Mastering the Performance Review Conversation

Performance review conversations are when a manager and their direct report formally discuss the employee’s past performance, business impact, and development opportunities. These discussions typically happen once or twice a year, depending on an organization’s performance management cycle, and play a key role in driving alignment, recognizing employee contributions, and investing in career growth. 

While ‍performance reviews are critical for both employee and organizational success, recognizing their benefits can be difficult when you're deep in the process. Reviews take a significant amount of time and effort and often involve difficult or uncomfortable conversations between managers and employees. Yet, done right, they can significantly drive employee development and strengthen employee-manager alignment.

In this performance review conversation guide, we share how managers can establish the right environment to give and receive feedback to lead productive, effective, and actionable discussions. 

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Why Performance Reviews Are Important

During performance review conversations, managers provide constructive feedback, set clear expectations for the future, and collaboratively create individual development plans to support their employees’ career growth. Reviews also ensure that employees and their managers are aligned on the best ways to achieve these contributions.

• Reflecting on past performance: One of the main goals of performance review conversations is to reflect on an individual’s performance over the past review period, assessing both successes and areas for improvement.
• Recognizing great work: Reviews also provide a great opportunity for managers to highlight employee wins from the review period and congratulate them on any major achievements. 
• Giving and receiving feedback: In a 2023 Pew Research Center survey of US workers, only 34% of respondents said they receive feedback from their manager on how they’re doing their job often or extremely often. While businesses should aim to create an ongoing feedback culture, performance review conversations present another opportunity for managers to share both positive and constructive feedback with their direct reports. Not only does feedback make a company and its people successful, but it also leads to alignment and supports a vibrant and healthy organizational culture.
• Fostering employee development: Employee growth is another key aspect of a successful performance review conversation. Managers should foster employee development by asking workers about their career aspirations and sharing specific growth areas to help them gain the skills they need to make their next target role a reality. 
• Setting goals: Every review conversation should also focus on the future, setting ambitious goals and establishing clear expectations for the next review cycle. This can ensure manager-employee alignment and provide a roadmap for continued development and success, helping to motivate employees and drive performance throughout the next review period.
• Driving future performance: By fostering open communication and mutual understanding, performance reviews help employees feel valued and motivated to tackle their new goals and continue contributing to their organization’s success. 

However, to reap all these benefits, you need to put in the work. Think of it like this: Performance conversations are like going to the gym — you might drag your feet getting there and it may be uncomfortable in the moment, but the practice can help you stay healthy in the long run.

And, to have an effective review conversation, you need to come prepared. While human resources teams typically own the overall performance cycle and design its processes, managers and employees are the ones actively conducting performance review conversations. Below, we’ll share how employees and managers can prepare for performance management conversations to maximize their time together. 

Establishing the Right Environment

Framing an employee performance review as an opportunity for transformation and growth — instead of seeing it as a dreaded task you have to complete — can make or break the conversation. Preparation and mindset are key: What you bring into it determines what you get out of it.

Both parties should be open to receiving constructive feedback in a non-defensive way, while also setting their own boundaries. For example, you should be willing to listen to feedback that helps you be a better performer, but not allow harsh personal criticisms.

Here are some tips for managers and employees that will help set the tone for a successful and productive performance review for both parties.

For Managers

Even if you’re at the top of your craft, being a strong individual contributor doesn’t automatically make you a great manager. Being a great manager requires certain skills, including the ability to motivate people to perform at their best in the workplace and set high standards without alienating people. 

But don’t worry if you don’t already have these skills — they can be learned and improved. While there may not be a lot of classes you can take on the subject, you can learn people skills through different relationships over time, whether they be with family members, friends, or mentors. Lattice's Manager Tools can also support your growth into a strong leader. These features help create more effective one-on-one agendas, track team goal progress, build personalized individual development plans, share and receive feedback, understand employee engagement, and more. 

Some performance review preparation tips for managers include the following:

• Eliminate feedback surprises. The performance feedback you share in reviews shouldn’t come as a surprise to your employees. Providing continuous feedback throughout the year as you see issues or achievements arise will allow employees to take immediate action to improve their performance, rather than waiting for the end of the year. At that point, it’s often too late for them to make a meaningful change.‍
• Provide specific examples. In a personal context, most people don’t take notes on others’ behavior in order to report it back to them. But in a professional setting, it’s effective to cite specifics. Including tangible examples in your reviews can help you avoid using generalized language that can put employees on the defensive. Check out our post How to Write More Effective Performance Review Comments for more tips.‍
• Identify key themes in feedback. Find commonalities in your feedback so employees have focus areas, instead of trying to address several different things all at once. This gives employees a realistic list of things to work on, without overwhelming them. 

