The Four Mindsets

chapter 16 How to conduct a best practice performance review

Although this is the final chapter of the book, it is probably the most important.

I started the book by introducing and defining the role of the psychological contract and the impact it has on relationships and results. Conducting a performance review is probably the management task most likely either to strengthen the psychological contract or to break it in an instant, as both relationships and results are at play. To make things even trickier, perceptions of fairness and trust, give and take, underlie the performance review and are also key components of the psychological contract.

So what must a manager do to ensure they put their best foot forward and minimise any risk of the review becoming tricky or uncomfortable? The answer, as always, comes down to the right mindset!

The performance review mindset requires careful planning, focused execution and, as always when dealing with people, anticipation of how things are likely to play out. Typically, we find most managers will fail in one of these key areas and so perpetually find themselves in tricky situations. This results in a loss of confidence, which leads them either to avoid doing performance reviews wherever possible or to approach them in an overly aggressive way.

The key to performance reviews is to start as you mean to go on. Consistency is essential. You should train your people to anticipate how you are going to run them, what you will ask, how you ...