How to make sense of performance management questions

Almost everything written about performance management is addressed to the manager. This page is written for both chairs, because the same handful of questions decides whether the process is honest, and either party can ask them.

Scope. These are questions about clarity, not about entitlements. Rules on evaluation, records, pay, discipline, dismissal and how disputes are raised differ by jurisdiction and by employer, and your organization will have its own binding policies. For anything with formal consequences, or where you believe a process has gone wrong, go to your HR function or an employment adviser rather than working from general guidance.

What to take away

• If you cannot say what you are being assessed on, who decides, and when, those three questions are the ones to ask first, and a manager who cannot answer them has a problem to fix rather than a difficult employee.
• Ask what specifically would have produced a different outcome. It is the one question that separates a judgment with evidence behind it from an impression.
• Nothing in an assessment should be new. If it is, that is a fact about the preceding months and worth naming plainly at the time.

The three anyone should be able to answer

Whichever side of the table you are on, these should have answers you could write down.

What am I assessed on, in observable terms? A good answer names outcomes and behaviors that someone else could check. A weak answer is a list of qualities. If the reply is that you are assessed on the overall contribution, ask what the last person who did poorly did.

Who decides, and who else is in the room? Many organizations run a comparison step between managers before anything is final. Knowing whether your manager is the decider or an advocate changes what is worth discussing with them and when.

When is it decided, relative to when I would hear about a concern? If the answer is that concerns surface at the decision, the process has a structural problem, and it is worth saying so before the cycle rather than after. Public-sector guidance treats the gap between an event and the conversation about it as the thing to close, which is what the monitoring stage of the US Office of Personnel Management's cycle describes.

A manager who cannot answer these for their own team should treat that as the highest priority item on their list. It is the root of a large share of what later presents as attitude, disengagement or surprise.

Questions worth asking before you accept a goal

Goals are usually handed over and agreed to in the same breath. Four questions asked at that moment prevent most of the trouble that arrives later.

• Which part of this is in my control, and what happens to the rest? Shared outcomes are fine as long as your part is stated. If it is not, ask for it in a sentence.
• Is this the bar or the ambition? Stretch targets that quietly become the standard stop people from setting stretch targets. Ask which this is, and get the answer in writing if the two are treated differently.
• What gets dropped to make room? A goal added to a full workload is resolved later by somebody deciding privately what to abandon. Better to decide it now, together.
• What happens if circumstances change? A goal invalidated in month two by a change of direction should be renegotiated, not marked as missed at the end of the year. Agree that in advance, when it costs nothing.

Managers can ask these of themselves before handing anything over. If any of the four has no answer, the goal is not ready.

When you disagree with an assessment

One question does most of the work: what specifically would have produced a different result?

A useful answer names events, decisions or outcomes. An answer that cannot get past characterization is a signal about the process rather than about you, and it is reasonable to say that the answer does not give you anything to act on and ask again.

Three follow-ups worth having ready. Which of this was raised with me at the time, and if none of it was, why not? Was this assessed on my whole period or on the recent part of it? And what would you need to see, and by when, for this to be different next time?

Keep it about evidence rather than about fairness in the abstract. A conversation about specifics can change something. A conversation about whether the process is fair usually cannot, at least not in that room, and where you believe a process has genuinely gone wrong, that belongs in whatever channel your employer provides and is worth taking advice on.

Questions a manager should ask before the conversation

Not of the other person. Of themselves.

• Is any of this new to them? If so, say that part out loud and own it.
• Have I asked what is getting in the way, and would I act on the answer?
• Am I assessing the whole period, or the last six weeks that I remember best?
• Does this person do work that leaves no trace, and have I looked for it rather than waited for it to appear?
• Would I be able to defend this to somebody who liked them, using only things that happened?

The last one catches more than the others. The fourth needs evidence you have to go and look for, and where to find it is covered in team management metrics. The standing habits that keep all of these from arriving at once, in a review, are in the management foundations checklist.

Questions that will not get you anywhere

"Am I in trouble?" Almost nobody will answer this directly, and the ambiguity that follows is worse than the original uncertainty. Ask instead what would need to change and by when, which is answerable and which a manager who has nothing in mind will find easy to say.

"How did other people do?" You will not be told, and asking makes the next question harder. What you can reasonably ask is what distinguishes the bands, in terms of work rather than in terms of people.

"Do you think I am doing well?" Invites reassurance, which is what you will get. Replace it with a request for one thing you should do differently, which is specific enough to answer honestly.

Anything asked in a group. Performance questions asked in front of colleagues convert the topic into status for everyone present, and the answers get calibrated accordingly.

The general craft of building a question that returns information rather than comfort is covered in management foundations questions, and it applies here more than anywhere. A question shaped around the answer you are hoping for collects agreement rather than evidence, which is confirmation bias doing its ordinary work.

Development, and the question underneath it

Development conversations go wrong when both people are actually discussing promotion and only one of them knows it.

Two questions separate them cleanly. What do you want to be able to do? is about capability and is available regardless of structure, budget or timing. What would need to be true for the next step to exist? is about the organization, and the honest answer is sometimes that it does not exist this year.

Saying that plainly is kinder than vague encouragement. People make reasonable decisions with accurate information and resentful ones with reassurance that turns out to be empty. The rest of that distinction is in the performance management pillar, and the day-to-day mechanism, which is what work someone gets given rather than what course they attend, sits with team management.

Common questions

My manager says everything is fine and then the review says otherwise. What do I do?

Ask, at the next opportunity, for one thing you should do differently, and ask it repeatedly over time rather than once. Where nothing useful ever comes back and an assessment later disagrees, that is a problem with the process rather than a problem you can solve by asking harder. What options you have then depends on your employer's policies and on where you are, which is a question for HR or an adviser.

As a manager, how much should I say about how somebody else was assessed?

Nothing about individuals. You can describe what distinguishes one level of performance from another using examples of work rather than examples of people, which is what the person is actually asking about.

Should any of these questions go in writing?

The ones about what you are assessed on and what would change the outcome benefit from a written answer, because both parties then have the same version and the drift between two memories is the source of most later disputes. Asking for it in writing is normal and should not be treated as an escalation by either side.