How to conduct performance reviews: a manager’s guide for 2026

Most managers know a review conversation matters, yet few feel it lands. Done poorly, a review leaves people confused and deflated. Done well, it becomes the clearest moment of alignment all year. So if you’re searching for how to conduct performance reviews that actually change behavior, you’re already asking the right question.

The payoff for getting this right is real. When you run reviews well, you turn a dreaded annual ritual into a clear moment of alignment, and you help each person see exactly where they stand and what to do next. That’s how most of your success as a manager gets built, and it’s a big part of how you help your team succeed.

This guide walks you through what a performance review is, why it matters more than ever, and a repeatable seven-step process for running one. You’ll also get questions to ask, common mistakes to avoid, and a look at how a connected work platform like monday AI Workspace keeps feedback and goal tracking in one place so your teams work well together.

Key takeaways

• A performance review is a structured check-in that assesses past performance and sets clear goals for the period ahead, and it works best as a two-way conversation
• Preparation drives the outcome: set goals together, take notes between reviews, and share an agenda so no one is caught off guard
• Specific, respectful feedback beats vague judgment, so describe the behavior you saw and state its impact instead of labeling the person
• Reviews only stick when you end with a clear action plan and follow up on the commitments you both made
• monday AI Workspace keeps review goals, feedback history, and follow-up reminders on one connected platform with dashboards and automations, so nothing slips between cycles

What is a performance review?

A performance review is a structured, scheduled conversation between a manager and an employee that assesses how someone has performed against their goals and expectations, then sets direction for the period ahead. Think of it as the formal counterpart to day-to-day feedback: casual feedback happens in the moment and keeps work moving, while a review steps back to look at patterns, progress, and growth over a full quarter or year.

Here’s the contrast in practice. Day-to-day feedback sounds like “that client email was clear and well-timed.” A performance review sounds like “over the last quarter, your client communication became a real strength, and here’s how we build on it.” One is a nudge, the other is a milestone.

People often ask what the steps of the performance evaluation process are. In short, you set goals together, gather notes and feedback, share an agenda in advance, give specific feedback, keep the conversation two-way, end with an action plan, and follow up afterward. The rest of this guide walks through each step so you can run the whole cycle with confidence.

Why performance reviews matter more than ever

The workplace backdrop makes this skill urgent. Gallup reports that global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, and manager engagement dropped from 27% to 22% between 2024 and 2025. When managers themselves are disengaged, the reviews they run tend to feel hollow, and employees notice.

The feedback itself often falls short. When reviews feel vague, one-sided, or disconnected from daily work, employees stop trusting them, and a review that feels neither fair nor motivating quietly erodes confidence every cycle. That’s the gap a deliberate process is built to close.

Managers feel the gap too. SHRM finds that 61% of HR professionals say fewer than half of their managers effectively address underperformance, and 43% say their organization doesn’t provide adequate training for managers to run effective reviews. That’s the real opportunity in front of you: a clear, repeatable process closes the gap that training often leaves open, and it makes hard conversations far more constructive.

Get started with monday.com

How to conduct a performance review in seven steps

A strong review isn’t one event; it’s a sequence that spans before, during, and after the meeting. The seven steps below move you through preparation, the conversation itself, and the follow-through that makes it stick. Work them in order, and each review gets clearer and more efficient than the last.

Step 1: Set goals and expectations together

Before you sit down to review with someone for a review, you need to know what you’re reviewing. This is another reason you and your team should work together to set objectives like SMART goals for the year or quarter.

If you’ve never set specific goals with your team, do so as soon as you can, instead of waiting until your next review period. Once you’re setting goals and holding reviews regularly, you can combine them into one meeting.

Expectations deserve the same clarity as goals. A SMART goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound, so instead of “improve reporting,” you’d agree on “ship the weekly ops report every Monday by 10 am with zero missing fields.” When you and your report define both the target and what good looks like up front, the review becomes a check against a shared standard rather than a surprise. That “no surprises” principle underpins a fair review, because nothing discussed in the meeting should be the first time the employee hears about it.

Step 2: Take notes and gather feedback between reviews

Next, make sure you’re reviewing performance more often than you hold official reviews. Sitting down once a year or quarter and trying to remember all of someone’s strengths, weaknesses, and accomplishments at once can easily make your brain hurt. Taking that approach with an entire team will only make it harder for everyone to succeed.

Instead, try to make a note of things as they occur. When you notice a certain behavior is becoming a habit, put it in the file. When you realize how big a role they played in a recent win, put it in the file.

This way, when it’s time to prepare your notes for the review, you don’t need to worry about remembering details of the past 3 to 12 months. You can simply read over your notes and look for patterns, outliers, and other discussion points.

Your own notes are one input, not the whole picture. Gathering feedback from more than one source gives you a fuller, fairer view of how someone works across the team. Pulling in peer, upward, and cross-functional perspectives gives you a more balanced read on performance and reduces single-rater bias. A lightweight 360 approach, where you collect input from a few peers and cross-functional partners, surfaces strengths and blind spots you might miss on your own and reduces the pull of a single recent memory.

Step 3: Share an agenda and self-evaluation in advance

Remember that you’re not the only one in the room at this review. Just as in-the-moment notes help you prepare for the meeting, giving your team members their materials in advance helps them do the same.

