Your Employee Was Blindsided by Their Review. That’s On You.

Performance reviews are not just paperwork. They’re a reflection of leadership.

In this episode, Shelby and Belinda break down how strong leaders handle employee evaluations, difficult feedback, and accountability conversations without damaging trust or team morale.

They discuss:

• Why employees should never be surprised by feedback
• How to write more specific and actionable evaluations
• The difference between performance issues and personality conflicts
• Why documentation and HR processes matter
• What leaders get wrong about firing employees 

Whether you’re a first-time manager or a seasoned executive, this episode offers practical leadership advice for navigating one of the hardest parts of management: evaluating people fairly and effectively.

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Transcript

Legal And Ethical Review Mindset

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I think anybody who's listening can relate that there's usually one person around that you're like, yo, why don't they quit? Why don't they leave? Why are they still here? Like, make it go away. Right? Like, we've all encountered that person. So you have to be really careful for legal and ethical reasons. When you are working on their evaluation and you have to focus on what has this person done? What is their performance or lack of performance and not who they are.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

If your employee is surprised by their performance review, that's not their failure. That's yours. And I don't say that lightly, because the way you handle performance evaluations is actively shaping your team's trust, your credibility as a leader, and your reputation in rooms you may not even be in yet.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

If you haven't watched part one of this series where we walk through what to do after you receive a bad performance review, that's linked in the description. Because here's what I want you to understand: how you receive feedback and how you give feedback. They're more connected than most people realize. The leader who gives excellent feedback is almost always the leader who's learned to receive it too.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Subscribe so you don't miss new content. And if this video is useful, share it with a manager on your team. Because sometimes the gift isn't for you, it's for the people you lead.

SPEAKER_03 1:37

And here's what most people think performance reviews are about: paperwork, a form, a rating, a box that you check at the end of the quarter. But they're not. Performance reviews are about your ability to lead consistently, communicate directly, and make decisions before the stakes get too high. The review is just the paper trail, and your leadership, well, it's happened already, or it didn't happen, long before you sat down to write that review.

Reviews Are Leadership Proof

SPEAKER_00 2:08

In this episode, we're offering four tips for leaders writing performance evaluations. More importantly, if you follow these tips, it will separate you from the average manager into the leader that people actually want to follow. So welcome to the Leadership Tea Podcast, where leadership, culture, and clarity meet conversation. And if you like what you hear, leave us a comment and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

So oftentimes we can feel really nervous about that. Like, oh, I don't want people to get upset. I don't want people to feel demotivated. But we're not helping our employees grow if we're not offering them honest and clear feedback. And so it's like you don't want to be too harsh. You don't want to be discouraging. You want to be fair and balanced, but also thoughtful. And so an example that I think comes to mind for me is this idea of, let's say you write something like, so-and-so is great, they're a great team player, but they need to improve as a communicator and they give strong contributions, but they need to improve as a communicator. And so I know you've probably seen that in lots of performance reviews. I have as well, and it's unclear what that really means. Is the person having difficulty writing? Are they having difficulty speaking? Are they mean? Are they rude? What is the problem? And so I want to give an example of what that looks like when it's more developed and when it's more specific, because that vague feedback you think it's like protecting you and the employee, but it's actually hindering you from developing them. And so the example I might suggest there is saying something like so-and-so participates in many cross-functional meetings, but often they say very little during those meetings. And instead, they follow up those meetings with emails outlining suggestions even after key decisions are made. It would be more helpful if the employee could speak up during the meetings or provide this guidance or these insights during meetings so they can be helpful in the moment as decisions are being made. That's not necessarily the cleanest version of that. It's something that's more specific. And I'm being honest, that's actually pulling from something I got once. As I was. Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't even that I don't know how to communicate. It's that in that particular space, I had not adapted to the culture of the organization. I was very accustomed to like a hierarchical space. And so I was quiet in meetings because I was like, Well, I'm not in charge. My boss is here, and my boss speaks, and I'll just pass them notes or say things later. And so when my boss provided that feedback to me, it provided an opportunity for me to dig deeper as to like what did that really mean for me and to open up a discussion with him about well, here's why I did that. And giving him context. And then he's like, no, no, no. And so he overtly was able to tell me in this organization, we want you to talk, we want you to communicate, we want you to speak up in meetings. You don't have to worry about hierarchy. Oh, okay, cool. Now, got it. Now I know. Now I know. Now I make the change. But had he not been specific or not said anything, we could have gone the whole rating year without, you know, he was able to give me that in a quarterly feedback session. So I think for me, it's just making sure that people understand, be precise, say what needs to be said, but do it with dignity and with thoughtfulness.

