From Performance Review to Action Plan to Results

What is the point of a performance review if nothing changes after it? If your feedback lives in a PDF and not in your day-to-day growth, you're missing the entire point and you're missing opportunity. Today we're going beyond the performance review. I'm talking directly to professionals who are ready to own their own development and to leaders ready to stop checking boxes and start building people. You'll learn how to turn that feedback, good, bad, or vague, into powerful, practical action plans that drive real change. Whether you're climbing the ladder or coaching others to rise, this episode is your roadmap from performance reflection to professional execution and evolution. So let's turn the review into results.

Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms today's managers into tomorrow's powerhouse leaders. Your host, Bernadette Boas, executive coach and author, brings you into a world where the corporate grind meets personal growth and success in each and every episode. With more than 25 years in corporate trenches, Bernadette's own journey from being dismissed as a tyrant boss to becoming a sought-after leadership coach and speaker illustrates the very essence of transformation that she now inspires in others with her tips, strategies, and stories. So if you are ready to shed the bitches of fear and insecurity, ditch the imposter syndrome, and step into the role of the powerhouse leader you were born to be, this podcast is for you. Let's do this.

In a recent episode, we already talked about how to write powerful performance reviews from an employee's perspective, as well as from the manager's perspective. And you can find that episode in our library on bolafirecoaching.com/podcast. It's called Power Plays for Writing Powerful Performance Reviews. Once the performance review is written, and even once it's given to the individual, there's a lot more that has to be done as a result of the feedback provided in that performance review. It is not the endpoint. It's not the finishing line. It's actually the launchpad to their development and their growth, which means it'll also lend itself to your own development, growth, and success. Let's first talk about why are performance reviews so bad at lending themselves to growth, lending themselves to development, lending themselves to success. There's common pitfalls. There's 3 of them that I want to discuss that really you need to recognize as a manager in order to ensure that your performance reviews, given, discussed, and action planned, are meeting the needs of your employee, are meeting the needs of the growth and the development and the learning opportunities that they're seeking. The first one is once the conversation is over and the employee signs, you sign, and maybe you hit a send button. The conversation ends. The follow-through ends. The performance review is considered yesterday and not a living tool that should be used for moving forward. That's one pitfall that you really want to avoid. You want to make that performance review a living, breathing document that your employee can use to understand what comes next, what they need to do next, and a pathway for achieving the next goal or objective that you or they have for themselves. The second one, second pitfall that is, is that the feedback is way too vague. This is an area that I often will work with my clients on, that being the manager, but also the employee who's submitting their self-assessment into their manager, because too often It's so vague, you don't get anything from it. And that hurts both the employee and the manager. It hurts if they are too vague, if they are too generic or vanilla in providing an assessment, a recap of their accomplishments, of their challenges, of the areas for development that they want to focus on, as well as maybe what feedback they've received. At the same time, if the manager is even given a very detailed, very robust, very rich performance review assessment from their employee, oftentimes they'll simply say, oh, okay, great job. Keep up the good work. This is an area that I want you to focus on, with, and leaving it at that without putting context, without putting additional details around their own observations of this individual. Throughout that, that time period, whether it's the end of the year or mid-year. And that is only gonna fall flat to the employee because if you as the manager, let's say, aren't providing them that context, aren't providing the examples, aren't providing the specifics around their performance, good, bad, or vague, as I mentioned, then they really have nothing to leverage to learn from. If you're not able to spell out specifics or give them the illustrations or the scenarios or the examples of the behavior or of the goal or the metric that they were to work to achieve, then, you know, it falls flat on them. It's not fair to them and they don't know what to do with it. You need to be careful to ensure you're taking time, you're being intentional, And you're providing that context to your performance as the employee, and then to the performance of your employee, along with what do they need to do next, along with that detailed action plan. So they know what the expectations are going forward, and they have new goals and new objectives to pursue and accomplish. The pitfall being not only the conversation often ends with, the performance review, but also that the feedback is often too vague. The third pitfall is the fact that the HR pretty much will dictate what that performance review form looks like. And too many people just use it as a fill-in-the-blank. I often find that there needs to be some creativity to what it is that you would want to share with either from the employee to the manager or the manager to the employee that may not fit in the very strict, very structured HR form. So you really want to ensure that regardless of what the boxes are asking you for, that you provide the depth of detail, depth of feedback that that employee needs so that they are clear they are understanding and that they know what to do next with it. Those pitfalls