Creating A Culture Of Continuous Feedback

Preparing for year end performance reviews is like sprinting to the finish line and they are right around the corner. The final stages of reviews may feel a bit daunting and stressful for managers. Your team members are expecting you to take every aspect of their performance into account, as if you are sitting next to them experiencing it with them each day. There is no doubt managing is challenging, I've been there and trust me, I've made my share of mistakes. When it comes to performance our “formal” reviews are an annual event although the performance occurs daily. There is nothing more disheartening for a team member to go for six months and then learn during an annual review that an aspect of their performance fell short. It's like going to college and never getting a report on your grades and then you get them at the end of the year and you were missing one class and your grades are lower than expected, SURPRISE you are not graduating. You think wow, it would have been nice to know this a little earlier so that you could have taken action to adjust your course.

Feedback is an essential component to career development, employee satisfaction, retention and motivation. Yet managers often miss golden opportunities to recognize high performance, and behaviors that have a positive impact on the unit and company. It also makes the. . . would have been better if conversations much easier. Just imagine what could be accomplished, if you and your team looked forward to your one-on-one meetings? Consider how much easier formal reviews would be if you shared the responsibility of tracking progress.
Here are a few tips to maximize your performance meetings throughout the year:

• Encourage your team members to schedule their one-on-ones with you on a regular basis, and allow them to determine the frequency (daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly).
• Track performance that stand out to you-- positive or negative. Experiment with the feedback template on our resource page to support deeper more meaningful performance conversations. (template is on resource page)
• Boost your year-end appraisals with factual data you collect throughout the year from reports, feedback from peers, stakeholders, and accounts of actual situations that demonstrate skills, abilities and core competencies.
• Ask yourself: What habits will I need to establish to create a culture of continuous feedback?

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