So, what do I do to make it a bit less painful? Some of my tips/tricks.

• Documentation- make sure that you have plenty. As a manager, I have to keep documentation on my direct reports. Why not myself? Treat yourself no different than one of your employee’s. Keep your records, keep your email thank-yous, awards and anything that will help define your work.
• Make Lists – sit down with the documentation and start a list of accomplishments, feedback, awards and whatever else is in your folder. This will help to form what will be written. Sort of like a brainstorm list for writing.
• Put yourself in a good state of mind – insure that you are feeling good, have plenty of time to focus and there are no distractions (people or work). Having a “good” day helps. If you wait till the last minute, you will feel rushed and the writing will show it.
• Give Examples – here is where the documentation is very handy. Make sure to call out the specific examples, involvement you played and the impact. 
• Be Objective- when reviewing the documentation and reviewing the rough draft, be objective on everything. In my case, I am overly critical, sometimes too much. Look at the impact – answer the “so what” question. Be real. While spending time reviewing, pay close attention to the tune of the messages.

Writing about yourself may come easy to some, but not me. I have to work at it more-so for myself than my direct reports. I have little to no difficulty writing about them. Do you have any tips/tricks to help you with writing about you?

I went into the office on Monday, because I had a couple of meetings that I had to have. One was with a person that wanted to get active in the companies internal social computing capabilities. I am always into having discussion with folks to demonstrate the social capabilities, discuss potential opportunities, help out or just plain teach. The passion is real, I looked forward to coming into the office, when very few folks were going to be there. I always am on a high after these meetings. So, I scheduled another meeting, one that I am not a fan of – going over the changes needed to roadmap presentations. Boring and necessary topic. Start the day – in outstanding fashion, tackle the not so much fun subject next… Seemed to work for me.

What I really use the week for is – getting ahead on some of the work that is going to hit and hit hard:

• Yearly performance appraisal’s are going to be a big time sync over the January timeframe (getting ahead of that is all goodness)
• Budget 2010 should be finalized – and everyone and their brothers are going to want to know what is coming and when (hence the roadmap discussion). The amount of cycles that will be consumed will be large.
• Writing my rev 0 self-assessment for my boss. Since I manage a team, I need my folks to complete theirs to insure that I have not missed anything important.
• Preparing for the welcome to the new year fire drill. You know that topic that just keeps on giving that makes your head spin. This year is no different – centers on social computing again. 2009 for us, was a year of really starting to take shape. Now that some of the leaders have a better understanding (enough to be dangerous, but not enough to fully understand) – they want to see how we can save some bucks and maybe look to consolidate and integrate. Nobel efforts, but a bit too early, in my opinion.
• Setting up the overall groups expectations for 2010. Once everyone is back from their holidays, they will be recharged and ready to go. Time to have what expectations fully lined out. Budget is set, work on the roadmaps has started and we should start to have some vision of 2010.
• Lastly, celebrating 2009! Lots of good stuff happened in 2009, don’t forget that. Have fun and celebrate the wins. Celebrate the near wins… 2009 was rough in many ways, but I know that I had some wins to celebrate. I told my team to do the same thing!

It is nice to have some time to slow down and spend the cycles during the periods when the work force is limited (out enjoying the holidays). For me, it helps to kick of the new year with some work already in the can, or at the very least shaped up to complete on time.

Performance appraisals, performance reviews, appraisal forms, whatever you want to call them, I’ll use appraisal. I’m not sure if it has been the 27 years of writing these for my team or having one done about me, but I think the appraisal is a necessary part of the whole process.  Yearly also seems to be the right timeframe. I have done this with every six months to 18 months – 12 months (January to December). Built in reminders that when the holiday season is coming upon us – it is time to close the documented part of the year.

From my experiences and tweaking of my past 26 years, here is the checklist for how to close the annual performance appraisal – start to end!

Preparation for annual performance appraisal:

• Kick-off the end of the year, with a nice reminder to your team that our performance appraisal time is now just around the corner. I usually send this message out with expectations, timelines and expected closure.
• Within the initial message, my employee’s are given a blank document for them to write a self assessment on their key accomplishments, their strengths and some areas that they may want to improve on in the coming year. This provides them some input on their overall assessment.
• Provide the opportunity for broader feedback. I use a 360 degree performance feedback request.  That incorporates feedback from the employee’s peers, customers, and people who may report to him.  Each employee can provide me names of the above that they feel will be a good source of providing feedback (I also reserve the right to add additional names). We really want a well rounded loop of feedback.
• The self assessment and 360 feedback requests have deadlines that all will be due to me.

Assessing employee and the team performance:

• Start the Rev 1 appraisal. This is where I sit down and review the self assessment, 360 comments, during the year coaching session notes, employee 1:1 file (all feedback good or bad, awards and such for the complete year) and write my document that I would say is very close to the performance appraisal (Rev 1). Focus on the expectations for the coming year – keeping the cycle alive.
• Sit down and discuss the Rev 1 document with the employee. One more attempt to review the document and for each to provide feedback. Usually there are minor tweaks or maybe some missing information that may come to the surface, but rarely.
• Take my individual employee’s performance reviews and assess each to the overall team. This is where folks are being ranked and rated to each other. Depending on the team, you may have senior folks and junior folks on the same team – and assessing them could get a bit difficult. I usually have to remind myself to look at their job expectations, their grade level and level set my expectations to match. Finish up the process by giving each a rating.

Delivering the performance appraisal:

• Insure to schedule the meetings! Coming up to an employee that happens to sit in the same site as you, is not really a welcome sight. If the employee’s are at different sites, insure to schedule conference rooms. Privacy is something that is important.
• The night before the scheduled appraisal review session, I send out the Rev 2 document. (I do this for both the folks on and off site). This is the complete review form – that has been reviewed many times by each of us, discussed and finished up. The main item that the employee really has not seen is the overall performance message and ranking/ratings.
• Minutes before the meeting – I send out to the employee’s that are off site – the overall pay letter. Each employee knows to come to the meeting with their laptop to open the emailed pay letter. For those on site, I have a copy for them.
• We discuss both documents in detail! Questions and comments – whatever is needed.

Tips:

• Never schedule these review sessions back to back! You may want to get it over with, but time to discuss is critical and needed. Running a marathon of performance appraisal meetings, is very taxing.
• Never schedule on a Friday! From past experience, this gives too much time between delivery and potential additional discussion. If this message is not going to be perceived well, the receiver really does not need to have their weekend wasted. Schedule those messages, early in the week…
• For off-site folks, try to be there, physically if possible. If travel is restricted, definitely try to use a video feed. Gauging reaction to messages is very difficult over the phone.
• After completed, I usually give the employee some time to think about the appraisal some more, and if they have any questions and/or comments – to just get back to me by 3 days. This is when I usually close our companies policy by uploading the document to the employee’s record.