Moyers

Here's the uncomfortable reality: most managers avoid giving regular feedback because they're terrible at it.
They don't know how to have constructive conversations about performance. They're afraid of demotivating people or creating conflict. They've never been taught how to separate behaviour from personality, or how to give criticism that actually helps rather than hurts.
So they punt these conversations to the annual review process, where they can hide behind forms and formal procedures instead of having to develop actual coaching skills.
This is a management development problem masquerading as a performance review problem. No amount of tweaking the annual review process will fix managers who don't know how to have ongoing performance conversations.
The organisations that get this right invest heavily in developing their managers' coaching and feedback skills. They provide training, mentoring, and ongoing support for having these conversations effectively.
They also create accountability for managers around the quality of these conversations. They measure manager effectiveness not just by team results, but by team development, engagement, and retention.
Because here's the thing: if your managers can't have effective performance conversations, your performance review process is irrelevant. And if they can have effective performance conversations, your performance review process is unnecessary.
What This Means for Your Team
Stop waiting for the annual review cycle to tell people how they're doing. Start having those conversations now, in the moment, when they can actually make a difference.
Focus on recent, specific examples of behaviour rather than general impressions or personality traits. Instead of "you're a good communicator," try "the way you explained that complex technical issue to the client yesterday made it easy for them to understand and approve the next phase."
Make feedback a two-way conversation. Ask people what they think went well, what they'd do differently, and what support they need. You'll learn more about their performance and development needs than any formal assessment process could tell you.
And please, for the love of effective management, stop forcing people to rate themselves on arbitrary scales. If you want to know how someone thinks they're performing, ask them directly. If you want to know what they need to improve, have a conversation about it.
The goal isn't to document performance for legal purposes - it's to help people get better at their jobs and achieve their career goals. Everything else is just bureaucratic theatre.
Your best people don't need annual performance reviews. They need ongoing performance partnerships. The difference between those two things is what separates organisations that develop talent from organisations that stress management training their way through another year of mediocre results.
Because when people know how they're tracking and what they need to do to succeed, everything else gets easier. When they don't, even your best people eventually give up trying.