At least a week or two ahead of an employee‘s review, show them the game plan. If you’re having them complete a self-evaluation, this gives them time to think about and fill out their answers. Even if not, this gives them time to reflect on their own performance and prepare any questions or conversations they want to have with you.

Letting your team prepare for these reviews as thoroughly as you do makes it a two-way conversation about improving your team’s performance, instead of you delivering a one-way critique.

A good self-evaluation asks the employee to rate progress against each goal, name a win they’re proud of, and flag where they want more support. When they arrive with that reflection done, you spend the meeting comparing perspectives rather than delivering a verdict. Where your view and theirs differ, you’ve found the most valuable conversation in the whole review.

Step 4: Give specific, respectful feedback

Finally, we’re ready to talk about the review meeting itself. If you follow the steps above, the meeting is the easiest part. Still, simple can be uncomfortable, if not downright awkward.

The best way to keep the review as comfortable as possible is to remember your respect. You don’t need to barrage anyone with a monologue of complaints, nor do you need to sugarcoat any true critiques. And definitely don’t condescend to them with “compliment sandwiches” or any other stilted, impersonal frameworks you might have heard of in the past.

Speak clearly and directly with your employee like you normally would. Rather than hiding negative feedback, address it outright so the rest of the meeting can focus on addressing it and improving the situation.

What should you not say during a performance review? Avoid vague judgments about the person, such as “you’re not a team player,” because they give someone nothing to act on. A reliable technique is to describe the specific behavior you observed, then state its impact. Compare these two:

• Vague: “Your communication needs work”
• Specific: “In the last two launches, status updates arrived a day after the deadline, which left the design team guessing, so let’s agree on a Friday cadence”

The specific version focuses on behavior instead of personality, ties it to a real consequence, and points toward a fix. That’s feedback someone can actually use.

Step 5: Make the review a two-way conversation

A review should feel like a dialogue, not a verdict. You’ve already set that up by sharing an agenda and inviting a self-evaluation, so now protect it in the room. Ask open questions, then listen more than you talk, and give the employee space to explain their view before you respond.

Good questions do most of the work here. A few to keep on hand:

• Looking back: “Which accomplishment from this period are you most proud of, and what made it work?”
• Obstacles: “Where did you feel blocked, and what got in the way?”
• Support: “What can I do differently to help you do your best work?”
• Growth: “What skill do you most want to build over the next quarter?”
• Alignment: “How well do your current goals match what you want from your role?”

When people help shape the conversation, they leave more committed to whatever you decide together, and you learn things about the work that you’d never see from your seat.

Step 6: End with an action plan

A common trap is doling out actionable feedback that makes it hard for employees to improve between review periods. Think about it: after spending 30 minutes talking about ways your work can improve, wouldn’t you feel overwhelmed?

Instead of just throwing a mountain of feedback at someone in the review, discuss what specific steps your employees can take once the meeting is over. This can include a performance improvement plan, a new set of SMART goals, or a short to-do list of one-time tasks. Choose the option that best suits the employee, since the goal is to help them improve.

This way, your employee leaves with a clear answer to “what’s next?” Not to mention that looking to the future can be a more aspirational and motivating way to end the review than discussing past mistakes.

Make each commitment concrete by writing it down with an owner and a date, so you can both point to the same plan later. Two or three focused goals will move the needle faster than a long list nobody can act on.

Step 7: Follow up after the review

The review isn’t finished when the meeting ends. Without follow-up, even the clearest action plan fades within a week, and the next review starts from scratch. Following up is how you turn a single conversation into continuous feedback that compounds over time.

Put a few simple habits in place to keep momentum:

• Schedule check-ins: book short recurring one-on-ones to revisit the action plan while it’s still fresh
• Track commitments: keep the agreed goals somewhere you both can see progress, not buried in a document nobody reopens
• Set reminders: use recurring nudges so review commitments and deadlines don’t quietly slip

Consistent follow-up signals that the review mattered, and it gives you real evidence to draw on when the next cycle comes around.

Common performance review mistakes to avoid

Even a well-intentioned review can fall flat when a few familiar habits creep in. Most of these mistakes come from rushing preparation or defaulting to old scripts. Watch for these, and you’ll sidestep the traps that make reviews feel unfair or forgettable.

• Recency bias: judging the whole period by the last few weeks. Your running notes from Step 2 fix this
• Vague feedback: saying “be more proactive” without an example the person can act on
• The compliment sandwich: burying a real concern between two compliments, which muddies the message and feels insincere
• A one-way monologue: talking at the employee instead of inviting their perspective
• Springing surprises: raising a serious issue for the first time in the review rather than when it happened
• No follow-up: agreeing on next steps and never revisiting them

Continuous feedback vs annual reviews

How often should you conduct performance reviews? More than once a year. A single annual sit-down leaves too much time between feedback, so issues linger and wins fade from memory. That’s why Gallup recommends reframing the annual event as ongoing “progress reviews” built on continual coaching rather than a single yearly verdict. The table below shows why a continuous rhythm tends to work.

You don’t have to abandon a formal annual moment. The goal is to surround it with lighter, more frequent conversations so nothing waits twelve months to be addressed.

Get started with monday.com