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By Brent Mitchell
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Ah yes, the dreaded annual review. There are many different methods and approaches to take on this. One company I worked for broke the review down into twenty separate characteristics for the managers to rate the consultants. The characteristics included things like: Written Communication, Quality, Promptness, Professionalism, etc. All considered to be good things to look at and review, but it took up quite a bit of time. The manager's options for rating the consultants included ratings from, "needs improvement" to "average" to "excellent" and a few others in between. In all my years as a manager, I've never had a person who was reviewed say, "wow, this was really helpful." <continued>
Instead, I found it consistently made people very defensive and was not very productive. The very structure seem adversarial. Not to mention, our clients dreaded receiving an email requesting feedback because of the amount of time it took to complete.
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I like the approach our company takes. As a consulting firm we are interested in feedback from the manager, but we also need to make it easy and productive. We ask:
- Are you happy with his/her overall performance?
- What are his/her strengths?
- Is there anything he/she can do to add more value?
- Are there any communication issues written or oral?
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It is pretty short and sweet and easy for the client to fill out. If there is an issue, this provides the opportunity for it to come out. Asking, "Is there anything the consultant can do to add more value?" allows issues to be looked at in a positive light and also allows us to approach it from a coaching stand point instead of from an adversarial one.
May all your reviews be positive and productive.
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608-204-9299
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Smart Solutions, Inc. | 200 River Place, Ste. 230, Madison, WI 53716 | Phone: 608-204-9299 | Fax: 608-204-9177