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Questions not answers make great employee performance reviews

Questions and not the answers you provide create the most powerful employee performance reviews.

Think about learning to drive a car - someone could tell you what to do until they were blue in the face, but it wasn't until you physically sat in the drivers seat and made mistakes (corrected by the instructor) that you truly started to learn to drive.
Why do managers then insist employee performance review time is when they get to sit back and tell the employee everything they have done wrong and what they should do to fix it?

The best managers and leaders use employee performance reviews as a time to ask powerful questions to help the employee reflect on their performance and to set goals for the future.

Here's two of my favourite questions that I use with my team and why I use those questions.

· What was your favourite task/role/project in the past 12 months and why? What made it so special? What made it successful? What did you do to make it work so well? This is a great question as it helps you to find patterns of success. You get to learn what motivates your team member.

· What was your biggest mistake/regret of the past 12 months and what did you learn from it? Another great question. Often this will help identify areas you need to keep an eye on in the future. For example, was there a particular personality they couldn’t work with, were they having problems with time management or trouble with balancing work and life? By having them reflect and learn from their mistakes you help teach that mistakes happen in life – it is what you do with them that are important.


To have a look at some of the other questions I ask my team during their employee performance reviews here is a link to one of my articles.

Until next time

Ingrid




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