It’s the end of the year. Most managers we know are thinking about the holidays… and annual reviews. After years of managing, training and consulting, we’ve concluded this is one of the most poorly managed and implemented processes we’re aware of. it’s not hard to do, but for plenty of (bad) reasons, managers just don’t handle this responsibility well. For those few who do, it’s an enormous competitive advantage.

We’re dedicating at least the next THREE podcasts to helping you deliver an effective performance review. We’ve taken the approach that you haven’t had a whole year of one on ones, with the related notes, and haven’t done quarterly reviews to prepare for this one. In this first podcast, we start walking through HOW TO WRITE the review. There are 3 steps in this first part of the process: COLLECTING DATA, EVALUATING DATA, and finally WRITING THE REVIEW. All three of those steps take two podcasts. Starting with the third ‘cast in this series, we talk about how to actually DELIVER the evaluation.

We reference a sample letter for gathering performance data from your employees … you can find it here.

This week, we continue with our discussion on effective performance reviews. Last week, we discussed collecting data; today we discuss evaluating the data and writing the review. In the weeks following, we’ll continue with a discussion on actually DELIVERING the review.

Also, thanks to Kevin Williams at the Middle Management Lobotomy Podcast for his kind remarks about Manager Tools on his show. Another management podcast we listen to regularly that’s worth checking out!

Happy New Year! Please accept our thanks for helping make 2005 a great year for us. We had a wonderful year and a lot of it is a direct result of meeting a number of great folks through Manager Tools. We’re both looking forward to any even better 2006 and hope each of you will stick around and share the upcoming year with us.

Over the next two weeks we’ll be concluding our discussions on Performance Reviews, focusing on actually DELIVERING the review.

The sample of the memo we suggest sending to your employees before their performance review meeting is located here.

In addition, as we discussed on a previous show, we suggest you send to each ratee SEVERAL weeks in advance of the review, an email or memo soliciting input from the ratee. As promised, a sample email/memo is available here.

Today, we conclude our conversation on Delivering the Review. As a brief review, here’s are the items we’ve covered over this show and last:

• The Pre-Meeting E-Mail - You’ll send this about a week in advance of the delivery meeting. In this mail, you begin to set the groundwork for the meeting by telling them what’s going to happen and why.
• In addition, in part 2 we provide a Sample Self-Appraisal Email - Text for an email you can send to all of your ratees to ask for their input SEVERAL weeks in advance of the review.
• Develop The Core Message - This is perhaps the most important, most overlooked, and initially the HARDEST part of your discussion preparation. If you want the ratee to remember ANYTHING, you need to boild down your message to two or three core items. The core message has three parts: Rating, Result, and Ramifications.
• Logistical Preparation - Things you need to do before the meeting around the physical set-up, etc.
• The Day Before - There’s one thing that MUST happen the day before you meet with a ratee. The ONE THING you MUST DO on the day before any review meeting is give the ratee a copy (without pay information) of their review form.
• What To Bring - There is a list of stuff you need to bring with you.
• How To Structure Your Delivery - There is an effective ORDER to your delivery. Our delivery will have three components: behavior, results, and confirmation.
• How To Start - We recommend scripting your opening, with three parts: the agenda, the ground rules, and the core message.
• How To Behave During the Meeting - Some simple tips on being perceived as a good listener and communicator.

We spent a lot of time at the end of last year talking about how to write someone else’s review.

What should you do to prepare for your own?

Think of it this way. Suppose you had three folks working for you, and one of the three spent a couple of hours over the previous months preparing for their time with you. They had reviewed the entire year, prepared better information for you for their review, and had taken their time writing their self-evaluation, including specific data to support their points.

Wouldn’t that be impressive? If there were a close call to be made, might it go in your direction?

In this cast, we walk you through everything YOU need to do to prepare for YOUR review with YOUR boss.

And if you think it’s too early, think again – the timeline is THREE MONTHS!

And, by the way, during the show we promised a couple of things. You’ll find all of these in the Manager Tools website under Tools section under Preparing for Your Review Documents.

1. A complete transcript of the entire show
2. A Powerpoint presentation (in PDF form) with a detailed outline of the review preparation process
3. A detailed note-taking form to guide you through the process.

Folks, no note-taking required … we’ve done all the work for you. As we discussed on the discussion boards, these are examples of what you’ll get with our premium membership program … which will be announced shortly!

Note: So everyone can get a look at the documents associated with this podcast, we’re making this month’s member-only cast available to ALL listeners. Enjoy!

Today we cover the 2nd part of our series on Preparing For Your Review. After you’ve listened to the podcast, I think you’ll agree that if you follow this simple process you will be in a position to not only get the best possible review possible this year, you will also have all the information you need to improve your performance (and your next review!) over the coming year.

And, as a reminder, you’ll find a number of documents to assist you in this process in the Tools section under Preparing for Your Review Documents.

1. A complete transcript of the entire show
2. A Powerpoint presentation (in PDF form) with a detailed outline of the review preparation process
3. A detailed note-taking form to guide you through the process.

Many firms do annual reviews all at the same time, and usually that means at the end of the calendar year. So, for many managers at this time of year, you’re faced with having to do a review on someone whom you really haven’t spent sufficient time with.

What do you do when you have to review someone whom you haven’t supervised for more than perhaps a few months? Obviously, we encourage you to go to our previous casts on reviews, which are some of the most popular on Manager Tools. They do a great job of laying out in excruciating detail exactly how to do a review for anyone.

But in this cast, we recommend some additional tactics to help you with those whom you haven’t known as long. Maybe they came to you recently, maybe you got promoted or took your role over late in the year. In Manager Tools style, we tell you what to do and how to do it.

Whether you like Matrix Organizations or not (we don’t), the fact is, many of us manage within one. If you’ve done it for a while, you’ve probably adopted the Matrix Review Cynicism syndrome. What’s that, you say? Well, if you’ve ever thought about asking for performance review input from someone else, and then said, “NAAH - they’ll just blow me off,” then you’ve adopted it.

The fact is, in far too many places, even IF your company requires the dotted line manager to add input, either no input is forthcoming, or what you get is not very helpful. Oh, and PLEASE don’t tell us you wanted example of behavior with their reply.

In this cast, we talk about what to do when you have to give a review to one of your directs when you live in The Matrix.

Last week we covered the first part of our conversation on conducting performance evaluations in a matrix environment … this week we conclude the conversation.

As always, if you’re a new listener to Manager Tools, joining the conversation mid-way is probably not the best way to take advantage of these podcasts. You may just want to go back and listen to last week’s podcast first.