Imagine you’re blindfolded, handed three darts and asked to throw them at the board which is in front of you. You’re not even sure how far away it is but you proceed to throw the first dart and no one around says anything. You proceed to throw the second dart, again no one says anything. You throw the last dart, and again no one says anything. Now your asked to do it again, but this time your asked to do better.

Do better?! I don’t even know if my first attempt was any good. How can I improve when I don’t even know how I did?

With no feedback loop in place, it’s almost impossible to improve.

Feedback is critical to improving athletic performance, musical proficiency, or any endeavor where high achievement is demanded. Nevertheless, in business we have relied on the performance review process, which has rarely lived up to expectations. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that most managers lack formal training in managing performance. And while we can debate the process, what we can’t debate is the importance of constructive feedback.

The Broken Process

A study by Deloitte University Press, for instance, found that ratings-based rankings were doing more harm than good because it by undermined employee engagement and wasted management’s time. Consequently, many companies are scrapping the annual review and traditional evaluation methods in favor of approaches that involve real-time feedback and continuous coaching.

Notwithstanding the debate over the value of performance reviews or policies dictated by your company’s HR department, it’s imperative for managers to provide regular feedback that is both objective and actionable to employees. Just because the performance review process is broken doesn’t mean the idea of job evaluation is invalid. In fact, it’s critical especially when compensation is involved. Many large companies are re-inventing the review process with promising results. A quick look at how they are approaching things can illustrate how it can be done better.

I have personally rolled out annual performance reviews when no process existed. However, the goal was never about the process, it was about training all managers how to properly give feedback; this transcends the imperfections in the overlying process.

Reinventing the Performance Review

Adobe, for instance, has scrapped a traditional rating system – which many insiders described as “soul-crushing” – with a “check-in” approach that decouples compensation decisions from employee evaluations and emphasizes collaborative coaching sessions over rigid, complex, and formal evaluation procedures.

Similarly, a study by Deloitte found that conventional performance review methods were out of step with imperatives of the new economy, which requires nimbler, more engaged, and more creative employees. For instance,

Deloitte found that its organization spent 2 million hours assessing past performance, but the firm concluded that this was hardly a wise use of resources in a real-time economy that requires an agile, engaged, and highly adaptive workforce.

As a result, the company is shifting to ongoing team-building conversations geared to enhancing performance in the future rather than assessments focused on the past. Deloitte’s performance snapshot, which measures skillsets exercised at a specific moment in time and how they might be employed at a later date, is an indication of the forward-looking approach they are taking.

IBM has overhauled its performance review process with an app-based system called Checkpoint. This approach emphasizes short-term goals and quarterly management feedback on progress towards those objectives. Competitive rankings and single score assessments – a major source of employee stress – have been scrapped in favor of richer and more individualized measures.

How to Deliver Feedback

Widespread discontent with “rank and yank” systems means that 70% of today’s companies are re-evaluating their performance review approach. However, whatever your HR department dictates, you need to get good at providing the kind of feedback that will help employees up their game and do their jobs better. Here are a few ideas:

• Initiate Informal Reviews (But Be Specific). Brigette McInnis-Day, vice-president of human resources at SAP, advises against vague feedback like “good job” or “nice work” in favor of example-specific feedback. Employees need to know precisely what project or job they are being praised for and why. That way, they’ll have a clear understanding of what they are doing right and what they need to change.
• Don’t Sandbag Your Workers. Performance reviews shouldn’t come as a complete shock to your employees. Effective managers communicate performance and improvement goals on a consistent basis. Briefing employees or providing them with a written summary of what to expect prior to a formal review will help them approach the process more constructively and less defensively.
• Utilize the STAR Method. This acronym refers to a behavioral interview technique that centers on four considerations:

1. Situation: What was the situation an employee faced?
2. Task: What was the worker’s objective in this particular context\
3. Action: What did they do? And why?
4. Result: What was the outcome? Did the employee meet specified objectives and did they learn from the experience?

Using the STAR approach forces everyone to focus on specific situations, which helps build rapport and guides managers so that they can deliver the most constructive and pertinent feedback. In particular, it encourages self-awareness in employees without eliciting defensiveness. Similarly, it gives managers an opportunity to balance the positive and negative feedback that each worker needs for growth and improvement.

Takeaway

The performance review should center more on delivering quality feedback than on stress-inducing meetings and evaluations. Done properly it’s a process that can enhance both individual and organizational potential. However, conventional employee assessments were designed with a different kind of worker and economy in mind. Novel approaches must evolve to meet the needs of a business environment that is inherently more dynamic, collaborative, and creative than ever before.

So manager’s listen up. Regardless of your company’s performance review process, you can still provide great feedback to your team. Take the initiative to learn best practices when it comes to giving feedback and remember, your own performance is based on the collective productivity of your team. Give them quality feedback and they will not only be thankful, but also achieve greater performance.

Because let’s face it, not everyone can be Mike Tyson!

PS – for the record, he did get feedback in the form of audience reaction 😉

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Michael Iacona has  20+ years’ cross-industry experience within large multinational companies, works with start-ups and earned dual Masters degrees – an MBA from Columbia Business School and an MS in Information Systems from Pace University.  Having built, led and managed small and large teams, Michael continual evolves his management style. He leads by example and fosters open communication and enjoys coaching team members, capitalizing on their unique talents.