Build A Quarterly Feedback Rhythm

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Your point on specificity cannot be overstated because no one likes an empty, critical feedback loop that doesn't give them something actionable to show that they're trying to make improvements where you've told them that they need to improve. Saying you're not a good communicator without giving a specific example, like you said, how does that help the situation? If you really want the person on your team to do better when it comes to briefing or their writing skills. And something else that you said on the quarterly sessions, that's actually a great segue to my first point, which is that leaders need to check the process. Performance evaluations are not solely the responsibility of the employee. It's really on the leader to make sure that you have a schedule where you are sitting down on a quarterly basis or whatever system you come up with, but you need to have a regular system in place where you're giving your employees feedback. You owe that to them. It's not, let's wait until the last minute and throw something together, which you and I have seen in multiple office settings. And yeah, you know, it's not the most glamorous part of being a leader or being a supervisor, but it is required. It is necessary. It is the responsibility of the supervisor to set up a schedule to give their employees regular feedback on their performance. This avoids surprises so that when the evaluation season is over and it's time to submit the evaluation, no one is shocked because you already have a record of what you've been discussing every quarter. And the other thing that I would say, as part of this checking the process, when it is time to submit the evaluation, have you been clear on what the inputs are that you want from your employees, how you want to receive that information, and what the timeline is. This is something that you and I, Belinda, did when we were at the operations center, the State Department's 911 equivalent. And we each had the pleasure or the misfortune or the really heavy duty of having to evaluate a lot of people at the same time in a very high-paced environment. And to your credit, I basically copied the template that you came up with in terms of how we wanted to receive input from people. So was it four bullet points or five bullet points? And did we need subheadings? Did we want them to identify a legitimate area for improvement that they had discussed with their direct supervisor during the year? But also we asked them to include information about the previous area for improvement and how they demonstrated that they actually improved in that area so that it didn't repeat or, you know, to make sure that the evaluation was a wholesome document. I bring up that example because I think it is very important. If you're working with an HR team, that's a best case scenario. If your human resources division has come up with specific guidelines. But in the absence of that, there's nothing stopping you as a manager from saying, this is the timeline that we're going to operate under for the evaluation season. These are my expectations in terms of how I want your input. This is what I expect, this is the format. It just makes life a lot easier for everyone involved.

Separate Performance From Personality

SPEAKER_03 9:50

Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think that also when you start having lots of smaller conversations, it helps you get ahead of HR problems. Yes. Right. People, instead of having somebody really explode at the end of the season, you get to let off a little steam, right? Like every quarter, you get to see where things are going, and you get to try to direct people in the right direction sooner so that you're not having an HR situation at the season. So yeah, I agree with you. Having a process in place and a timeline and meeting those benchmarks is really important. Well, I feel like that moves smoothly into my next suggestion, which is about focusing on a person's performance and not their personality. And I think we can all, anybody who's listening can relate that there's usually one person around that you're like, yo, why don't they quit? Why don't they leave? Why are they still here? Like they can go away. Right? Like we've all encountered that person. And so, or there's that employee maybe that you just don't get along with. They don't like you, they don't like your face. So you have to be really careful for legal and ethical reasons when you are working on their evaluation and you have to focus on what has this person done, what is their performance or lack of performance, and not who they are, right? And I think there's a difference between saying that someone is in their evaluation, so-and-so is difficult to work with. Okay, well, that's not based in data. Or you could say something like, again, I'm pulling from like a real example, you know, three of this person's subordinates have come to senior leadership and noted that this person yells frequently or does not provide clear instruction and is retaliatory in these ways, like being very specific, making sure that it doesn't sound like a character judgment, but rather documented patterns of observable behavior and something that you can really take to HR and something that you can defend. So we don't want to hide because someone is explosive or difficult to work with. It's just when we encounter those challenging people, it's an even more of a reason to be precise and think very clearly about what is this person's performance versus their whack attitude. Versus their whack attitude.

