10 Performance Conversation Starters
You’re a hero when you get hired and a loser during traditional performance reviews.
It’s a waste to hire for strength and evaluate for weakness.
Replace traditional annual reviews with monthly performance conversations. Better yet, discuss performance in some way, every week.
Make it normal, not an exception, to discuss performance.
7 reasons traditional annual reviews waste time:
- Busy managers and employees copy content from previous reviews.
- The goal is to get through the pain, not engage in substantive performance conversations. “Let’s get over this.”
- Managers often lose sleep during performance appraisal season. They don’t like it any more than employees.
- Managers who enjoy the process often enjoy the power of making individuals sweat. Performance appraisals make weak managers feel powerful.
- Feedback that should have been given long ago comes out too late.
- A few weeks after the review, employees remember how bad it felt, but forget their goals.
- Feelings of partnership decline. Hierarchy and distance go up.
10 performance conversation starters:
- What do you notice about the reasons for your success?
- What are you trying to accomplish?
- How are you being helpful to your team?
- What are you doing that hurts your team? (Insert customers, employees, manager, yourself, or organization?)
- What’s working for you?
- What could be better?
- What matters most to your customers? (Insert you, team, employees, manager, or leaders?)
- I notice…. (Describe behaviors.)
- What are the most impactful things you do?
- If things were going perfectly, what would it look like?
Bonus: What do you need to stop?
5 second questions:
The second question sets direction. Focus curiosity on behaviors. Don’t blame or judge.
- What’s important to you about that? (Explore the power of purpose.)
- What would you like to do about that?
- How might I help? (Help is not doing someone’s job for them.)
- What’s next?
- What behaviors move you in that direction?
How might managers start performance conversations?
What makes performance conversations go well? Poorly?
“What decision did you make this week that’s improved your team’s performance?”
“What have you learned this week?”
And, of course, follow up on the employee’s most recent training and ask what they’re doing differently.
Thanks Ben, Giving people time to reflect enables them to solidify their development. Your comment reminded me about one of my favorite questions, “What are you learning about yourself?”
Being enthusiastic about their journey, gives people energy. You added really great questions.
This is a very thought provoking read and I love your insight on conversation starters. Often, professional conversations are overlooked, when in reality, they can be the ultimate way to grow in any profession.
Many of the above remarks make me further question the differences between evaluators (the individual you seem to describe in the top portion of this) and supervisors (the individuals who take the time to help others grow). I am still exploring whether these two roles can be held by the same individual. If the purpose of evaluations are to make judgments based on a persons’ performance and the purpose of a supervisor is to focus on an individuals’ growth, should the two be mutually exclusive? What are your thoughts? Can an effective evaluator be a just as effective supervisor?
To take this further, if it is possible for the same person to hold both roles, is it possible for the individual being both supervised and evaluated to separate the two?
Thank you for your thoughts!
I think that as managers and leaders, we are in this position to a large extent because traditional performance reviews are all about meeting the demands of HR and higher management. Most of us have performance conversations with our people several times a week, but they don’t capture the frankly superfluous needs of the formal performance plan. Most of the time the traditional performance review would dismally fail the test of “adding value” for operational leaders and managers.
We stopped doing the standard performance reviews a couple of years ago. We now use a coaching tool that is based on our core values. 90% of the tool is praising the employee on how they meet expectations on those values and 10% is reviewing essential functions of the person’s job description and identifying areas of improvement. It is all done through a conversation and not a bunch of check boxes.
I would love to know what that tool is–please share!
I hated to receive evaluations as an employee even though I was always rated high and I hated to give them as a supervisor for the reasons you have shared. You nailed it!
For your #3 second question, I’d replace “help” w/”assist.” The 2 words have very different connotations & “assist” puts the person being coached in less of a subordinate/supplicant role & promotes teamwork rather than hierarchy.
This is very timely as we have ours at the moment. However, my manager hasn’t even organised times with us, he leaves it to the last minute. In my team we don’t get payrises or training so I lack the motivation to fill in this.
There are some very good conversation starters here; I suggest, though, that “What are you doing that hurts your team?” as a STARTER will invite a defensive reply.
There is nothing more useless where I work than performance evaluations. Supervisors hate it and just cut and paste and employees feel like it’s all a joke and accomplishes nothing.