For Employees

Employees should be active participants in their performance review meetings, coming prepared with a list of their top achievements in the review period and their own feedback for their manager. Here are some tips employees can use when preparing for their performance reviews:

• Write your self-evaluation. When drafting your self-assessment, be sure to reflect on your own performance, share your accomplishments and day-to-day impact throughout the entire review period, and identify what you believe are opportunities for improvement.‍
• Know your successes. You are your own best advocate, so there’s no one better to sell your wins, and how you achieved them, than you. When drafting your self-assessment, be sure to check any feedback tools your business uses, like Lattice Feedback, which collect comments from your colleagues and peers year-round. This can help jog your memory and help you highlight any specific wins or improvements you had throughout the review period.‍
• Don't just receive feedback; give it as well. Performance reviews are also a forum for employees to give managers feedback. Come prepared for your performance review discussion with a few ways your manager can better support you moving forward. Reviews should be a two-way conversation, so don’t be afraid to bring up your manager-employee relationship and share any constructive feedback you might have.

Creating a Feedback Culture

One way to think about how people can become high performers is to use a “love/structure” framework. On the love side, you have empathy, connection, and positivity. On the structure side, you have expectations and boundaries. In order to be a functional person and employee, you need to receive both. 
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For example, companies with low love and low structure have a lot of churn because they lack positive feedback and fail to provide clear goals and targets. Companies with low love and high structure have high expectations but often use negative feedback; this could be fine when everything is going well, but as soon as company performance takes a dip, you’ll see employees leave. Companies with high love and low structure, while they have positive environments, can cause employees to feel lost or be unclear about what they’re being measured against in the absence of set expectations.

High love, high structure is where you want to be from an organizational culture perspective. These companies tend to retain employees through thick and thin because people are happier, and they also tend to see high performance because the right structures (like performance reviews) are in place. 

How can you ensure your business falls in this desirable quadrant? Lattice supports a high-love, high-structure culture by providing tools that promote both empathy (public praise) and structure (goal tracking). Public recognition tools like Lattice Praise give employees a platform to recognize their peers’ great work and connect their contributions to your company values — promoting stronger interpersonal relationships and a more positive work environment. Lattice OKRs & Goals, on the other hand, reminds employees what they’re working toward and how their role impacts organizational success. Together, these powerful features can shape a workplace culture that marries both love and structure. 

Giving and Receiving Positive Feedback

While constructive feedback can help employees grow, being overly negative can actually do more harm than good. In fact, only 19% of employees strongly agree that focusing on their weaknesses motivates them to do outstanding work. In order to lead balanced performance conversations, be sure to highlight employee strengths at least as much as — if not more than — areas of opportunity. 

That said, mastering the art of positive feedback involves more than just saying nice things. Here are three components of giving and receiving positive feedback:

1. Active Listening

Active listening is the most imperative foundation for any manager. You should go into a review conversation with the aim of listening twice as much as you talk. Actively listen to what your employee has to say and make an effort to repeat back their key points to show them you hear and understand them.

2. Giving Positive Feedback

It never hurts to kick off your performance review conversation with some positive feedback. This can set the tone of your meeting and create psychological safety, which can make your employee or manager more receptive to what else you have to say. Additionally, you’ll want to:

• Give positive feedback and constructive criticism equal weight.
• Focus on specific actions or behaviors an employee can control, rather than the results of those actions. For example, instead of saying, "You didn't meet the sales target," which focuses on the outcome, you could say, "I noticed you didn't follow up with several potential clients.”
• Share feedback from peer reviews to introduce different points of view into your conversation.

3. Receiving Positive Feedback

Not sure how to react to positive feedback someone shares with you? Take a breath, say “Thank you,” and ask any follow-up questions you may have. Those could include:

• Can you elaborate more on my strengths in that situation?
• What is something you would like to continue to see me doing?
• In your eyes, how could this be improved more?

Giving and Receiving Negative Feedback

Feedback is a gift. Positive feedback feels good, but critical feedback can be more useful for growth and improvement, even if it’s difficult to receive and give. 

As a manager or a team member, you should consider feedback an obligation to others; it’s a mutual understanding that you’re going to help each other grow. If you work with someone closely every day, you’re in the position of being able to provide useful feedback. 

Say what you see and what you think is helpful — and do your homework to know how to give meaningful feedback to your colleagues. Even imperfect critical feedback is better than no feedback, but managers should refresh themselves on how to give feedback effectively to help these conversations run smoothly. Here is some essential advice you’ll want to consider when giving or receiving negative feedback.

