Coming up next week – a performance review meeting with five of your key employees.  You would like to make the most of the meeting.  You know that your thoughts and words in the meeting are important.  By preparing intelligently for the coming performance review sessions, you will have a chance to see your people work harder, possibly even commit to doing more for your unit.  However if you fail to make a positive impact, your employees may leave feeling discouraged, and their work performance may degrade.  Your own rating in the company may suffer?

How do you prepare for performance review meetings? Don’t wing it; take the time to prepare for your feedback sessions. Spend the time to look at each employee, and put your thoughts in writing.  This process may take several sessions.  Treat each private review as an iteration to help you motivate and create positive change – a big demand, but certainly possible if you prepare properly.

Begin by deciding on the top three things that you want your employees to know and understand. Organize the information this way before you get started. First consider the positive news that you have to deliver.  Secondly, point out the biggest area of change that you expect from your direct report.  Third, point out to your employee, an area of opportunity that this employee can do which will exceed your expectations. This third area should be something beyond simple expectations.  Roughly considered, this plan of review is positive, negative, and possible.  You will deliver good news, hard news, and open the door to doing even better.

By following this process you will first open the heart of the employee to be positive too.  The employee will expect negative feedback, and you are going to deliver it quickly, without hesitation. Then you are going to surprise the employee by showing that it may be possible to do an exceptional job.  Open the door to possibility, and get the employee to be a bit inspired.  You may want to tell the employee that you see potential to go even further, and convince yourself that you really mean it!  The realm of the possible is the direction that the employee can take to get the attention of all the leaders in your company.

Most managers won’t offer the realm of the possible to their employees.  They will offer positive and negative feedback, and leave it there.  Show your employees that much more is possible – and you believe in them.

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