Yawn….. annual review. Reveal your employees’ secret this year.

Tired of the annual review? Then do it differently and take the lead in revealing your employees’ secret. You might be pleasantly surprised….

“It’s the time of annual reviews again. Sigh, yawn …… can’t this be done any differently” spoke Anke (team leader). She just finished her interview with me and this comment came out with a smothered sense of irritation.

In fact, I had asked her if she was going to do anything “fun” today ….. Oops …. Of course she wants to do this right though, but every year it turns out to be a repeat performance.

Yawn 1. Annual ireview is BOHICA

For many of you, these year-end performance reviews are sort of a song you hear every year. In fact, you can largely write down the outcome right now. So what are you really doing it for? Sitting down for 15 minutes together about that last 10% is just as good enough, right? But that’s not how it works.

BOHICA: Bend Over Here It Comes Again

So you’re just joining in again. The picture is complete, the usual deadpan discussions have been had and that’s that, on to the order of the day … No energy though …

Yawn 2. Don’t sweat it …

Why bother? After all, the plans will be overtaken by harsh realities and new developments anyway. But then again, where are you going to get your satisfaction as a manager when it comes to annual reviews?

Maybe it’s an idea to leverage the talent of your employees you’re paying for anyway. Leveraging talent, for example, will keep your people working with heart. Getting this done is obviously just a little more than a performance review on Friday afternoon.

The secret of your employees

Leverage the talent of your people you pay for anyway

To my taste, giving more meaning to your work is not done by working harder. You can do it by applying the talent your employees have to the goals your organization would like to achieve. That gives satisfaction!

Instead of the umpteenth project, the annual review will be about all the capabilities your employees can offer and what they are passionate about. So how do you do that, linking your people’s talent to your club’s goals? Follow the path of wisdom.

The path of wisdom

The Path of Wisdom contains three simple steps. You use these steps to link your employees talent to the annual plan. In fact, your employees’ talent is waiting for an opportunity to be utilized.

1. Discover the talent
Ask your employees, prior to the annual interview, what they consider to be their natural talents. For some this is easy, but for others it’s more difficult. Therefore, two questions to put your employees on a track:

• What compliment do you get with any regularity that makes you say, “pffft, easy”? Without realizing it, this is probably a talent, because you can do it without effort and another person thinks it’s special and complicated.
• What irritates you about others? You really wonder why they can’t do better. 10 to 1 that this is an undeniable talent of yours that you can put to use and someone else much less or not at all.

As you answer these questions, remember that for your employees, their talents are probably the most ordinary things in the world. They are the things they do effortlessly, which is why they are sometimes so hard to recognize.

These talents or abilities are at many levels: things you do, thoughts you have, solutions you come up with, situations you sense, things you notice, etc.

2. Explore the talent

Together with your employee, translate the talents he/she has found into what you can do with it for others. How can you leverage it for your organization (customer, colleague, client, employee).

• Example 1: A talent is quickly signaling that people disagree with something. This can be exploited for more effective MT consultation, simply by voicing the signaling and asking the other person for a response.
• Example 2: Looking naturally from a helicopter view, for example, can be used to control workload. By asking aloud the critical questions that naturally arise in ad hoc work. Does this fit the bigger picture? Do we really need to do this?

3. Recognize the talent
If you know how to use your people’s talents, you can use that talent more consciously and effectively. Then look at the objectives of the annual plan from this talent. Ask yourself, collectively, where your employee can contribute with that particular talent.

Example

Are changes, new products or other (strategic) policies planned for the coming year in which that talent is desperately needed? In what ways do you plan to deploy that talent?

Want to prepare helpful questions for the annual review or your performance review?

So…..

As a manager, do you just want to conduct your annual review in a slightly different way and/or are you tired of the current way of conducting annual reviews? Then be naughty for once and take the lead, from the talent of your employees, to discuss your ideas for the coming year.

I have seen this lead to surprising outcomes more than once. To return to Anke for a moment: she has taken the plunge and has resolved to change the direction of the annual plan conversation. I am curious to hear from her what that yielded …… to be continued.