Performance Review 101 - Scale, Criteria, Calibration and Rating
Precursor to a Performance Review - A must for EMs
(This is part 2 of the performance management series - I’m writing a series of posts for EMs to manage an individual's performance with specific cases and insights and how they can do a well thought out, fair and complete performance review. Check out the first article on the people dynamics about performance management if you missed it)
Carrying out a fair and unbiased performance review is not easy. If you’re not understanding the system and rationale behind it, it’s next to impossible.
Performance review process might look like a grand ceremony for your teammates as they think you, managers, are preparing for months well ahead. But sadly that’s not the reality every time. EMs are trying hard to find time and cramp doing performance reviews in a matter of hours. Performance rating is not a magic number that you can spin up in a few hours, you have to arrive at it. Sadly there’s no shortcut for conducting a fair performance review. It has to be well thought out and you have to spend enough time.
Individuals' performance in your teams is measured on a scale against a set of criteria defined for their respective level and job function. Let’s take a look at terminologies first with some practical insights on specific cases and later put it together.
Scale
Get the basics right
Before you do a performance review for your direct reports, make sure you understand the scale in which they have to be assessed. Different EMs rate performance differently. For some, 3 / 5 means that, individual is performing at a mediocre level. For another EM, it means that the individual met expectations set.
Get the basics right by understanding what each number means in the scale and how it corresponds to your people’s performance. To rate an individual above 3, they should have contributed above their expectations by going the extra mile like mentoring, ramped up other engineers in the team and led delivering an impactful project. Are the engineer’s contributions made visible to your manager and in the leadership group as well? Perfect! Having that visibility helps the reasoning behind such a high rating.
Performing at the next level
As the term indicates, these are the individuals who are performing above their current job level. A senior performing to the level of a staff, A mid-level engineer performing to the level of senior, etc. I recommend assessing a candidate not only to their level but deliberately to the next level, to understand how far are they from reaching it and what are the skills and behavior that they need to exhibit.
Individuals who are performing at the next level are candidates for potential promotion. But promotion cases are a much more complex topic than you think. I promise I’ll write up a separate post on promotion cases.
3 / 5 is not bad at all
As you can see in the scale, 3 / 5 is not bad at all. This means that the individual performed as per the expectations. This scale is not like a school score card where scoring 100 / 100 only means that the individual has performed to the fullest. Same has to be discussed with your direct report as well.
Unacceptable performance
Unacceptable performance is nothing but individuals performing at a level lower than theirs and impacting the team's performance to an extent. Deliverables weren’t on time, quality has taken a toll as well and if there’s an issue with attitude and behavior, it makes the situation worse. We’ll discuss this case in detail in an upcoming post about how you can do a performance review for low performers and what could be the next steps.
Peer EM Alignment
Aligning this with your peer EMs and other leadership groups is quite important as well as it will be crucial in performance calibration within your domain, consisting of multiple teams.
Performance Criteria 🎯
Performance Criteria are nothing but metrics based on what individuals will be assessed. It varies from organization to organization. But within the same organization, it tends to be the same even between different teams and nature and mainly inherited from core values of your organization.
Some organizations go overboard by having too many performance criteria which may not be effective and in fact ruin the whole process of performance management. Performance criteria have to be carefully designed that’s holistic and to the point. And mainly your people’ team is responsible for it. Any doubts that you have about performance criteria? - they are your best bet.
Some examples of performance criteria are, but not limited to: Impact, Leadership, Integrity, Togetherness / Collaboration. Let’s take a look at some of them with examples.
Impact 💥
It’s the single most important performance criteria that through their work what impact they have created for the product/service and the organization. And it has multiple layers to it. Impact created: on the technical systems, on the people they work with, on the product or the business, on the culture.
What system metrics have they improved?
How did they create an impact with other team members, being the force multiplier and help them ramp up?
How did they contribute to the bigger release that customers were super happy about and brought a new business prospect?
How did they contribute to the team’s culture in defining or even living it?
Leadership 🥇
How the individual led a project, led a difficult situation like conflict or an incident resolution, led as an example during a failure, led a conversation. It’s leadership all the way.
Leadership is also about raising hands when they see a problem and leading in finding a solution for it. It’s rarely done alone. How the individual takes ownership, leads and motivates the team is also a trait of a good leader.
Integrity 💯
How team oriented the individual is and at the same time taking good self care, being honest and transparent by accepting failures and looking for continuous improvement, being authentic.
Collaboration 🤝🤝🏻🙌🤝🏼
How collaborative is the individual, Being a team player and force multiplier by mentoring and sharing knowledge, Collaboration with cross functional stakeholders, How clear and effective are they communicating in written and oral form?
Assess above criteria against specific cases and how the individual exhibited their abilities. Do you think you can identify specific cases in just a matter of hours right before performance review discussion and fill it up? - I bet not. Maintain a journal on where the individual did well and could have done better against performance criteria and share the feedback on a regular basis in your 1-1s.
Above criteria are just for reference, identify what are those for your teams and set clear expectations with your direct reports.
Can a skill be a performance criteria?
Skill and performance aren’t the same. A highly skillful engineer may not have performed well against criteria set for them. And an engineer with average skills would have performed better, given the role and the context. Be wary about that. Performance is nothing but exhibiting one’s skills and contributing.
It’s not how many moves a dancer 🕺 💃 knows but how he performs on the stage matters. That’s what performance is all about.
Levels and Job Function
Performance criteria remains more or less the same irrespective of levels and job function. But the expectations and responsibility differ between levels. The higher the level, the more expectations and the responsibility.
Levels and Job function are too different from company to company and on that note, I would prefer to skip them explaining it as it has less relevance to this article.
Calibration 📐
It’s the act of calibrating performance ratings of engineers in multiple teams by applying the consistent set of standards.
Different EMs rate performance differently. After you initially assess your direct report, you come together with other EMs (of teams under the same umbrella) to discuss penultimate ratings (rating that aren’t final and public yet) given and rationale behind it. This conversation is especially interesting to discuss about extremes: highest rating, lowest rating and cases for promotions where you have promotion proposals from 2 EMs of different teams, but only one can be promoted.
Whole point is not to rank engineers among different teams but rather act as a standard to understand and even have conversations on disagreements and discrepancies among EMs.
Especially if you’re a new EM, your first few calibration sessions are tricky and it takes time to master. You might feel bad about going wrong or what if your proposal hasn't been accepted. Go with a mindset that you along with your other EMs are there to discuss and come out with an unbiased decision without having the feeling of being judged and showing favouritism.
One important note to keep in mind is, these calibrations are confidential and only for EMs to carry out an unbiased fair performance review among teams under the same umbrella - strictly not to be shared with your direct reports.
In the next part of this performance management series, we’ll discuss how to write a performance review and later conclude with conversation with your direct report and specific cases like high/low performers, salary discussions etc.
Find the part 3 here:
Would you like a specific topic or scenarios to be featured in this performance management series? - I would love to hear your feedback.
What’s your experience when it comes to preparing for carrying out a performance review? What was the difficult part in understanding the system and rationale behind it? - Leave your thoughts in the comments.