that you want to avoid is ensuring that the conversation doesn't end with the review, ensuring that it's not vague, that it provides depth and details and specifics and examples and that action plan for follow-through and that fact that if you're form is kind of like a fill-in-the-blank. If you need to add any context that isn't in that structured form, you need to add it because it won't be fair to your employee if they're lacking feedback, observation, critique, praise, just because it doesn't fit into this HR form that you were given. Now let's talk about what's at stake. What is the impact if managers aren't effective in providing a very action-oriented performance review back to their employees? Because there is an impact. So we talked about the fact that they won't have the clarity. They won't know the direction that they're going in. Well, what that causes is the employee will feel as if they're not wanting to be engaged with you or with the business because there's no value in it for them. They don't see where they're gonna be able to contribute and grow and develop into the future of the team or the business. So why would they engage? Why would they exhaust themselves? And I hear way too often where an employee will say, well, based on our policies for raises and for promotions, I'm not going to get a bonus because I'm at a ceiling. I've hit the wall when it comes to my compensation. So why am I going to go over and beyond? Unfortunately, some policies may just cause an employee not to be engaged, but you as a leader can at least protect them. And get very creative as far as ensuring that you keep them engaged and you keep them feeling valued and important. Another impact to not providing robust and action-oriented feedback through your performance review to your employees is you're going to lose them. If they don't feel that there's a plan, if, and you're not considering what comes next, how they can grow. Where their strengths are, what opportunities there might be sometime in the future. Well, they're going to just throw up their hands and they're going to leave. So what's at stake is the fact that you're going to have a retention issue. You're going to have a turnover issue. You're going to have a morale issue amongst your team or with an individual. And maybe that individual is a high potential individual of which you do not want to risk losing them. And individuals just want to feel as if they're making a difference, as if they're contributing, that they're valued, that they're important, that they have that opportunity to grow and to develop and to advance. No one wants to just stay where they are today. Think of it from your own perspective. What is it that you want? What is it that you need from your manager? What is it that you're aspiring to pursue and accomplish? Your employees are no different in having those same emotions, same aspirations, same dreams. And therefore, you need to figure out what you need to be doing differently, possibly, in order to give them what they need to stay engaged, to not leave you, and not leave the company and to feel as if they have opportunities to grow. Disengaged individuals or individuals who feel as if there's no path for them, they're just going to erode the return on investment you get from them because your current talent is going to feel restricted and future talent is going to resist coming in if they do their due diligence and then they learn that the process for performance review, the process for action development plans, the process for promotions and opportunities are not there, well then they're just gonna go look for better opportunities elsewhere. So our goal is to avoid all those pitfalls and to not get anywhere close to those impacts to the business, those negative impacts to the business. And how we wanna do that is let's talk about a framework, a 4-step framework that both an employee can follow, and then we'll have a 4-part framework that leaders can follow when it comes to turning the performance review into an action plan that, that are going to benefit the employee, the manager, and the business as a whole. Let's start with managers out there. If it's you listening and not your employees, then pass this on to your employees. But for all of you, whether you're the employee or the manager, You're all employees, right? Even leaders will want to consider this 4-part framework from an employee's perspective when they're addressing their own performance review and action development plans. First, we're going to translate the feedback from the performance review in such a way that is easily kind of categorized. You can look at it as themes of the feedback. Being received that you can then really zone in on to determine what needs to come next. Take your performance review and if they're like most, they'll have goals that were passed down from the business to the boss, from the boss to the employee. And they're very, very much probably the hard goals, the hard metrics, the business results metrics. And then from there, there are probably shared goals from the team, maybe projects, initiatives, new implementations, whatever the case might be. And then it could be specific personal and professional development goals that were linked specifically to you as an employee. A lot of times, those are the kind of the 3 big categories of the performance review. So take all the feedback, even the feedback regarding the hard metrics, the shared goals. What were they? Uh, what was the achievement? What was the feedback received from the manager? And put them in themes because there could be things as far as those hard goals and those hard metrics and whether or not you accomplished it or not, that they might have provided feedback in regards to. You know, you missed it by 20% due to not being fully engaged, not readily available to the team. Your workload prevented you from spending the amount of time you needed to, whatever the case might be. Also focus on the 3 categories that we talked about. The shared goals. What feedback did you receive regarding your participation, your contribution to the shared goals? And so put those