Episode 12 – Performance Reviews Pt. 1

Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. Every couple of weeks we get together to talk about what matters to you as a professional project manager. We talk about project management certification, doing the stuff of project management, and we pick the brains of some of the leaders in the industry. I’m your host, Nick Walker; and with me are our resident experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. They are project managers themselves, and they instruct other project managers and those working to become one. Guys, here we are. It is officially summer now. And we’re in that time of year when maybe things get a little bit more relaxed. I don’t know. Does it feel like that to you? ANDY CROWE: I’m dressed up today, Nick. I don’t feel relaxed today. I’m on my game. NICK WALKER: You’re on. Okay, okay. Maybe nothing changes for you in the summertime. BILL YATES: It feels hot and muggy, I can tell you that. NICK WALKER: Yeah, it feels like it’s been summer for three weeks or more already. But here we are officially. Time of year that maybe some of us, Andy excluded, dress a little bit more relaxed. ANDY CROWE: Let me just say, Nick, that I am going to Hawaii in September. NICK WALKER: Oh, okay, there you go. ANDY CROWE: So that’s going to be – and it’s for one day of work, or maybe two days of work, and a lot more relaxation. NICK WALKER: There you go. ANDY CROWE: So maybe at that point we’ll get closer to your vision. NICK WALKER: It is the time of year when we think about vacations, too. So a lot of things are going on. But it’s also midyear, and there’s something that happens in midyear in most companies. And that is – are we ready to cue the scary music? This strikes terror into the hearts of many managers, as well as employees. We’re talking about, Andy? ANDY CROWE: Performance reviews. NICK WALKER: Performance reviews. There’s the scary music. All right. Granted, some performance reviews are fairly routine. Nobody gets killed, usually. But sometimes it can be kind of scary. Sometimes it can mean a job or no job. ANDY CROWE: Yeah, everybody’s blood pressure is going to go up during that time. And that goes for the person giving the performance review, definitely for the person receiving it. It is a natural anxiety-producing event, and it causes a lot of people some nervousness. So we’re here to talk through it and specifically look at it from a project manager’s perspective. Project managers a lot of times have to either conduct these or give input into them. And so we’re going to talk through that, and hopefully help talk some people off the balcony. BILL YATES: Yeah, I feel like this is an opportunity for us to reach out and hold the hand of the project manager and kind of another hand on the back going, hey, we’ve been there, done that. We’ve been on the receiving end. We’ve had to do the research to provide feedback to team members. We can help you with this. NICK WALKER: Good, good. Well, I’ve been on the receiving end of many performance reviews. BILL YATES: Yeah, we were going to talk to you about that. NICK WALKER: Oh, is this going to be a performance review now? Oh, you’re springing this on me. All right. Here we go. But I’ve never given one. You guys have. And I know that’s a huge responsibility. I’d like to get your perspective on that. Andy, how do you do it? How do you really get there? ANDY CROWE: You know, there’s a lot of different practices. And one interesting thing, one of my really good friends works for a sizable company here in Atlanta. And they are a utility company. And they rank every employee within the organization. I believe they have just shy of 2,000 employees. Every employee gets ranked from 1 to 1,999, all the way through. And I’ve always found that to be fascinating because I know how those...