The Written Review Form

The written part of the review is the sun that the review orbits around. It contains all of the meaty content. Your company may already give you a review form to use. If so, that’s fine. Go ahead and use it. However, if your company doesn’t give you a form to use, or perhaps, you’re not satisfied with the one that you’re given, you can use the form provided in this chapter. I’ve been using it for a number of years. It has served me pretty well, and it may serve you well also. You should prepare the review in a shared document so that both of you can see what the other has written.

The review form is broadly split into three parts:

• Your own observations about what your staff member has achieved and areas they should seek to develop next: You fill this in before the review so they can read it.

• Your direct report’s observations on the same topics: They fill this in before the review so you can read it.

• The goals that you have mutually agreed upon for the coming six months: You think about these going into the review and discuss them during it. You finalize them afterward.

As the person on the receiving end of the review, it’s deeply unpleasant to turn up with no idea of the direction that the meeting is going to take, especially if it hasn’t been a stellar year for them. These meetings are not an occasion for a big reveal, and that’s true for both good and bad news. It also goes without saying that the bad reviews are much harder to stomach than the good ones. Delivery of critique, especially when there’s a lot to criticize, can put people in a spin. By sharing what you’ve written for them beforehand, you give your staff time to mentally prepare.

To frame why this is useful, consider the five stages that people tend to go through when receiving bad news:

1. Ignore it

2. Deny it

3. Blame others

4. Assume responsibility for it

5. Find a solution

Staff reading the document before the meeting have the chance to move through steps 1 to 4 in their own minds. This focuses the meeting on step 5, which is a much more productive use of both of your time.

Right, let’s start putting together your review form. We will step through each of the questions in turn. Remember that writing reviews take time. Allow your staff time to get them done. One way to find time is to treat it like any other task for your team by putting tickets for each of them in the backlog.

Their questions to answer