into themes. And then your personal development, professional development goals that were given to you, you know, what is the feedback there as far as your behavior, your performance, your challenges, your blind spots, your strengths, so forth and so on? Are there themes such as themes could be teaming, engagement, communication, leadership. Strategic thinking. It could be prioritization, time management, whatever the case might be. Put them into categories and look for the commonalities. And once you have all of that, you can pick up on some nuances. You can pick up on some patterns. You could pick up on some consistencies of strengths, blind spots, or areas for improvement. That you then can draft an action plan against. And keep in mind something: action plans are not just for areas for improvement or weaknesses or even those blind spots. Action plans can also be, how do I leverage my strengths? And your manager should be thinking about, how do I have this individual leverage their strengths, leverage a key skill that they have that maybe they're not optimizing fully or completely? Throughout the team and throughout the goals that we have for them. It could be your strengths, your blind spots, your weaknesses, your areas for improvement. Any of those areas could go into your action plan. But before you move on from that step, what you wanna do is after you've identified some themes, you found some patterns and some consistencies and overlaps, you wanna look at it and you wanna be brutally honest with yourself. As far as what is this feedback telling? What is it that I need to learn about this feedback? And again, you might be learning about your strengths. You might be learning about your hidden talents, your hidden skills. You might be learning about some blind spots or some weaknesses that you have. So you simply want to be brutally honest because this is all about your development and growth, and you want to ask yourself, what is it that I I need to be taking away and learning from this feedback? All right. So that's the first part of your 4-part framework for employees. After that, you're gonna define your SMART development goals as a result of it. Now, I always talk in 3s. So depending upon how many themes comes out, how many groupings or categories of those themes, such as the communication and the leadership and strategic thinking, so forth and so on. You want to pick 1 to 3 that are most critical, that are going to have the most impact to you achieving your goals going forward, or that are negatively impacting you today in achieving your goals. You want to focus on 1 to 3 of those and ensure that you're defining specific goals around those things. That's the first two parts. You're going to take the feedback, group them into themes, look at those themes and that feedback, and learn from it. And then you're going to identify 1 to 3 of them that you're going to turn into very SMART actionable goals. Now, the third step, once you have your SMART goals, what you then want to be looking at is based on all this feedback and based on the goals I just established. What are my learning actions? What can you be doing to elevate and enrich your own leadership right now? Your own ability to team, your own growth, your own professional development. What are those things you could be doing in order to complement the SMART goals and/or contribute to achieving the SMART goals? It could be anything from the resources or the support I need is mentoring. Coaching, taking some classes, getting on a project that might stretch my capabilities or that might provide me new skills. Maybe I need to shadow someone in order to learn something new. Maybe it's books, maybe it's podcasts, maybe it's videos, masterminds, whatever the case might be. But what are those learning actions you could also be adding into your repertoire to support the SMART goals that you're going to pursue based on the feedback that you received. Following all of this is you also want to ensure that there's some degree of accountability built into you going and pursuing those SMART goals and acting on those learning actions. You want to talk to your manager. You want to talk to other individuals to provide accountability to you. That you are indeed taking action and moving forward and making changes based on what it is that you have defined for yourself as your performance action plan. You might even create a cadence around it, meaning you might say to your manager, can we touch base once a month over the next 6 months so I can review where I am, what challenges I'm having, what opportunities I have. What questions or what advice I need. One, ensure that you're putting accountability in place. And then two, add to that a cadence around getting that accountability, getting that additional feedback and observations regarding how you're moving forward. Part of the framework. So we talked about the framework being break down your feedback into themes. From that, create SMART goals, then formulate some learning actions beyond or contributing to your SMART goals. Now you need to go and make the ask, so to speak. You need to review your action plan with your manager. If, if it's not already been collaborated on, and we'll talk about that when we get to the manager's framework, you want to take your plan and go to your manager with it, review it, provide them your thought process behind it, your reasoning, the value to you. The impact, positively preferred, to the team and to the business and to that individual, the manager, and gain their support and their buy-in and, and ask them for what it is that you need. You might need their support. You might need them to make investments in what it is that you want— mentoring, coaching, courses, programs. You might need advocacy or sponsorship from them to get onto a project for you to be stretched. Maybe you need their advocacy to find a place to be shadowed. This is your time to advocate for yourself. Now, if you follow this 4-part framework, you will have all the formulations of a, a very effective, very results-oriented action plan. And if you have already discussed it and gotten that