Gautam’s talking about performance reviews today. He asks "If it serves so many functions why is it often such a de-energising and negative process?" It’s a fair question.

Here are two guesses:

1. – The medium is the message. If you’ve got to slog through reams of paper to do your reviews, it almost doesn’t matter what the results are. The process alone is painful enough to make the whole excercise negative.

2. -  True, reflective evaluation is hard.  Who said being fair, honest and helpful was supposed to be cake? It’s part of what makes the whole thing worthwhile. We actually take a short break from our daily efforts to think about our performance and that of others. It should be a smidge challenging.

No? 

Is such a thing even possible? Well, I wasn’t able to attend our most recent user group meeting in Chicago, but Randy Reynolds tells me about an interesting comment from some of our customers. We unveiled some new interface enhancements at the meeting that reduce the number of steps managers have to go through to evaluate an employee. It’s called SpeedRater, and it sounds good right?

Well there was apparently some pushback becuase people felt it would enable managers to do their reviews too quickly – thereby removing some of the time for thought from the process. In other words, people were worried that you’d get quick but thoughtless reviews.

But then Randy asked the HR folks to put themselves in the positon of a manager who has a bunch of reviews to do. Would they appreciate the feature then? A room full of hands went up.

So what do you think? Which is more important, speed or thoughtfulness? What’s the happy medium?

Impactful isn’t a word, but it should be. Anyway, the prolific Susan Heathfield is talking about giving and receiving impactful feedback. She’s got 10 steps for both and some good tips, too.

My favorite "Give" Tip: "Effective feedback involves the sharing of information and observations. It does not include advice unless you have permission or advice was requested. "

And "Get" Tip: "Try to control your defensiveness. Fear of hurting you or having to deal with defensive or justifying behavior makes people hesitant to give feedback to another person."

The biggest shame is when feedback isn’t given at all because people don’t know how to give and receive it. Consistent feedback is to be promoted from both sides. Managers and employees should be receptive to getting it and proactive about giving it. As Martha Stewart would say, "it’s a good thing."

In a truly facinating post at Fast Company, Heath Row discusses an academic study that attempts to understand the optimal ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback. Apparently a positive/negative ratio of between 2.9 and 11.6 (2.9 – 11.6 positive for every one instance of negative feedback) is an optimal ratio for “human flourishing.”

One of the authors, Marcial Losada, commented on the post with the following: “High performance teams and marriages that last and are happy with their relationship will have a P/N ratio around 5. Low performance teams and marriages ending in divorce typically have a ratio between 0.4 and 0.9; i.e., more negativity than positivity. If your P/N ratio is above 11.6 you don’t have enough grounding and your excess of optimism will soon be deflated by a world that requires a healthy dosis of negative feedback.”

Amazing how too little or too much positive feedback can have a huge effect on performance, or identify a relationship (work or personal) that’s in trouble. It would be interesting to see how this could relate to performance reviews. Perhaps it’s a guideline by which we should judge our own evaluations?

I was just pointed to this great post by a 15-year Microsoft employee named John Porcaro on doing annual reviews. As we all know, the process can be tough, and John provides some great advice for getting through them and focusing on the important stuff. His tips are as follows, but you should definitely read the original post for the thinking and explanation behind them.

1. Take time to reflect
2. Think of your review as a living resume
3. Be thorough
4. Go with metrics
5. Make it about YOU
6. Don’t worry too much about missing an agreed-upon deadline
7. Don’t forget the “extra credit.”
8. If there’s something negative to say, bring it up yourself
9. Sometimes mistakes can be the best thing
10. Realize that half the equation is perception
11. Don’t sweat the review
12. Ask your manager to edit some of their negative comments
13. Don’t put it off until the last minute

What advice have you or your employees found helpful in completing reviews? Let me know and I’ll post the results here.

Props to Kinkoi Lo for the pointer.

Just heard about some new development going on here around a product called iReview. Basically, the idea is for small businesses or business units within larger organizations to have immediate access to do performance reviews online. Think it one minute and do the reviews the next minute; all you need is a credit card and the will to review.

Right now, iReview is in Beta and we’re shooting to launch it sometime in the next few months.  More details as soon as they are available. It’s pretty exciting stuff though. Who says performance reviews (and the benefits) are only for the big guys? 

Stay tuned. Oh, and here’s a link to the little teaser image on the website.

Keywords: Small Business, Performance Reviews