Performance Review Questions for Managers and Employees

Most performance reviews go wrong before anyone sits down. The form asks "How would you rate your communication skills?", the employee picks a number, the manager picks a slightly different number, and fifteen minutes later both leave without learning anything. The problem is rarely the people. It's the questions.

Good performance review questions do three jobs. They help the manager understand what actually happened during the review period. They give the employee a fair chance to explain their work, including the parts the manager didn't see. And they point the conversation forward, towards goals and development, instead of only backwards at a score.

This guide sets out the questions we would use, grouped by purpose: questions managers ask employees, questions employees should ask their manager, self-review prompts, and questions for specific situations such as an underperforming team member or a high performer at risk of leaving. For each group we explain why the questions work and what a useful answer looks like.

A note on method: this article draws on published research from Gallup, Deloitte, LinkedIn and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, checked in November 2026. We link each figure to the page it comes from. The question sets are our own, written for the kind of review conversations most HR teams run.

Why the questions matter more than the form

The research on traditional reviews is not kind. Gallup found that only 14% of employees strongly agree their performance reviews inspire them to improve. The same analysis estimates that performance evaluations can cost a 10,000-employee organization between $2.4 million and $35 million a year in lost working hours. That is a lot of time spent on a process most people find unhelpful.

Trust is low too. Deloitte's 2025 Global Human Capital Trends research reports that 72% of workers and 61% of managers could not say they trust their organization's performance management process.

Better questions won't fix a broken process on their own. But they change what the conversation is about. Gallup's research on manager habits found that only 16% of employees said their last conversation with their manager was extremely meaningful, while 80% of employees who received meaningful feedback in the past week were fully engaged. A review built from open, specific questions is far more likely to be one of the meaningful conversations.

What makes a good review question

Before the lists, here are the tests we apply to every question:

• It is open. "Did you meet your goals?" gets a yes or no. "Which goal are you proudest of, and what made it work?" gets a story you can learn from.
• It is specific to the period. Ask about the last six or twelve months, not about the employee's personality.
• It asks for evidence. Good questions invite examples: a project, a customer, a number, a decision.
• It leads somewhere. Every section should end with a question about what happens next.
• It is fair to ask everyone in the same role. Consistent core questions make reviews easier to compare and harder to bias.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management sets out a similar principle for federal agencies: its guidance on the performance management cycle says performance elements and standards "should be measurable, understandable, verifiable, equitable, and achievable." Questions that can't be answered with evidence fail that standard.

Performance review questions managers should ask employees

These are the core questions for the manager to ask in the meeting itself. You won't need all of them. Pick two or three from each section and leave time for follow-ups, which is where the useful detail usually comes out.

Looking back at the review period

1. What are you proudest of from the last six (or twelve) months?
2. Which of your goals did you make the most progress on, and what helped?
3. Which goal didn't go the way you planned? What got in the way?
4. What piece of work do you think I didn't see, or underestimated?
5. Where did you have to make a difficult judgement call? What did you decide, and would you decide the same way again?
6. What did you learn this period that you didn't know at the start?

Why these work: they start with achievements, which lowers defensiveness, then move to setbacks framed around obstacles rather than blame. Question 4 often surfaces work the manager never saw, especially in remote or hybrid teams.

Strengths and how the employee works best

7. Which parts of your job give you the most energy?
8. Which tasks drain you, even when you do them well?
9. When have you done your best work this year? What was different about it?
10. What do colleagues tend to come to you for?

Why these work: strengths conversations tell you how to deploy someone, not just how to score them. If an employee does excellent work on tasks they find draining, that is a retention risk worth knowing about.

Obstacles and support

11. What is slowing you down that I could remove or escalate?
12. Do you have the tools, information and access you need to do your job?
13. Is there a process, meeting or approval step you would change if you could?
14. Is your workload manageable? Where is it heaviest?

Why these work: they make the review a two-way check on the working environment. They also surface problems that are the organization's to fix, which keeps the review from becoming a list of the employee's shortcomings.

Goals and the next review period

15. What should your top three priorities be for the next period?
16. How will we both know you have achieved each one?
17. Which of your current responsibilities could you hand on or stop?
18. Where would a stretch goal be realistic for you?

