6.  Be a consultant, regularly guide your employees in a discussion about their performance and activities.  Brainstorm together about what would work better.  Employees that come up with their own solutions are more likely to act on them.  Now there are some employees that you will have to guide the discussion and lead them to the appropriate solutions. 

7.  If you are providing feedback ask for feedback in turn.  By doing so, the conversation becomes collaborative – two professionals working to become better at their craft. 

Yes, this is a good list but by no means complete.  I would say that #2 above is the hardest to do for most managers, yet if done then all the rest tend to happen naturally.  A genuine relationship is the key that opens a door to a productive and coachable employee.  The great warrior general Sun Tzu said over 2,000 years ago, “If soldiers are punished before they have grown attached to you they will not prove submissive; and unless submissive they will useless.”