Brewing Success: Making the Most of Annual Reviews

Brewing Success: Making the Most of Annual Reviews

We recently wrapped up an annual review season at my previous role. Between self-review, manager review, calibration, and delivery, the process took close to three months! The annual review process can be a big challenge to everyone involved. Introspection can be difficult, and for many, it can be a stressful affair. Executed well, annual reviews are a fantastic way to celebrate successes, advocate for your team, connect the dots on important conversations, and get better alignment on how someone’s long-term growth goals fit into the overall business strategy.

This year involved closely collaborating with my managers in advance of the review period as well as during our calibration period after self-reviews and manager reviews were written. I shared some advice to help make their reviews generate the kinds of outcomes we want to have for our people, and how to use these discussiosn to effect the right kind of changes. After getting everything all wrapped up, I wanted to memorialize some of this advice here to generate comment and provide some free advice for newer engineering managers daunted by this task for their first time.

Feedback Is Like Tea

I once worked with an HR business partner who prefaced review season with this analogy, and it always stuck with me – probably because I’ve got Harney & Sons on speed dial. “Feedback is like tea – if you steep it for too long, it may become bitter, but if you don’t steep it for long enough, it has no flavor.” In other words, when giving feedback in any form – be it a peer review, a self-review, or a manager review – you should spend an appropriate amount of time forming your thoughts, and doing so with appropriate tact and care. Avoid ruminating on the negatives, but make sure that constructive feedback is clear, unequivocable, and adequately balanced. Conversely, even a glowing review should have appropriate detail and consideration for areas of improvement.

Feedback Is a Gift

What’s better than getting someone to seriously, honestly tell you how you’re doing? The answer is, getting that same feedback accompanied with the knowledge that the person giving it has your best interest at heart. So long as you go into the process with that in mind, I encourage you to be bold and candid in your discussions. Every single one of us has something we need specific and actionable feedback on to get better — otherwise, we’d be perfect! Don’t be afraid to say important things that you know can help make a person you think is great even greater.

An oft-repeated bit of advice is to use something called “sandwich feedback”, where you say something positive, then deliver the critical piece of advice, and then finish with another positive. The latest consensus on this approach is that it is in fact an anti-pattern when it comes to delivering the advice. The reasons for this range from the observation that it can be considered manipulative, to the fact that the number of positives outweigh the number of negatives, setting off a subliminal Two out of three ain’t bad response from the recipient. In other words, don’t use sandwich feedback to soften the blow of what should be an important conversation. Hedging this way makes your feedback more ambiguous and less effective.

Ideally, the format of your annual review should be informed by the tool that you are using or the standards put in place by your HR business partner. When it comes to pacing, structure, and the like, stick to the customary script provided. Be direct, clear, and fair at the appropriate juncture – don’t hide the things you want to get better behind the things that are going fine.

Taking overly positive feedback to its logical extreme, there is no place for the “all fives” school of reviews (or whatever your max value may be). This is another example of the “tea” being too “weak”. If you’re feeling pressure to give these kinds of reviews to protect your reports, that’s a big culture red flag at your company. If you feel the need to give these kinds of reviews because delivering difficult feedback makes you uncomfortable, you should bear in mind that this is an important competency for a manager. You owe it to your reports to get comfortable delivering constructive feedback, and doing it in a way that keeps them feeling listened to and supported. Giving the highest possible ratings in every category and not providing thoughtful advice isn’t only a disservice to your reports, but it indicates a lack of engagement in the process to your HR business partner and your manager.

No Surprises

If you’re having a performance conversation about something for the first time during an annual review, that should give you pause for thought. This should not be the first time important feedback is provided. Annual reviews are a time to synthesize, summarize, and reflect on what trajectory you can extrapolate. In fact, for sticky performance issues, you should be able to reference whether the problem has improved, has persisted, or gotten worse. You should be able to say something along the lines of:

We initially discussed this problem back in July, and talked about how we could improve it. You agreed that you’d try to work on it by using strategies such as X, Y, and Z. I’ve commended you in past one-on-ones on implementing those strategies on occasion, such as in November when you did X instead of M. But we did have a discussion in December after I observed you did N, when I hoped you would have done Z instead. So we’re seeing growth in this area, but continued growth is still important here, because it still prevents you from being successful in ABC, which we agree is one of your goals.