Involving the employee in setting goals is one of the most consistent findings in engagement research. Gallup reports that employees whose manager involved them in goal setting were nearly four times more likely to be engaged than other employees. If you want a structured way to write the goals themselves, our Performance Review Builder includes evaluation criteria and goal prompts you can adapt by role.

Development and career

19. Where would you like to be in two or three years?
20. Which skill, if you developed it this year, would make the biggest difference to your work?
21. Is there a project, team or type of work you would like to try?
22. What kind of support would help most: training, mentoring, a stretch assignment, or something else?

Why these work: career conversations are rare, so employees notice when they happen. LinkedIn's Workplace Learning Report found that only 15% of employees say their manager helped them build a career plan in the past six months. Asking these questions in the review is the simplest way to be in the minority of managers who do.

Feedback for the manager

23. What is one thing I should keep doing as your manager?
24. What is one thing I should do differently?
25. How do you prefer to get feedback from me, and how often?
26. Is there anything you have wanted to raise but haven't found the right moment for?

Why these work: they model the openness you are asking of the employee. Ask them sincerely, take notes and don't argue with the answers in the moment. If you want to go further, a structured upward review or a 360-degree feedback process collects this input more systematically.

Questions employees should ask their manager

A review is also the employee's best opportunity to get clarity. If you are the one being reviewed, prepare a few questions of your own. Managers usually welcome them, because they show you are thinking about the role, not just the rating.

27. What would excellent performance in my role look like over the next six months?
28. What is the most valuable thing I could do differently?
29. Which of my strengths do you think the team relies on most?
30. How does my work connect to the team's or the company's priorities this year?
31. What would I need to show to be considered for the next level?
32. Is there feedback from colleagues or stakeholders I should hear?
33. How often should we check in on progress before the next review?
34. Is there anything about how I work that makes your job harder?

Questions 31 and 33 matter most. The first turns a vague promotion conversation into concrete criteria. The second sets an expectation of regular contact, which protects you against a review where everything comes as a surprise.

Self-evaluation questions

Many organizations ask employees to complete a self-review before the meeting. The best self-review prompts are the manager questions above, turned around. These are the ones we would put on a form:

35. List your three most significant achievements this period. For each, what was the result and how do you know?
36. Which goal did you not meet, and what would you do differently?
37. What new skills or knowledge did you gain?
38. Where did you help a colleague or another team succeed?
39. What feedback have you received from others this period, and what did you do with it?
40. What support do you need from your manager in the next period?
41. What are your goals for the next review period?

Self-reviews are hard to write well. Employees tend either to undersell themselves or to list activity instead of results. If you are writing one, our guide on how to write a self-assessment walks through examples and wording you can adapt.

Questions for specific review situations

The core sets work for most people. Some conversations need a different emphasis.

When performance has dropped

42. How do you feel this period has gone compared with the last one?
43. Has anything changed in your work, workload or circumstances that I should know about?
44. What do you think the main gap is between where you are and where the role needs you to be?
45. What would help you get back on track, and what will you commit to?
46. How often should we meet to review progress?

How to use them: start with the employee's own view before you give yours. Often they already know, and a conversation that starts from shared ground is far easier than one that opens with a verdict. Be specific about the gap and the timeline, and write down what you agree. Our guide to giving constructive feedback covers the language for these conversations in more detail.

The OPM guidance makes an important point here: unacceptable performance "can be identified at any time during the appraisal period." The annual review should not be the first time an employee hears there is a problem.

With a high performer

47. What would make you want to stay here for the next two years?
48. Is there anything that would make you consider leaving?
49. Which problem in the business would you most like to work on?
50. Are you being stretched enough?

How to use them: high performers often get the shortest reviews because there is "nothing to fix". That is a mistake. Gallup found that 42% of employees who voluntarily left their organization say their manager or organization could have done something to prevent it, and 45% of leavers said no manager or leader discussed their job satisfaction, performance or future in their final three months. A review is exactly that discussion.

For a new starter's first review

51. How does the job compare with what you expected when you joined?
52. What has been the hardest part of getting up to speed?
53. Who has been most helpful, and where have you felt unsupported?
54. What do you know now that you wish someone had told you on day one?