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Document Early And Partner With HR

When Letting Someone Go Helps

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Seriously, you just gave me some PTSD for a few people that I had to give an honest evaluation for. But your point, you know, evaluations should not be an example in character assassination. That's not what the evaluation period is for. You really do have to separate performance from personality, like you said, that's a bar. Leadership today often means working across borders, and your banking should keep up. Our sponsor, State Department Federal Credit Union, delivers digital first banking designed for globally mobile professionals. And I have been a proud SDFCU member for more than 25 years. With SDFCU's wise partnership, members can move money in over 40 currencies right inside their SDFCU account, making international payments simple, secure, and efficient. Visit SDFCU.org to learn more. State Department Federal Credit Union is federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration and is an equal housing lender. Membership and product eligibility are subject to approval. And related to what you said, especially when it comes to, you know, are there legal steps that may need to be taken? My final point is to check your files and your allies. And what I mean by that is, you know, in the previous episode where we were advising people on how to avoid getting a bad evaluation as a leader, as a supervisor, let's flip the script. What does the data say? What have you been documenting throughout the evaluation performance review season? And I also want to say something that's probably a little controversial, but I think if you haven't actually fired someone, or if you haven't at least begun the process of initiating letting someone go, you're probably missing the mark as a supervisor. Because as much as we want to think that everyone walks on water, as much as we want to have peaceful office environments, that's just not the case. That's not the reality in most human interactions. And so, in order to fire someone, guess what? You need to have documented the reasons or the examples of the performance or conduct issues that have led you to the conclusion that this person needs to be let go. And another point that I want to make as you think about your files and making sure that everything is in place as it should be. If you truly have a problematic employee on your team, the end of the evaluation season is not the time to bring in HR. You should have already been consulting with your human resources professionals. The moment that you sense that Bobby or Susie, you know, are missing the mark. Are they not showing up to work on time? Are they missing deadlines? Whatever the problems are, you should already be consulting with HR to make sure that you're following whatever the regulations say that you need to follow. But also just in case you do end up needing to separate this employee so that you have a record. So the HR is already tracking. So you're already crossing the T's and dotting the I's. And I would go a step further in suggesting that leaders also need to make sure that if your employee is truly like off the charts and explosive, or if there is the potential for things to really go sideways, it's probably a good idea to have an HR professional join you in some of these meetings, join you in your sessions, whether you're talking about their performance or anything else. It's it's a good practice to protect yourself, to make sure that you have a neutral third party to verify what's being said so that you don't get into this he said, she said situation where there's no one who can actually provide an accurate, neutral, objective third perspective that protects you and protects the employee, but ultimately protects you as a leader.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

Yeah, Shelby, I agree with that. I would add on that, where appropriate or where it's available, I would get professional liability insurance when in a leadership role. And I would also say that in one of my first official supervisory roles, I had to let someone go. And it was a very lengthy process. This is when I was still in government. It was very lengthy. And I was reluctant to do it and to go through the process because I thought this is gonna destroy the team, that it's gonna bring down morale. People thanked me.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Yes, they did. I'm sure they did because right?

SPEAKER_03 17:58

They were like, We've been waiting for years for someone to do something. Yes, and no one did. Thank you. They were like, so-and-so was getting away with doing nothing. We were doing all the work, we were resentful.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Yes, yeah, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Yeah, life only got better, right? I don't enjoy firing people. Yeah, most of us don't. I've seen where it actually can help the team when done properly and fairly.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

When done properly and fairly. Because it's also a sign of credibility for the rest of the team members that you are willing to call out bad behavior or poor performance when it needs to be called out. That's part of the job.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Definitely.

Coaching Offer And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_03 18:40

Well, Shelby, I think what I would want our audience to know is that this is the kind of work that we do every day with leaders. We're not just helping them write better evaluations, but we are helping them to build the clarity and the judgment and the confidence to have these types of conversations before they become problems on paper. Because leading well in moments like this, where you're writing performance reviews and you're giving hard feedback and you have high-stakes decisions, it's not a skill that we're all born with. It's a skill that we build. And it builds faster when you're not building it alone. So if you're leading a team and you're thinking more seriously about how you show up in moments like this, whether that's the performance conversations or managing up or just figuring out what your next move is, we work with leaders like that and who are navigating these kinds of challenges through our work with Grounded and Global. And so the link to book a call with us, it's a free call. It's available in the description. And there's no pressure, there's no pitch, just the clarity on where you are and what could be possible next. So, with that said, we look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you for watching us here on YouTube on the Leadership Tea Podcast. And this is where you can come to continue to sip wisdom and stir success.