Why We Have Boring Annual Reviews
*This is part of a series that provides examples of how you can manage different details of church leadership, including how we handle church membership and why we don’t pass an offering plate.
The dreaded annual performance review. It is a yearly source of anxiety, awkwardness, and/or pointless paperwork for employees and managers everywhere.
However, a performance review should not be “dreaded” when your work is in ministry or your office space is in a church building. For starters, a gospel-centered community should have a different perspective on “performance.” In ministry, we know that faithfulness is the goal (Matthew 25:21) and that size does not necessarily equal success. However, even when there is need for improvement, we are not communicating in a loving way if people dread getting feedback from us. And if we’re committed to resolving conflict biblically and keeping short accounts with those around us, we can’t wait 12 months to tell someone where they went wrong (or praise them for where they went right).
No Surprises
For Watermark staff annual reviews, our explicit goal is that there should be no surprises—no big piece of feedback (and especially no big criticism) to spring on people during the performance review.
That’s because feedback about someone’s job performance should be an ongoing conversation, not something that happens only once a year. As coworkers, as Christians, and as members of a church community, we should be giving each other feedback regularly—and immediately. If someone is in sin, it is not loving to let them remain there (Galatians 6:1; James 5:19-20). If there is need for reconciliation, we are to drop everything else and make that a priority (Matthew 5:23-24). And if a brother or sister simply has room for growth, the sooner we can identify the problem, provide constructive feedback, and partner with them for improvement, the better off they (and the whole organization) will be.
Practically, there are several reasons why it makes sense to give feedback immediately:
- You don’t have to remember what feedback you were going to give. An annual review might be many months away, and you might forget the feedback before then.
- It’s easier for people to understand feedback when the events or actions that you’re discussing are still fresh in their mind.
- Giving feedback now allows people to make changes and grow now, instead of waiting until the next review.
- If you wait until an annual review to give feedback, the person will have a long list of items to try to implement all at once. If you instead give bite-sized feedback regularly, people can better focus on changing just one thing at a time.
Loving Feedback
At Watermark, we strive to give (and receive) feedback all the time. But we also emphasize that admonishment is a sign of love. Correction is done, first and foremost, for the benefit of the person being corrected. It is why a loving God disciplines those He loves (Hebrews 12:6). Helping someone improve and overcome blind spots shows them that you love them enough to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), sharpen them (Proverbs 27:17), and help them become more of who God wants them to be.
Sometimes giving feedback or correction is difficult, and it can lead to some hard conversations. There is no guarantee that the other person will handle feedback well. But if your motive is love, then it is loving to tell the truth—even if it’s a hard truth. And telling them now is better than waiting and cataloguing a bunch of hard truths to dump on them all at once at their annual review.
When you do give feedback regularly, the annual performance review itself becomes a more loving process. There is nothing to dread. The review is truly a “review” of feedback they have heard before. It is less exciting, but that’s a good thing, because it is less stressful as well. It allows you to focus more on encouragement during the review, pointing out how they have positively responded to past feedback. You can spend more time celebrating their wins and dreaming with them about the future.
Review Resources
If you are looking for examples of how to do annual reviews, you can download the review form that we use here. Everyone on our staff fills out their own employee review form, assessing both their own performance and their supervisor’s performance. They then send it to their supervisor, who fills out their own assessment of the employee. After the form is filled out by both parties, they meet in person to discuss the results and sign the form.
Note that the review is not just about job performance, but also how each person is doing relationally and spiritually. How someone works is important, but what it’s like to work with them also matters, and their relationship with Christ is the most important aspect of all.
Of course, there are different (and equally) good ways to handle the details of forms or meetings. The important thing is that your process serves people well and helps you steward your ministry staff. Strive to love one another in everything you do and leave everyone better than you found them.