The above is an example of how performance discussions are iterative, with the annual review cycle giving us the opportunity to neatly contextualize those trends, sucesses, and challenges over a broader period of time.

Along this theme, if you’re tying promotions to the annual review cycle, don’t keep reports with a vested interest in their development in the dark on where they are tracking. Recurring conversations should note what the current deltas are between how the indiviudal is performing and what the expectations of their desired role looks like. Make sure that you are giving clear, actionable feedback on how to more regularly exhibit the expectations of that role. For in-time interactions, don’t be cryptic – if there’s an opportunity to step up, make the reasoning behind your request clear. Remember that part of your responsibility as a manager is to help intentionally develop your reports along their desired career path. In short, your reports should have a reasonable level of certainty whether they will be awarded that promotion because of how they have performed in the concrete milestones you’ve set for them.

Use Data to Drive Discussions

Would you rather have a nice, organic Japanese green tea brewed at a perfect 180º with 12 ounces of cold, filtered water, or a generic green tea bag brewed with water you boiled from the tap? Even if they tasted identically to you, science suggests that you’d like the first more, largely because of the detail that’s been provided to you.

Detail makes things more memorable, and more compelling. Data is the ultimate form of detail. Data doesn’t just include being able to reference previous discussions, as mentioned in the previous section.

While you should be using a variety of indicators to measure your team’s performance throughout the entire year, annual reviews are a fantastic time to sit down and zoom out on those metrics. Think about it like long-term investment. It can be difficult to watch your money grow on a day-to-day basis in an index fund, but taking a look at it over a year can tell a valuable story, especially compared to other index funds you may have tracked over the same period of time.

For individuals at the same level, you should be able to identify clear trends on throughput based on key metrics that can be gleaned from version control, documentation, and issue tracking. Ideally, these will correlate to the expectations of the job description which you hopefully have on file. We can then use that information to address outliers, giving clear metrics they need to improve on. It might not be a bad thing that that data point is an outlier, but outliers are always valuable conversation starters, and correlating outliers often tell an interesting story.

Here are some suggestions for how to use data as a storytelling device instead of a cudgel. First, establish the metric of interest that the person has exhibited, and then share the delta observationally. Explain what that indicates, and then impart why improving the metric is valuable. For example:

Other team leads are performing N code reviews per month for a team with similar pull request volume, whereas you’re averaging M. This is important, because the folks on the team you’re leading deserve your feedback and guidance on the work they’re doing. Engaging in code review is also a great way to stay on top of what everyone is doing, and a great way to push on quality and ensure your team is meeting our overall architectural goals. What are some ways we could get you more involved in your team’s code reviews?

When using data to drive performance discussions, I encourage you to thread the needle on adequate context, and to be as objective as possible when laying out the details. Hearing constructive criticism is hard in general, and it can be very uncomfortable for the individual on the receiving end of this concrete evidence. Because of this, when using data to underscore room for growth, you should make doubly sure that this isn’t the first time that you’ve had the discussion, and that you’ve used gentler strategies in the past. In this case, I would hope that you’ve got notes from previous one-on-ones where you’ve written down that you asked the lead in question to get more involved in the team’s code reviews.

Set the Stage for the Next Year

I like to conclude my reviews with where I hope to see the person in a year’s time, and what support I hope to give to get them there. Since so much of an annual review is rehashing what happened in the last 12 months, I find that it’s a little uplifting – even in the face of some difficult conversations – the reconfirm your belief in the potential of the person you’re delivering the review to. So take the time a the end to build folks up, get them excited about what’s next, and make sure they know they are an important part of your vision for the team’s success. This hopefully won’t just help to inspire, but to confirm the important sense of belonging that every manager should foster in their team.

Conclusion

Annual reviews are a fact of life in most companies. I like to face such inevitabilities head-on, with lots of preparation so that I can bring my best self to the occasion. There are plenty of other approaches to take, but I hope that there’s room for a few of my recommendations in those approaches. What is most important is to strike that delicate balance between being fact-based and candid, supporting growth, and leaving each discussion with the recipient with a clear understanding of how to move forward – ideally feeling good about their future. Executing on these successfully are a responsibility and a privilege that can make a huge impact on company morale and culture, so sieze the opportunity to be a positive force that helps your team get ever better.