Leadership and management in bioanalysis (6) – Annual performance reviews: Assessing performance and setting goals for yourself and your team

Welcome to the New Year! For many organizations, this is the time to set goals for yourself and your team. Quite often this is done as part of an annual performance review using templates and online tools to assess the past year and look forward to the future. If it is that time of year for your company, you’ve probably already seen emails with timelines, training sessions and tips. If you’re like me, you’ve probably started thinking about this and once again are wondering when you’ll find the time, what kind of clever goals you can set, and maybe how you’re going to deliver constructive criticism for some individuals who haven’t performed up to expectations in the past year. I’ve been in a management role for about 15 years now and those questions and others still challenge me to some degree every year.

The first step in the performance review and goal setting process is usually the assessment. Usually every employee has a mix of accomplishments that deserve praise and some areas where they didn’t meet expectations. I believe in setting the bar high– if my team accomplishes 100% of their goals with no constructive criticism, I haven’t asked enough of them. I like the current system I operate under at PRA in which the assessment process is initiated by the employee instead of the manager. Most likely you don’t get much say in how the process works, but I’ve found that this way the employee(s) get the first say about how they’ve performed. It doesn’t necessarily make it easier on the manager, as sometimes employees give themselves high marks where you think they needed some work. It also happens the other way around, of course, but it isn’t usually too hard to tell people that they are being too hard on themselves. The challenge really is how to deliver the not-so-good news—whether it is simply constructive criticism or if you truly have a problem on your hands.

Some employees receive constructive criticism well and some don’t, but I’ve been wrong when I’ve guessed about which category someone falls into, so I always try to prepare for this type of feedback. The first step you can take to help yourself is to make sure there aren’t any surprises at the end of the year. It is easiest to provide feedback if you’ve been communicating throughout the year. If you’ve done that on a regular basis, you probably don’t have an issue, even with the negative feedback. Also, if your goals were set well the previous year, you are probably in better shape, unless you happen to have ’inherited‘ another manager’s goals and they have not been done well or even done at all.

Realistically, you probably haven’t done a perfect job on these two items, so I have a few simple tips. The first is to support any negative feedback with examples. If an employee hasn’t met expectations, you should be able to tell them exactly where and how they have not delivered. I always write down negative concerns. A couple of key examples might be expressed in the written review itself, but if the situation is quite bad, you might have a few more jotted down in your notes for delivering the review so you can talk about other issues as well. Another tip is to practice delivering the news. Identify a peer in your organization who can help you, or maybe a human resources representative can play the role of the person receiving the bad news. My final tip on this is to not change your stance on the issue during the conversation. The person being reviewed may try to talk you out of a bad rating or negative feedback. Keep an open mind because the employee may have some valid points. What I do in these cases is ask to take some time to consider their viewpoint and schedule a follow up. This gives you both time to consider what was said. Hopefully, you won’t run into extreme cases like that very often.

When you’ve completed the review, it is generally time for goal setting. This may or may not be done in the same meeting. I usually find it takes a few meetings to hammer out good goals, especially when there are multiple new ones to set up. There are lots of approaches already out there to help define good goals, and I think the most popular I’ve seen is to write SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). There are lots of examples and tips on SMART goal setting online. While I’ve found that this is helpful, it only completes a part of the picture for me.

If there is one thing you can do to make goal setting easier, make sure your SMART goals are relevant to the organization. How do you do that? I believe strongly in aligning your personal goals with those of your team. I’ve been most successful in setting relevant goals when I know my managers’ goals and when my team knows my goals. If I can align my goals to help my boss be successful, then I should be in pretty good shape in my job. If I can get my staff aligned to help me achieve my goals, then I will be happy with their direction, my boss will be happy with my achievements, and so on up through the organization. At the same time it is helpful to look at your company’s overall mission. Are my goals and consequently my team’s goals helping my company to achieve their mission? If they are, I am probably doing some things right. It follows then that once you know the direction for your goals, getting down to specifics is a lot easier.

I hope a few of my tips in this column help you in your career or even in the next month or two with the reviews you are going to be conducting. Goal setting and performance reviews are a critical part of the success of an organization. I’m sure you like to know what is expected of you, and your staff deserves to know what you expect from them. Hopefully, with a few extra tips this time around, you will find your performance reviews are just a little bit easier than in the past. If you can’t find anyone to practice with, give me a call or post a question on the forum; I’m happy to help!