6 Tricks for Better Performance Reviews!

1. Set expectations up front.

2. Begin the review by asking how things are going from your employee's perspective.

3. Give specific, tactical feedback.

4. Understand that there is always room for growth.

5. Set expectations for the future.

6. Ask plenty of questions.

Attend “Zombies, Grinders and Superstars:  The FOT Talent/Succession Review” (sponsored by Halogen) to get the following goodies:

How to use your performance review process to generate a picture like the one above

How what you do with performance management at your company is directly related to how you approach talent reviews and succession

Why corporate values don’t belong anywhere near your performance management system

How items called “potential factors” add flavor to your approach to performance/talent/succession, and how to create potential factors for your company to use in the talent review

How to use the talent review process to calibrate performance ratings across your company, box in managers who are soft on performance and create a greater sense of pay for performance in your organization

AK: "I put a lot of work into it just for it to blow up in flames, and somehow have to make it sound good even though I didn't accomplish my goal."

Now I'm a girl, so I've never had the ponytail convo before, but once on the job, I was pulled into my manager's office and told I needed to dress more professionally. I was not given specifics, only that "wearing leggings under dresses is inappropriate."

I was pregnant at the time. And the job was a contract job.

If you need me to spell it out for you, I wasn't making enough money to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe, and I wasn't going to freeze my pregger buns off in the middle of winter by wearing tights. I should mention that part of my job included walking my manger's dog. Up and down hills. In the winter. While pregnant. I know this is beginning to sound like one of those stories your parents tell you about having to walk 5 miles, uphill, in the snow to school. Maybe those stories are actually true. This one definitely is.

What was I talking about again?

Hi friends! Did you know Tweebs Hate Performance Reviews?  Truth.

@dustyloops Just killed my performance review. I deserve 5 gold star stickers and an eraser

This is because performance reviews make you feel like you are in grade school and are being rewarded by Teach with frickin' stickers and cool erasers for your dang pencils. Those things were awesome (and still kinda are), but this feeling in general? Not good.

@HollettLA  Hangin in there. It's staff performance review time :-/

This is the first of a couple of faces we'll see today.  To me, this face says "Someone please pour me a stiff one to ease the pain of having to review my staff, none of whom are getting raises this year."  Just a wild guess.

@Notorious_DEV Just got out of my performance review and 2012 goal setting meeting ^_^

Pretty sure that face is happy, but I think that's because some goal setting occurred (thumbs up) and also because this tweet was POST-performance review so there was relief mixed in there. Gah, the relief when those things are over!!

@jonshariat Doing a your own performance review is like high five'ing yourself talking about how awesome you are to yourself while your managers watch.

Now listen, I love to high five myself, just about as much as I love to kick myself in the a**. I think this tweet is near perfection, it just needs the following hashtag: #awkwardasHEdoublehockeysticks. (Maybe that would have exceeded 140.)

@letterboxed I can't tell if it's a good or bad sign that my annual performance review is today, #Fridaythe13th. #meepmeep

 I feel like this is bad mixed with more bad and it can't be good, no matter how you slice it, don't you? Sorry I said "slice." That was probably the wrong verb to use here.

@mariannevelonis the last 2 letters in 'performance review are EW. coincidence? I think not.

And, I hate to play favorites, but come on.  This one is totally winning. 

Happy Friday the 13th, Performance Review haters!! Fists in the ayerrrr.

First of all, I love the word, "pwned." It is unarguably one of the better words in existence today.  I thought it was gone, and then I did a Twitter search.  Very happy to see it alive and well. 

Second, check this out.  Pwned is used to describe Performance reviews in this sentence in Urban Dictionary.  How perfect is that? Pwned. Yep. Pretty much describes EXACTLY how you feel after a performance review, right?  Especially when you think you're doing a pretty good job and your manager is like WHOMP - nope! You suck!