Learning to manage performance and career development conversations

Perhaps the biggest part of being a people manager is guiding people’s growth and development, rewarding progress, navigating through challenges and enjoying the results of your work together. @recipient.name, this week you’ll learn more about how to support your reports.

This week you should:

• Learn about how we do performance and career conversations (10 minutes)
• Have an introductory brainstorming session with your new team (60 minutes)

Performance and compensation reviews

As a manager, you get the opportunity to reward and recognize your direct report’s growth and development during our performance and compensation review cycles. You may also find it is a time when you have tough conversations in order to help your report navigate through a period of poor performance. 

It’s normal to feel a little discomfort when you have these conversations for the first few times. But with practice and with the right resources, you will get more comfortable!

Our performance and compensation reviews happen [TIME]. During our review cycles, you will be responsible for:

• Writing a review for each of your reports
• Sending out and reviewing feedback requests
• Reviewing your report’s self-reflections and providing feedback
• Preparing for and having performance and compensation conversations
• Recommending promotions or compensation increases
• Preparing performance improvement plans

Keep your 1-1 document up to date starting now. An accurate 1-1 document makes it easier for you to write your review because you can look back at examples of your report’s work over many months.

Career development conversations

In your regular 1-1s, you’ll have informal development conversations as you discuss wins, near-term goals, and feedback. In a career development conversation, your aim is to discover your direct report’s longer-term goals and how you can support them on their career journey (use this Career Action Plan template to document your conversation).

Help your reports identify small things they can do throughout the year to help move toward their goals. For example, mentoring junior team members is a great step towards becoming a people manager. We encourage having in-depth career development conversations every 6 months.