sign-off and that buy-in from that 4th step of the framework from your manager, then everyone is good. Everyone is clear. Everyone is on the same page, and you're going to have a sense of confidence and clarity and certainty about what you need to do next. The feedback I get from individuals all the time is that's all they want. Employees just want to know that what path they should take and, and they don't need to be told how to get there or how to go down that path, but they need to be told what that path is and maybe what the end result is expected to be, but they need some clarity and they need some confidence that you're there in support of them and you have their back. Your performance review can become very, very results-oriented by following this 4-step framework from an employee's perspective. Let's talk about the manager. What is the framework they should be following in order to turn reviews into results? Managers, your success depends on the strength of your team members. And as a result of that, that you need to provide them the guidance, the detailed feedback, and the support reinforcing their strengths while highlighting where they need to develop in order to ensure that everyone is optimizing their capability and functioning in a very effective, productive way. So everyone is successful at the end of the day. And in order to do that, there's 4 steps that I would want you to follow in order to ensure that that is the end result of these performance reviews, that we don't want to be just a PDF in a filing cabinet. We want them to be a blueprint for achievement, for results, and for ultimate success. I mentioned earlier that one of the common pitfalls is that once the conversation ends, even the conversation of this detailed action plan from an employee's perspective, even after that ends, oftentimes everything stops as far as ongoing feedback, ongoing Oversight, ongoing support. And so the first part of your framework as a manager, when it comes to the reviews for your people, is to ensure that those reviews are reinforced. And reinforced, meaning that you actually schedule follow-ups. You create a cadence of touch bases. You do check-ins on what it is that they laid out in their own action plan that you collaborated and discussed and signed off on, and how are they doing? What successes have they had? What challenges are they having? What support do they need? What investment do they need in order to pursue those learning actions, but also to achieve the SMART goals that they've defined for themselves? So you want to ensure that the number one thing you're doing beyond that conversation is that you have follow-through. And that could even involve additional feedback, additional observation, maybe of strengths, but maybe of, okay, we're still not where we wanna be. I still need you to do X, Y, and Z. I still see you challenged here, but great job in pursuing that particular goal that you were working toward. It's reinforcing what it is that you provided them from the beginning. The second one would be, through this process, you want to be co-creating or co-collaborating on this plan. Now, again, that employee may have come to you with their original plan laid out. Based on their own framework of looking over the feedback, putting them into themes, creating their own idea of the SMART goals, learning actions, so forth and so on. However, you might have come into the discussion with your own ideas. So you really want to, one, include the employee throughout your creation of the development plan. Or ensure that you're open and you're collaborating when they bring it to you. So it's the partnership and that performance development plan being solidified. And you want to be actively asking them questions and engaging them in regards to their review and their action plan, such as, so what did you take away from the feedback? And that's when they might get into themes. How did you feel about it? What excited you about the feedback, about the statements that were made about you, the observations, the critique? What made you concerned, or what made you really have to reflect on your own performance of behavior? Let's talk about it so I understand how I can support you. Reinforcing the feedback that you're providing, reinforcing the accomplishments, reinforcing the strengths. Reinforcing the blind spots, reinforcing the observations or any other feedback from other people that you had laid out in their performance review, reinforcing the areas for development, and ensuring that they really feel confident and supported when it comes to that feedback. They may not like it. Remember, good, bad, or vague. At the same time, as long as you are able to defend it, able to provide details and context around it, able to champion and support them addressing it and then overcoming it, as long as you're doing all of that, then they'll feel confident about what it is that they need to do next to address it. So reinforcement is absolutely critical. The last thing you wanna be sure of, whether it's from you or from them, the employee, is that everything is captured, documented, written up, sent to both parties, reviewed, edited if need be, and finalized and signed off on to ensure that both of you are on the same page, have the same expectations, and understand that path that we talked about. Every employee wants to know that they're contributing to the success and the future of the business. And so you don't wanna leave them as one-offs without being able to tie them back to the growth of the team, the development of the team, the success of the team. Even when it comes to things that someone needs to improve on, well, I need you to improve on your communication skills, your time management skills, so it doesn't negatively impact the productivity of the team. And you working on them and focusing on X, Y, and Z will elevate your contribution to the team, your readiness, your availability to the team, as well as then the team coming together and working as a collective unit and being very focused and very effective in accomplishing this goal. So you want to always tie back the action plans that you're