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Leading Reviews#

Tips for leads on successfully undertaking reviews for their team members

Why we do reviews#

By taking the time to invest in reviews we are demonstrating to the team member that we care about their career and future, and provide more opportunities to support their growth, and understand their own ambitions and plans.

Reviews provide the time to dedicate to employee development, the space for open, constructive, and solution oriented feedback, a focus on development, and the ability to really understand “where they are at”. All of this leads to greater psychological safety at work, improved morale and engagement, and a constantly improving and developing team.

Reviews therefore can be an important part of our ability to train, grow, and retain our team members long term.

✅ Employee

  • A clear space away from the stress of daily work to “take stock”
  • Time dedicated to discussing, planning, and tracking career & skill growth to keep momentum going on development
  • A space to deep dive into any concerns, feedback, improvements, and solutions
  • Increased transparency and psychological safety

✅ Lead

  • Improved team member engagement
  • Ultimately, reduced employee turnover
  • Ability to up-skill and develop your team
  • Focused time to support and understand your team
  • 360 reviews allow for feedback on the lead, improving the lead's own skillset

Coordinating reviews as a lead#

Leads can only review their team members via Lattice once that particular team member has all other reviews completed (Self review/peer reviews), therefore the lead should ensure their team complete reviews in a timely manner.

Book your 1:1 with an employee for the review summary well in advance. This gives the employee a visual deadline of when things will be discussed, and forces you and the employee to plan and expect a full review.

Let the employee know what to expect. Set the agenda in Lattice 1:1s ahead of time so they know what will be discussed. This will also aid you in providing yourself with some structure to the conversation, making sure everything is covered.

💡 Key topics for leads to cover in review feedback

  • General feedback - Positive and Constructive
  • Past 3 months review, achievements and challenges
  • Future 3 months review, hopes, fears and goals 
  • Goal setting and tracking 
  • Anything else you want to discuss

Leading review meetings#

Go in prepared. Before the review meeting make sure you go into it with clear discussion points, also having read through the most recent review summary once again, and ideally the previous review to that too. Digest the information in them, and go in with a plan of what you will talk about, things you want to celebrate or praise, and potential areas of improvement. Being prepared will make the most out of the review.

Be sincere and open with constructive feedback as well as positive. Team members appreciate feedback, and not just positive. One way to support stability and growth in your team is to always be transparent and constructive with feedback. It allows a team member to really understand how they can better themselves, what people perceive as their strengths, gives them goals, and allows them to feel relaxed in that they aren’t having any issues hidden from them. If there is genuine criticism, then mention it, and make a plan together to improve it.

Be specific. Try to avoid vague feedback like “you’re doing great” or “the quality of your work needs to improve”. Provide specific and clear feedback on tasks, conduct etc. and give examples. This allows for the employee to better understand the issue, and obtain actionable feedback so they can improve or develop in specific areas. In the case of praise, clear and specific feedback lets the employee know what they should keep doing, and what you really appreciate about them.

Give them your full attention. If you have Slack going off, if you attend to “one last thing”, have to jump off the call, or just give a rushed review, this can be damaging. It will make the employee feel like our reviews are “lip service” and superficial. Lead by example. Be structured, be organised, be attentive.

Give the employee plenty of room to talk. Our reviews are based around open communication and two way conversation in order to have the most productive outcomes. You can only design a truly successful and sustainable growth path, improvement plan, or career development if you listen to the employee's own thoughts and goals too.

Being conscious of biases and common biases to be aware of#

Recency bias: When you favourably view recent accomplishments over ones from further back in time, due to them being in the for front of your mind

Halo Effect: When you focus on one particular positive trait or achievement, allowing you to ignore or pass over legitimate concerns or areas of general improvement

Horns Effect: When you view an employee or their overall performance negatively, based on zoning in on one particular issue, and allowing it to cloud the full picture of their overall performance.

Leniency Bias: When you tend to give higher ratings than you feel are right to all or most of your team members, regardless of actual performance. You might give a high rating to an employee who is performing averagely or below average, because you want to avoid conflict, or boost morale etc. However, this can lead to unrealistic reviews, reducing our ability to improve as team.

Severity Bias: The opposite of Leniency Bias. You may give overly harsh or low ratings to your team as you may want to challenge them or motivate them. This again can lead to demotivation, lower engagement, and employee self confidence due to never feeling like they are achieving enough. 

Similarity Bias: Similarity bias is when you favour or prefer employees who are similar to you in terms of personality, values, beliefs, background, or interests. Similarity bias can lead to unfair or biased reviews that are influenced by your personal preferences or relationships within your team, rather than by the actual performance.

Compare and Contrast Bias: This occurs when you evaluate an employee by comparing them to others in the team, rather than the criteria for the role. This can result in team members being judged too harshly when compared to a particularly high performer, or too leniently when compared to a team member who is struggling.

Neglect of Outliers or Perceptional Blindness Bias: a lead's attention may be disproportionately focused on employees who are more vocal, present issues proactively, or are perceived as requiring more guidance, leading to neglect or oversight of perhaps more introverted employees or high performers who the lead may consider can be “left to get one with things”, as there are no obvious major areas of concern. Such employees will still want to feel engaged with, need the space to voice themselves and discuss ambitions, and support in making these ambitions real.

Avoiding biases in reviews#

All of these biases are all relatively easy to avoid with the right structure and awareness. Frequent 1:1s (and documenting what was discussed): This helps stop recency bias and allows you to review past conversations since the last review, obtaining a fuller picture of the employee over time, and fairer reviews in general. Be consistent and have a structure: Decide what your criteria for the role is and what meeting expectations looks like, and make sure you stick to this criteria for every team member in this role, to avoid favouring certain employees or too harshly judging others.

Be aware

After you’ve written out your reviews for your team ask yourself the following:

  • Am I really judging my team by consistent standards based on the expectations of the roles? 
  • Am I being favourable / too harsh based on some personal emotion not related to the work being performed or the criteria I have set for the role?
  • Have I put a similar amount of time, effort, and consideration into the reviews for all of my team members, or spent much longer on some and rushed through others?

Before submitting employee reviews#

Once you’ve compiled your employee review in lattice, go through it again before finishing the write up, and make sure you’ve considered and included the following:

  • Praise on specific achievements, and constructive solution orientated feedback on specific areas of improvement, where appropriate
  • Revise your criteria and expectations for the role, and be sure you are assessing the employee fairly, paying attention to the common areas of bias above
  • Consider how you’ve addressed employee potential growth areas
  • Make a note to discuss any previously agreed goals, and check in on milestones, progress, or adjust as required For support on setting up realistic and achievable goals, and employee coaching in general, you check out our page on https://amazeeio.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/IH/pages/3641114642

Reviews v 1:1s#

Reviews and regular 1:1s with your team can and will compliment each other well, but they do not replace each other. Together, they help create a well-rounded approach to managing and developing team members effectively and both should be used together.

Weekly syncs facilitate ongoing communication, a regular feedback continuum (meaning issues don’t build and build overtime), and frequent alignment/ability to realign goals and check in.

Quarterly reviews offer a deeper dive into performance, development, and goal setting.

If you’d like support setting up some structure to 1:1s with team members you can check out our Lattice 1:1 templates here.