A performance review is difficult to use when its main message is a label. Be more strategic leaves the employee to guess which decisions, actions or results need to change.
Useful feedback gives the person enough information to try something different and enough opportunity to find out whether it helped.
Discuss work that can be examined
Choose a recent example. Describe the task, the behavior you observed and its consequence. Ask how the employee understood the situation before settling on an explanation.
A missed deadline may concern an overloaded dependency rather than unwillingness to take ownership. A blunt answer may have followed contradictory instructions. Understanding the sequence does not remove accountability; it makes the next commitment more realistic.
Agree on a small next step
Specify what the employee will do differently, what support is available and when you will review it. If the request is to improve delegation, identify an actual decision the employee will transfer and the limits of that authority.
Keep the follow-up close enough to the work that both people can remember what happened. An annual conversation cannot carry every development need.
The manager also has a commitment. If the employee needs a clearer priority or access to a decision-maker, provide it. Feedback becomes less credible when the employee is asked to change while the conditions preventing change remain untouched.
At the next meeting, discuss the attempt and its result. The purpose is to improve the work, which may require revising the first interpretation as well as the employee's behavior.
