A performance review is one of the most important moments in managing a team. It's a summary of what's happened, and a planning conversation about what comes next. Most managers, however, have never been shown how to actually run one.

That's exactly why so many review processes fail to deliver. The problem rarely sits in the process itself. Companies usually have forms, rating scales, and platforms. The real challenge is the conversation – the actual communication between manager and employee.

Below are seven things a manager needs to understand before running review conversations.

1. How communication actually works in a review conversation

Communication is never perfectly linear – in performance reviews or anywhere else. We tend to assume that if we said something, the other person understood it the way we meant it. In practice, there are plenty of places along the way where that breaks down.

Everyone processes information through their own experiences, emotions, and beliefs. Think about the filters that shape how a message lands:

• Emotional state. An employee who's already anxious about the review may hear a neutral comment as criticism or an attack.
• Past experience. If previous conversations with this manager felt unfair, the employee already expects this one to go badly.
• Organisational culture. In companies where feedback only appears when something goes wrong, employees naturally assume a review conversation means bad news.

The same sentence can land very differently depending on which filters are active. When a manager says: "In this project, you could have shown more initiative" – the manager may mean it as encouragement toward greater independence. The employee may hear: "My work wasn't good enough."

This is why review conversations often end in frustration. The manager feels they communicated clearly. The employee leaves feeling they were treated unfairly. What matters in a review isn't only what the manager says – it's whether the employee understood it as intended.

2. How to check whether the employee understood

Paraphrasing is one of the most practical tools in a review conversation. One person summarises, in their own words, what they heard.

Why this matters: it's incredibly common for a manager and employee to walk out of the same conversation with completely different understandings of what was agreed.

A manager might say: "Over the past few months, there were a few times when we found out about project delays quite late. I'd like you to flag those situations earlier."

Instead of assuming that landed clearly, the manager can ask: "How do you understand what we've just discussed? What do you think needs to change on the next projects?"

The employee responds: "So if I can see something might slip, I should give you a heads-up earlier – on Slack, so you can respond faster."

Now the manager can see whether the message got through. If it hasn't quite, there's still space to clarify: "Yes, the idea is to flag it early. But let's do that in the daily standup – on Slack it might get buried."

3. How to give feedback during a review

Many managers struggle with feedback because they believe they have to choose between two options: either be honest, or be kind. The result is that some avoid difficult topics to protect the relationship, while others are very direct, but in a way that lands as an attack.

In reality, you don't have to choose. Kim Scott's Radical Candor describes the combination perfectly: you genuinely care about the person and you tell them the truth about the problem. Both at the same time.

Instead of: "That project was badly run." A manager can say: "I can see you put a lot of work into this project. At the same time, there were a few moments when the team wasn't clear on the next step. I'd like to talk about how we can structure things better on the next one."

It's honest. But it's not an attack.

And skip the old "feedback sandwich" (positive – criticism – positive). If the message sounds like a rehearsed HR script, the employee will sense it and disengage. What works much better is a natural, honest conversation grounded in specifics.

4. How to receive feedback from an employee

A review isn't only a moment for the manager to give feedback. It's also a moment when the employee may have something to say to the manager.

That part is often harder. When an employee raises issues – unclear priorities, team tensions, difficulties in how work is organised – a manager's instinct is often to go into defence mode: explain, justify, or close the topic quickly.

What that communicates to the employee: better not say these things in future. And that means the manager loses access to something genuinely valuable – accurate information about what's actually happening in the team.

Imagine an employee says: "Sometimes it's hard to plan work because project priorities shift a lot mid-sprint."

A natural but unhelpful response: "Yes, but that comes from the client situation. We don't always have control over that." That closes the conversation immediately.

A better response shows that the manager actually heard it: "So the issue isn't the number of tasks – it's that priorities shift during the sprint and that makes planning difficult. Am I understanding that right? Do you see anything we could do differently to make that easier?"

When an employee sees their perspective is being taken seriously, the review becomes a real conversation about how to work together.

5. How to separate facts from opinions

In a review, it's easy to slide from describing a situation to judging a person. A manager wants to say something about an employee's work, but ends up talking about their character:

• "You're not very engaged in the project."
• "You have communication problems."

For the employee, these are vague judgements about who they are, not observations about what happened. They trigger defensiveness instantly. It's much easier to have a productive conversation when you start with what can actually be observed:

• "In the last two sprints, you rarely contributed in project meetings and didn't raise any comments on the planned tasks."
• "In two recent projects, the information about delays came on the day the task was due."

These describe specific situations, not personality traits. A simple question a manager can ask themselves before delivering feedback is: "What exactly happened?" Then talk about that.

6. How to ask clarifying questions

During a review, a manager will often hear opinions, feelings, or interpretations from the employee. If the manager immediately jumps to evaluation or solutions, they risk misunderstanding what the employee actually means.

The goal isn't to challenge what the employee is saying – it's to understand it better.

When an employee says: "It was hard to find my footing in that project because the priorities kept changing."

Instead of explaining or defending the project decisions, the manager can ask: "Which moments were most difficult for you?" or "What specifically made it hard to plan your work?"

A useful rule for review conversations: understand first, evaluate or advise second.

7. How to handle emotions when they come up

A review conversation is technically about work, but for the employee it's often a moment of real tension. Someone is assessing their results and their contribution to the team. Emotions are a natural part of that, and they escalate quickly when a manager tries to ignore them.

A manager says: "Several projects this quarter were delivered late." The employee responds: "But that wasn't only my fault. The requirements kept changing throughout the project!"

If the manager pushes back immediately, the conversation turns into a debate about who's right. A better move is to pause briefly and show that you heard their perspective: "I understand that the changes in the project made planning harder. Let's take a moment to look at what specifically happened there."

Acknowledge the emotion first, then return to the analysis.

To close

A well-designed form, a rating scale, and a good platform are all useful. But what determines whether performance reviews actually deliver value is how the manager runs the conversation. When a manager can communicate their observations clearly, listen to the other side, and keep the conversation grounded in facts while acknowledging emotion, performance reviews become a real development tool for the team.