

During our expansion, your suggestions were very helpful.Since we’ve added you to the team, everybody looks happier and we’ve seen an engagement bump among your teammates.If cutting or reworking these industry-standard questionnaires seems daunting, remember that companies like Deloitte have already done it (and saved themselves a ton of time in the process). Phrases like “From 1 to 10, rate this employee’s leadership/interpersonal/customer service skills” are pretty vague. You can also apply this to the graded scales inside your reviews. The employee now knows that they did great, how they did great, and what doing great meant for the business. They’ve seen a 60% drop in troubleshooting requests!” The manager can specify further with facts, saying, “Your work overhauling old systems has made IT’s lives so much easier. Now the employee knows exactly what they did that was great and can do more of it in the future. What does this look like? A manager saying, “You’re doing great!” isn't all that helpful.īut a manager that says, “You’re doing great work by going out of your way to overhaul old systems and point out areas where we can improve!” becomes infinitely more helpful. What do you think we should do differently next time? Good: We didn't hit our targets on our last campaign. Let's take a look at them together.īad: You’re not a smart enough on strategic thinker.

Good: I've seen some small errors in your client's accounts. Good: Some of your team members have said that they would like more autonomy on projects. Examples:īad: You’re too bossy and it's hurting team morale.

Notice that even though the "good" version feels softer, it actually gets the point across more clearly. This shows how a personal adjective you might be using can be easily replaced by job-related specifics. Make sure you and all of your managers are clear about removing hard adjectives or character-related judgments from their feedback.įor the examples below, we paired a good and bad phrase together. Any reasonable human being will resent being treated as anything less than what they are. The bottom line: A person is so much more than their performance on the job. So why are so many of today's employees disengaged and ready to walk out the door?

You can find this advice on business blogs and from best-selling authors. If there is one key rule for delivering effective feedback, it's to focus on the job, not the person.Ĭhances are, you've heard this before. Let’s look at some ways to make feedback more effective by hitting the right notes in your performance appraisals. What do you think we can do to ship a less buggy product next time?”Įxample B: “You were much more careless with the last product and it was much buggier than normal. If you're at all skeptical about the power of words in employee performance reviews, take a minute to consider these two examples giving the same feedback with different phrases.Įxample A: “Our last product had 56% more bugs than usual. Learn More A Simple Example of Why Words Matter Is your employee review process turning into a mess? Simplify things with PerformYard.
