6 Powerful Questions To Ask In Your Performance Review

Was your last performance review/appraisal enjoyable? Worthwhile? Inspiring? Constructive? It should be all of these things, if done right. But chances are, it wasn’t. And you won’t be the only one. I recently surveyed over 800 IT professionals from over 600 companies and discovered that over 70% felt their performance reviews were ineffective. What’s happening?

What the survey confirmed is that many of the people who experience the least satisfactory performance reviews didn’t ask enough questions . There is a strong correlation between the effort put into the review by the employee and their satisfaction.

There is one critical point I want to make upfront. Not all managers who conduct appraisals are experienced in the process. Every manager has their first time, and it takes more than one go to become good at it. The truth is, many new managers are just as nervous about conducting your review as you might be.

Whether you have a manager who is a novice at conducting reviews, or a seasoned expert, the challenge for you is the same: ask powerful questions in your performance review in order to get the most from it .

Here are six questions that will give you a solid base to start from:

1. I am going to start with the most powerful questions of all. There are 3 questions (I’ve grouped together) that will cover everything you need to know about your general performance. They are really powerful because you’re asking specific questions about your behaviors that your reviewer understands to effective, ineffective and non-existent. These are questions that are very difficult to fudge the answers on! I always ask these questions in my reviews, and I always get the most value from these questions alone.:
   1. "What should I continue to do?"
   2. "What should I stop doing?"
   3. "What should I start to do?"

   Ask yourself these questions. What do they make you think? Because of their directness, depth and coverage, it is these 3 questions that form the basis of most 360-degree feedback methods.

2. "What personal goals will deliver the most value to our organization?" – this question is very powerful as it links goal-setting to company value. It demonstrates your interest in the commercial success of your organization and emphasizes goals that you take personal accountability for.
3. If you’re in a technical role then you could ask "What emerging technologies could I investigate and report back on their potential value to our organization? " or if you fulfil a management role, "What emerging management practices could I investigate and report back on their potential value to our organization? " Or adapt the question to suit your specific role. The power of this question is you are offering to open new opportunities to your organization by linking innovation to organizational value and to produce a summary of your findings in business terms.
4. "What criteria should I satisfy to move onto the next level in this organization?" is a question which asks your reviewer to be explicit about the behaviors, skills or qualifications you will need to demonstrate to progress in your career; this might be grade, position, pay, or whatever. Don’t be afraid to ask this question – many people are, actually. If you don’t know what you have to achieve to be ready for promotion, then you are burying your head in the sand and hoping for the best.
5. Ask your boss "What can I do to make you more successful?" This is a very powerful question. Why? It works on two levels: Once again, you’re requesting goals to be set and demonstrating your willingness to be measured ("..I do.." and "..more successful.." ), and secondly, you are creating an opportunity to be delegated to, i.e. take a responsibility off your boss. Managers need to delegate to be successful, so create a situation where your manager can offer this to you.
6. And finally, the question "How will my role align to company direction in the future?" tackles two issues. The first is you’re asking to know more about the direction your company is taking, and secondly you’re asking how your role will fit into that future.

These questions have been tried and tested by over 100 IT professionals. 62% discovered that formulating a constructive set of questions in preparation for their Performance Appraisal resulted in satisfaction evidenced by increased scores from the appraisal in which it was asked. Moreover, 84% then found that the subsequent appraisal yielded even better scores. Why? Well what they found is that they then understood what adjustments they needed to undergo to make a greater contribution to the success of their organization. In other words, they found that they didn’t just do their job better, but they helped their colleagues, managers and reports succeed too.

These questions really are powerful!

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