The art of the performance review can be complicated. After all, if you ask the wrong questions or go in with the wrong mindset, you may just end up wondering why your annual performance reviews don’t work. But the good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. All it takes is a better approach that prioritizes asking the right questions and making your team feel heard. So, what core questions of performance reviews should you ask, and how can you make your performance reviews more productive in the future?
Things to Consider When Preparing For Your Next Performance Review
Open communication is essential to the success of any business, and performance reviews play a key part in that. While they often get a bad reputation for putting staff on the spot and forcing rehearsed and insincere answers, this only happens when you make your performance review more of a checklist than an actual conversation.
While it may seem antithetical to the idea of the performance review, these reviews aren’t only about gauging performance. They should be a back-and-forth conversation that also allows you to gain new insights into the wants and needs of each member of your team.
Everyone is different and has different motivations and work preferences, and better understanding them can give you the tools you need to make your team happier and more productive. So, when you go into your next performance review, remember that the goal isn’t just to identify successes and failures. It’s just as much about creating a dialogue with your team members that helps you better understand how you can help them improve.
What Are the Core Questions of Successful Performance Reviews
There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for creating the perfect performance review question. If you want to create productive and engaging questions, you’ll need to consider everything from the goals that you want to achieve during the review to the individual personalities of each member of your team.
Remember that the goal is to make the performance review a conversation and not a checklist. So, you should be asking questions that encourage them to talk honestly about themselves and the goals that they want to achieve.
Still, there’s no doubt that creating the perfect question can be incredibly challenging. So, if you’re looking for a bit of inspiration, here are some proven core performance review questions that can help you ensure your next performance review is a success.
What Accomplishments Are You Most Proud of This Quarter?
Having individuals rate their own performance is pretty standard in most performance reviews. But, instead of simply asking how they think they performed last quarter, ask them about the specific accomplishments that they take pride in.
This invites much more thought and sincerity while also potentially giving you valuable insights into what specific tasks they enjoy doing and what achievements they get the most fulfillment from.
What Motivates You to Get the Job Done?
Motivations can vary drastically from individual to individual, so asking them what motivates them the most is another great way to better understand why each member of your team is there in the first place. You can even potentially use these motivators to drive improved performance and make them happier in their jobs in the future.
What Personal Strengths Do You Think Help You Do Your Job Effectively?
Asking about strengths and weaknesses is another common trope of the performance review, but it’s one that needs improvement. Though it’s always good to know what an individual’s general strengths and weaknesses are, this is a performance review, after all, so it’s much better to learn about how those strengths and weaknesses affect their job performance.
Asking about what strengths they think help them do their job more effectively can give you a ton of information about their expertise and how you could better utilize it down the road.
What Goals Do You Think Are Most Important to Achieve in the Next Quarter?
Achieving goals is an important motivator that drives your team to be more productive while also giving them something to look forward to. However, many goals tend to be broad and long-term, making it challenging to create an immediate and actionable plan to achieve them.
Instead, ask about the goals that they want to work towards this quarter or year, as this allows you and your staff to zero in on achieving what’s most important to them right now.
What Professional Growth Opportunities Would You Like to Pursue to Achieve Those Goals?
As important as it is to identify individual goals, this is only half the battle. If you want to help your team achieve their goals, you’ll need to work together to create a reasonable and effective plan to get there.
One way you can facilitate this is by asking them about the type of professional growth opportunities they’d like to pursue in order to achieve those goals. If they don’t have a good answer, you can use it as a chance to tell them about any available opportunities that they might be interested in.
On the other hand, if they already know what growth opportunities they would like to pursue, you can help hold them accountable and make it easier to take on new growth opportunities that align with their goals.
What Feedback Have You Received and How Do You Plan to Act On It?
Gauging how an individual responds to feedback is another essential piece of information that you can use to improve communication, worker happiness, and productivity in the future.
Whether it’s the performance review itself or general feedback given out throughout normal operations, you should ask the members of your team about the feedback they’ve received and how they plan to address it. However, you should also be sure to ask how they think feedback could improve, as this will go the longest way to improving communication and staff engagement.