For a mid-year or quarterly check-in

55. Are your goals for this year still the right ones?
56. What has changed since we set them?
57. What should we stop, start or continue before year-end?

A shorter check-in should take twenty to thirty minutes. Keep it focused on goals and obstacles, and save the full set for the formal review. Our one-on-one meeting guide covers how to make the weekly or fortnightly conversations between reviews useful.

How to run the conversation

Good questions can still produce a poor review if the meeting is badly run. A few practical points:

Before the meeting

• Share the questions in advance. Send the employee the main questions at least a few days before. People give better answers when they have had time to think, and it removes the sense of an ambush.
• Gather evidence. Look back through goals, project notes, one-on-one notes and any peer feedback. Recency bias is real: without notes, the last six weeks crowd out the first ten months.
• Pick your questions. Choose two or three from each section rather than working through a list of fifty. A conversation with ten good questions and real follow-ups beats a questionnaire.

Most of this preparation is easier with a consistent template. Our collection of templates for performance reviews includes standard, self-assessment and 360 formats you can download and adapt.

During the meeting

• Let the employee talk first. Open with their view of the period. You will learn more, and your own feedback will land better once they have been heard.
• Follow up with "tell me more". The first answer is rarely the full one. "What happened next?", "Why do you think that worked?" and "What would you change?" are where the useful detail comes out.
• Separate development from pay where you can. If the meeting also announces a rating or a salary change, employees often stop listening after that point. Some organizations hold the development conversation and the pay conversation separately for this reason.
• Write down what you agree. Goals, support and dates. A review that ends without written next steps tends to be forgotten within a month.

After the meeting

• Send a short summary within a few days, including agreed goals and any support you promised.
• Follow through on what you said you would do. If you promised training or an introduction, do it quickly. Nothing undermines the next review faster than broken commitments from this one.
• Keep the conversation going. Gallup reports that 47% of employees received feedback from their manager "a few times or less" in the past year, and that employees who get daily feedback are three times more likely to be engaged than those who get it once a year or less. The review should summarize a year of conversations, not replace them. If you are weighing how far to move from an annual model, our comparison of continuous feedback and annual reviews sets out the trade-offs.

Questions to avoid

Some questions reliably make reviews worse. Leave these out:

• Closed questions with obvious answers. "Do you think you communicate well?" Everyone says yes.
• Questions about personality. "Are you a team player?" invites a defence of character rather than a discussion of work. Ask about a specific collaboration instead.
• Comparisons with named colleagues. "Why can't you be more like Sam?" damages trust with both people.
• Questions about protected characteristics or personal life. Avoid anything about age, health, family plans, religion or similar topics unless the employee raises them, and even then focus on what support the employee needs at work. If in doubt, check with HR or legal.
• Leading questions. "Don't you think you should have escalated sooner?" is a statement dressed as a question. Say what you think directly, then ask for the employee's view.

When you need to write up the outcome, specific, evidence-based wording matters as much as the questions. Our annual review phrases and examples give language you can adapt.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most important performance review questions to ask?

If you only ask five, ask: What are you proudest of this period? What got in the way? What should your top priorities be next? What support do you need from me? What is one thing I should do differently as your manager? Together they cover results, obstacles, goals, support and upward feedback.

How many questions should a performance review include?

For a 45 to 60 minute review, eight to twelve prepared questions is usually enough. Leave room for follow-up questions, which tend to produce the most useful answers. A long questionnaire turns the conversation into form-filling.

Should employees see the review questions in advance?

Yes, in most cases. Sharing the main questions a few days before gives the employee time to gather examples and think about their answers, which leads to a more balanced and less defensive conversation.

What questions should an employee ask in their performance review?

Ask what excellent performance would look like in the next six months, what you need to show to reach the next level, whether there is feedback from others you should hear, and how often you will check in before the next review.

What should a manager do if an employee disagrees with their review?

Listen first and ask for the employee's evidence. If they raise work you weren't aware of, consider it properly. Where you still disagree, record both views, agree specific goals for the next period, and follow your organization's process for formal appeals if one exists.