Conduct Annual Team Review

Each year leaders spend a good amount of time and effort to review individual performance of each one of their members. This is quite common across my organizations and industries. What leaders fail to do in addition to individual reviews is to conduct annual team review. There is a difference between an individual performance review and a team review. If you’re not doing both, you may be missing out.

Individual performance reviews are important. Although research has shown that individual reviews are unpleasant for all parties, it is still a necessary function that needs to be completed. On top of individual performance review, you should seriously considering to conduct annual team review. It does require more time and effort but the benefits will prove to be quite valuable.

Conducting annual team review will allow you to get an overall perspective on how the team has performed. In addition, when you conduct annual team review, you will get a different perspective on how individuals within the team performed. The overall performance of the team matters. How individuals interact over the year matters. How everyone contributes to the entire group’s success matters.

To conduct annual team review, consider the following items. They will help guide you to get a more complete picture of the overall success of your team.

• When it make sense – Similar to an individual performance review, the team annual review should be done when it makes sense. It need not be in December or somewhere at the end or beginning of the year. Do so when there’s a milestone that’s been achieved. If it’s slightly shy or slightly over the one year period, it’s ok. Remember that the review is important, not the time.
  
  
• Productivity – As with any review, take time to go over how productive your team was over the past year. Compare the actual productivity to the preset goals. Overachieving is great. Underachieving is also an opportunity to learn why.
  
  
• Culture – Take a look at your team culture. What are some of the good things that’s developed? Negative changes should be corrected so that the proper team culture will move forward. Culture greatly impacts the success of the team. Dismissing this will be detrimental to the team as a whole.
  
  
• Objectives – Review objectives set at the beginning of the year. How much of it was achieved and how much was not attained? This is different from productivity as there may be objectives set beyond just the productivity of the team.
  
  
• Challenges – Definitely spend time to go over the challenges faced by the team. It would be quite rare to have no challenges during an entire year of operation. Be honest about the challenges so that a fruitful discussion can take place. Then solutions to remedy the challenges can be determined.
  
  
• Positive finish – I don’t always suggest to finish off on a positive note. However, in this case when reviewing for the entire team, I do highly suggest it. Find a way to bring some positivity and energy to close off the review. Allow your team to feel motivated to look forward to a new year.

A team annual review is important to the success of the team. Yet it’s not commonly done. Take the time to conduct annual review for your team. They will appreciate it. Everyone will learn and be better from it. Be consistent and make it an annual event.

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