Giving Negative Feedback

In a negative feedback situation, you’re trying to manage defensiveness. If you’re a manager, try to frame your feedback in ways that elicit less resistance, and manage your own emotions so your feedback comes out in a moderated tone. Some things to keep in mind:

• Be specific. Use examples you’ve experienced first-hand (no hearsay). 
• Use "I feel" statements. Focus on the person’s behaviors and how they make you feel rather than your interpretation of their intention.
• Avoid hyperbole. Ground your feedback in concrete observations without generalizing. Instead of saying, "You are always late for our team meetings," provide detailed examples like, "I’ve noticed you’ve been more than ten minutes late to our last four team meetings."
• Focus on how the feedback recipient can improve their future performance. Gallup research shows that making performance reviews forward-looking can improve employee performance by 13%.

Remember, your employees shouldn’t encounter new feedback for the first time during their performance review. Instead, the discussion should cover topics and advice that you’ve already addressed with them.

Tools like Lattice Feedback can help you manage and deliver constructive continuous feedback throughout the year — not just during review season. Employees can request feedback from peers, managers, and cross-functional colleagues at any time, allowing them to gather insights in close to real time. This can not only help foster a culture of continuous feedback within your company, but it can also encourage employee growth, drive performance, and build stronger working relationships. 

Still feel unprepared for your next performance conversation? Check out our article 5 Strategies for Having Challenging Conversations at Work for tips on how to handle your next tough conversation with grace and empathy.

Receiving Negative Feedback

If you’re on the receiving end of negative feedback, listen to understand and respond instead of listening to react. First and foremost, manage your own psychological reactions and emotions. Additionally, it’s helpful to:

• View it as an opportunity to grow. 
• Establish boundaries (e.g., setting a clear expectation of what you want).
• Ask clarifying questions. 

Finally, dig into the discrepancies. If you notice any areas where you ranked yourself significantly higher or lower than your manager or colleagues ranked you, those blind spots may be opportunities for improvement. 

Negative feedback is important, but it has to be delivered in the right way to inspire action. Companies should set leadership standards that don’t tolerate toxicity (like personal attacks or passive aggression) and importantly, hold people accountable who exhibit that kind of bad behavior. 

It’s crucial to communicate that it’s okay for employees to fail or work on hard things. If we never try projects or tasks we’re not sure we can do, we won’t stretch or grow. Creating a safe space for trial and error can help people feel more comfortable with critical feedback and flip failure into an ambitious way to grow.

Creating a Follow-Up Plan

After the performance appraisal, now what? You need to create a follow-up plan to address any feedback — otherwise, there was no point in doing the performance review in the first place.

For Employees: 

1. Follow up on any peer reviews in person through informal one-on-ones. This can help contextualize feedback, and get additional details that may not have been relayed in written form. 
2. Reflect on any areas where your self-review didn’t align with your manager’s. This can help you better understand where expectations might have been misaligned and ensure you’re on the same page come the next review cycle. 
3. Consider which growth areas you’d like to prioritize moving forward. While you might not be able to tackle everything in a week, month, or even a quarter, identify any feedback that can significantly impact your career growth so you can focus on these areas. 

For Managers: 

1. Recap the review in digestible chunks. There might have been a lot of content, so take a few minutes to summarize your conversation at a high level. Then, be sure to share your notes with your direct report so they have a record of everything you discussed. 
2. Share any process feedback with HR. Take a few minutes to reflect on your company’s performance review processes and tools and share any thoughts or suggestions you have to make reviews more seamless next time. 

For Both: 

1. Identify two to three areas of improvement. Don’t try to boil the ocean — sit down and decide which key areas the employee should focus on in the coming review period. This can direct your efforts and inform the rest of your follow-up plan.
2. Establish professional development goals. Once you have your focus areas, decide how to break them down into attainable targets. Create SMART goals and link the individual’s success to specific metrics, which will help you track progress throughout the period and adjust your approach as needed.
3. Draft the follow-up plan. Next, document your plan. You can use a Google Doc, Lattice Individual Development Plans, or anything you can easily reference to track progress and maintain accountability.
4. Regularly follow up on progress. Don’t set it and forget it. Schedule regular check-ins or include them in your Lattice 1:1s agenda to discuss goal progress, blockers, and any updates. This approach allows managers to provide ongoing coaching and regular feedback while giving employees the opportunity to grow and address any challenges.

Optimize your business’s performance reviews with Lattice.

Lattice Performance gives you everything you need for an effective performance review in one place. You can quickly reference AI-powered peer feedback summaries, an individual’s goals, and current and next-level job descriptions, making it easier to write more holistic and accurate reviews.

Plus, Lattice helps keep the spirit of performance review conversations top of mind year-round. With ongoing feedback, recognition, goal-setting, one-on-ones, development tools, and more, Lattice empowers managers and employees to continuously share feedback, track goal progress, recognize success, and support employee growth and development.

To better understand how your business can introduce painless performance reviews with Lattice, request a demo today. Or, watch the webinar that inspired this article, Mastering the Performance Review Conversation, for more best practices and insights on conducting effective performance evaluations.