In brief
- You don’t need a new review form to measure how people work. You need a second layer under the one you have.
- Goals cover what someone accomplishes. Behaviors cover how. A good review rates both.
- The behaviors should come from your culture and be set by level, so every manager rates against the same standard.
Most companies already have a performance review they’re reasonably comfortable with. It has goals, a rating scale and a place for comments. Replacing it would take months, and the new one would probably end up measuring the same thing.
You don’t need to replace it. You need to add what it’s missing: a clear way to rate how someone does the work, not just what they get done. Here’s how.
Step 1: Name the behaviors your culture runs on
Start with what good looks like at your company. Not a list of values, and not a generic competency library. The specific behaviors your best people already show, the ones customers and coworkers notice.
They’ll be different from another company’s. A careful, relationship-first company and a company that expects people to figure it out on their own both care about communication, but it looks different in each. The behaviors worth rating are the ones that match your culture’s personality. If you’re not sure where to find them, ask why people say someone is great.
Step 2: Set the bar for each level
A frontline employee and a senior leader don’t need the same behavior at the same strength. Describe what each behavior looks like at each level of your organization. Some companies have three levels, some have five.
This is what keeps the review fair. Each person is rated against the bar for their own level, and only on the behaviors that apply to their job. Nobody gets buried in a list that doesn’t fit their role.
Step 3: Rate too little, on target and too much
Most rating scales only go one direction: more is better. Behavior doesn’t work that way.
A useful behavioral rating has three places to land. Too little: the behavior isn’t showing up enough. On target: it’s showing up the way your company needs it to. Too much: the person’s strength has started crowding out something else.
That last one is the one most reviews miss. Think of the manager who is so focused on keeping everyone happy that hard feedback never gets delivered, or the employee who moves so fast that nobody else can keep up. That’s not someone who is “too good” at the behavior. It’s a strength that has tipped over into a problem, and it’s often where a company’s culture starts to slip.
Step 4: Put it under the rating you already use
The behavioral read doesn’t replace your existing rating. It sits underneath it. Goals still drive the overall result. The behaviors give the manager something specific to say about how the result was reached.
How much the behaviors count toward raises and promotions is your decision. Some companies weight them equally with goals, some use them to inform the rating without a formula. Either way, decide before the first review, and tell people.
Step 5: Make it a conversation, not a form
The review works best as a conversation between the manager and the employee, with three things on the table: the behaviors for that person’s level, their job description and their goals. Goals are what they accomplish. The behaviors are how.
Then keep the conversation going during the year, in regular one-on-ones. If behavior only comes up at review time, it will always feel like a surprise. If it comes up all year, the review is just a summary of what everyone already knows. Using AI in your reviews? Here’s how it frees managers to coach the how.
Start with the next review cycle
You don’t have to roll this out to the whole company at once. Many companies start with leadership, let leaders use the behaviors with their own teams first, and introduce them more widely at the next review cycle and goal-setting season, so the behaviors arrive with the goals they explain.
The result is a review that finally measures the whole job. Ratings spread out because the standard is clear. Feedback gets specific. And when someone asks why they were rated the way they were, there’s an answer they can work with.
Here’s how behaviors fit into performance reviews in a full engagement.
Read next: How to Tell If Someone Is Ready for a Promotion
New here? Start with How to Define Your Company Culture and Put It to Work.
Start here
Name the behaviors worth rating
It starts with naming your culture’s personality. The Culture Quiz gives you a first read in a few minutes.
Take the Culture Quiz
Frequently asked questions
Should performance reviews include behaviors or only goals?
Both. Goals measure what someone accomplished. Behaviors measure how they did it. A review that only rates goals rewards results no matter how they were reached.
Do I need a new performance review form to rate behaviors?
No. The behavioral rating can sit underneath your existing rating as a second layer, without changing your form or your scale.
What does it mean when someone overuses a behavior?
Their strength has started crowding out something else, like a manager so focused on harmony that hard feedback never happens. It’s not a compliment, and it’s worth coaching.
How do you make performance ratings more consistent across managers?
Give every manager the same behaviors, described the same way for each level. When the standard is written down, ratings depend less on who your manager is.
How should behaviors affect raises and promotions?
That’s your company’s decision. What matters is deciding before the review cycle and telling people how it works.
