Are staff performance reviews holding back your business?

Performance reviews are a common, and much grumbled about, business practice, but do they even help your business thrive and become more innovative? Angie Herbers, founder and CEO of FourPointe Consulting, says they actually make your business run less effectively.

“People want to be encouraged and told what they’re doing right,” Herbers said in her 2018 MDRT EDGE workshop. Your employees want feedback on their work, but they want to know that they’re helping you. They want to feel they are contributing to you and your practice. Performance reviews don’t accomplish that.

Performance reviews create an environment where your staff grasps to control something for themselves. In the process, they lose their focus on helping you.

It’s about core values and not “performance”

Instead of performance metrics, measure your team on core values — and walk your talk. To come up with core values for your practice, first think about what you really want for your business. Then write down how you want your team to act. If you have written any sentence that doesn’t match how you behave, then you need to change. Your firm’s culture is a reflection of the leader, and you can’t ask someone to do something you’re not willing to do.

Remember, keep your list short, with one or two core values. Traditional performance reviews list dozens of ratings for employees to work toward. It’s overwhelming. Nobody can act on all those items, Herbers said. Too many things on a list also blur people’s understanding of priorities.

Create strategies

Once you have a concise and focused list, develop with each team member a strategy to achieve the practice’s core values. Then throughout the year, coach them to keep them on track. That way, you don’t have to summarize those things at the end of the year.

“In my own business, we have one core value, and that’s ‘go beyond you,’” Herbers said. Going beyond you means focusing on being holistic, on personal and professional growth, and on working together.

Approach your staff as their leader and coach. Show them how they are contributing, and they’ll work for you toward your goals. When you do that, Herbers added, “you get rid of those ridiculous performance reports that aren’t working. No more performance reports.”

From Herbers’ presentation, “Building an organizational culture” (MDRT members only) 

Learn more about working with teams in

• Read “Evaluating employee performance” in MDRT’s Hiring Guide
• Find more leadership ideas in the video “Let go and lead”