With only two months left in 2025, each day brings us closer to everyone’s favorite yearly tradition: end-of-year performance reviews.
If you felt disappointed by how that sentence ended, you’re not alone. This task is a key milestone in the performance management cycle, yet the reality is that performance reviews remain one of the most persistent leadership challenges. Research shows that only about one-third of employees – between 33% and 42% – believe performance reviews are inspiring and effective.
Why? The research suggests that these conversations between people and their managers often fall flat for a few reasons.
1. They’re focused on the past rather than the future.
2. They’re subjective and biased.
3. They’re too infrequent to create real change.
Performance review conversations can feel stressful and judgmental for employees and overwhelming for managers who aren’t always skilled in giving constructive feedback.
The result: a process that’s time-consuming but not energizing and lacks follow-through once the conversation ends.
Rethinking the Conversation
End-of-year conversations have the potential to do more than simply assess on-the-job performance. And they provide an opportunity for something bigger than a check-the-box exercise.
Let’s try something fun: Take a moment to imagine what a great performance review could look or feel like for an employee.
Would they feel inspired to grow? Energized? Cared about by their manager?
And now for the manager: Would they feel empowered? Confident? Knowledgeable?
When done right, these conversations don’t just provide a look in the rearview mirror. They create space for meaningful dialogue about development and career ambitions and serve as fuel for future performance and engagement.
The truth is that people love talking about themselves. People crave opportunities to tell others about their career ambitions, interests, goals, and motivations. When leaders create space for and encourage these conversations, it not only builds trust, but also unlocks valuable insight into what will keep your talent engaged and growing.
So, ask yourself: Are your performance reviews energizing or exhausting? Motivating or merely mechanical?
Here are five good questions you can use to evaluate whether your end-of-year reviews deliver the impact your people and organization deserve:
Reflecting on these questions is a great first step to determining the value that performance reviews are bringing to your organization. Is your current process creating the outcomes you desire?
If not, don’t worry! There’s still time to shift gears and reinvigorate how you approach performance conversations across your organization.
Improving the Odds
If you’re now thinking, “How?!”… we aren’t going to leave you hanging. Effective performance reviews start with how leaders show up. Success depends on making the dialogue real, reciprocal, and grounded in mutual respect. Here are tips you can share with your organization’s people leaders to improve the odds:
Two Ways to Elevate Your Performance Conversations
Whether you’re rethinking this year’s review process or preparing for the next cycle, here are two ways to make performance conversations more meaningful and motivating:
Make it Career Focused
The best performance conversations help employees look forward, not backward. Prioritize discussions around career development, skill growth, and long-term aspirations. When people see a future for themselves within your organization, engagement and retention rise.
Encourage Conversations to be Employee Driven
Empower employees to lead their own development conversations. When they take ownership of these conversations, i.e., coming prepared with goals, feedback, and ideas, the review becomes a true partnership rather than a one-sided evaluation.
Performance management has a huge opportunity to be more than a routine, check-the-box process. It can be a major catalyst for growth and engagement across your entire organization.
If you’re ready to elevate your organization’s performance and development conversations and equip your leaders and teams to have meaningful, career-focused dialogue, WinningWise can help.
We offer training and development solutions that build the mindset and skill set needed to turn performance conversations into powerful growth experiences – for individuals and the organization.
Let’s talk about how we can support your success. Reach out to schedule a conversation.