defining for them, tie it back to how it impacts the results of the team and the business. So they can see that how they show up each and every day into their job, into their role, into the team is impacting the effectiveness or the productivity not only of themselves, but of the team and the business, I'll add, and the business. So make sure you're creating that linkage from their action plans to the ultimate results of the team and the business. And lastly, again, you wanna be part of that discussion around the accountability and the cadence of that accountability. You wanna be Talking to them about what do you need from an accountability perspective as you go forward? How often do you need it? How do you want to receive it? In what manner? Not necessarily what form, like email or personal, but more so, you know, how do you receive feedback and how do you want to receive feedback? Some people just want to be told. Directly. Just tell me how it is. Good, bad, or ugly. Just tell me how it is. Others need it to be more subtle, more softer, more supportive, more motivating, more inspiring. Take this opportunity to discuss with them how do they want to be held accountable? How often do they want to be held accountable? How often do they want just check-ins, just requests for support? Do you have what you need? Motivation. Inspiration, championing, we all want it and need it. And so you want to get clarity from them around it. So, you know, exactly what is needed in order to get the best out of that individual as they go to pursue and achieve their goals for not only themselves, but for the team and for you. That being the framework for the employee and the framework for the manager. Let me just leave you with a couple of tips. First, for the employee, don't take your growth, your development for granted, that someone's going to come along and tap you on the shoulder and hand you a beautiful blueprint or roadmap for your career trajectory, your career advancement, your career success. Make sure you're advocating for yourself. You're taking the lead. You're taking the initiative to develop your plan yourself and seeking the support and asking for the support that is needed. Now, for the managers, if you are not focused 98% of your time, I'm leaving 2% for wiggle room on looking strategically, looking at the vision of the business, so forth and so on. But if you're not completely focused and prioritizing the growth and development of your people, then all you're doing is managing tasks. All you're doing is doing. So I often talk to my clients about, are they a doobie or are they a leader? And I would suspect as powerhouse leaders that listen and participate with this podcast, that you wanna be a leader or you are a leader. To do so, you need to be solely focused on the growth and development of your people and not just managing tasks. Now, to summarize, we talked about the fact that it doesn't stop at performance reviews. That's just the starting point, the launchpad. It goes further from that. You wanna build momentum, you wanna build excitement, you wanna build energy, confidence, value in your team members in order to get the most and the best out of them. Employees, you want to be sure that you take your feedback, you learn from it, you learn from it, and then you develop plans to grow from it. And managers, you really want to lead the development and the growth of your people and the business. Because it's your job. That's what you're responsible for. A call to action for all of you would be, as an employee, take the initiative, be proactive in developing your development action plan, and do what you need to do to get that in front of your manager. Now, you might have a protocol, you know, a process to follow. And that's fine, but don't wait for them to come to you. You take the initiative. And for the managers, ensure that you are intentionally and purposely laying out not only that initial conversation, but ongoing conversations to ensure you're checking in and you understand the pulse of your team members and that you understand what it is that they need and what it is that they have. And where they are in achieving their development plans. Now I get it. It's not as easy as it sounds. These 4-part frameworks gives you a roadmap, yet there's a lot of detail and a lot of ways for things to go in all kinds of directions within each part of those 4-part frameworks. And let alone, time is very limited for many of us. However, if you need support, guidance, if you need some insights to deliver for your employees and/or for your managers and the business, then don't hesitate to reach out and let's talk. Simply schedule a call and within a 30-minute timeframe, we can talk about the challenges that you're having, the opportunities that are in front of you, and steps you could be taking to make sure that you can transform reviews into results and you can continue to be and/or work to become the powerhouse leader you're meant to be. Be sure to follow the show. Once again, you can go to ballofirecoaching.com/podcast. Not only get the episode regarding writing powerful performance reviews,, but you can dive into our whole library of great guests and great topics that we've talked about over the last several years. Until next time, I'll look forward to having you for another episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Bye.

Thank you for tuning into today's episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Every journey taken together is another step towards unleashing the powerhouse leader within you. Don't miss any of our weekly episodes. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever wherever you love to listen. And for those who thrive on visual content, catch us on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Want to dive deeper with Bernadette on becoming a powerhouse leader? Visit balloffirecoaching.com to learn more about how she helps professionals, HR executives, and team leaders elevate overall team performance. You've been listening to Shedding the Corporate Bitch with Bernadette Boas. Until next time, keep shedding, keep growing, and keep leading.