Quarterly reviews are the lightest weight performance review you will run, and the easiest one to do badly. They land between the urgency of an annual review and the looseness of a regular catchup, which means most managers either over-engineer them or skip the prep entirely. Done well, a quarterly review is a chance to course-correct before goals drift, recognise wins while they are still fresh, and quietly catch the friction that would otherwise show up in an annual cycle as a surprise.
The best quarterly reviews take ninety minutes of prep, not nine hours. The trick is having the evidence already in one place when you sit down to write.
Two weeks before
The work of a good quarterly review starts before the review window even closes. Two weeks out, you should be making sure the inputs are in place rather than scrambling to recreate them.
- Skim catchup notesRead your catchup notes from the last quarter back to back. Mark anything that surprises you, anything that came up more than once, and anything you said you would follow up on but never did.
- Check target progressLook at the targets that were set at the start of the quarter. Have they moved? Are they still relevant? If a target is no longer the right one, that is itself worth discussing in the review.
- Pull action follow-throughCount the actions assigned to or agreed with this person over the quarter. How many were completed on time, late, or dropped? This is one of the most honest signals of how the quarter actually went.
- Ask for peer inputA short message to two or three colleagues asking for one specific example of working with this person is often enough. Specific beats general every time.
- Look at sentimentIf you track sentiment in your catchups, scan it. A quarter that started cheerful and ended flat is a different review from one that did the reverse.
One week before
By a week out, you should be moving from gathering to writing. The goal at this stage is to have a draft of what you would say in the meeting, not a polished document.
- Pin the highlightsMark the catchups, meetings, and target moments that mattered. The pinned items become the backbone of your review and stop you forgetting that brilliant piece of work from week three.
- Write three strengthsThree is the right number. One feels thin, five gets generic. For each strength write the specific moment that proves it, not the adjective that summarises it.
- Write two growth areasTwo is also the right number. Pick the things that, if they improved, would make the biggest difference to this person. Be specific, kind, and evidence-based.
- Draft goals for next quarterThree is again about right. They should connect to development, to team priorities, and to something the person genuinely wants to grow into. Bring them as a draft, not a decree.
The day before
The day-before checks are about making the conversation easier for both of you, not adding more material. Resist the urge to keep adding things, the temptation always exists and it always makes the review heavier than it needs to be.
- Send the agendaA short note saying what you would like to cover and inviting the person to add their own items. People prepare better when they know the shape of the conversation.
- Re-read your draft onceRead it as if you were the person receiving it. Anything that would feel like a surprise needs to be softened or supported with more context. Reviews should never blindside.
- Plan one open questionPick one good open question for the start. Something like "what felt like the win of the quarter for you?" or "what got harder than you expected?" sets the tone better than diving into your assessment.
- Block recovery time afterEven good reviews are tiring. Give yourself fifteen minutes after the meeting to make notes and breathe before the next thing.
After the review
A review without follow-through is just a meeting. The hour after the review is more important than the hour before, because that is when the agreements turn into commitments. Capture the actions, agree the next-period goals as proper targets, and put a reminder in the calendar to revisit them in the next catchup.
- Capture follow-up actionsAnything you committed to during the review goes on your action list. Anything they committed to goes on theirs. If it does not get written down, it did not happen.
- Convert goals to targetsThe next-period goals should become real targets with deadlines and success criteria. Without that, they remain aspirations and quietly slip.
- Share a brief summaryA two-paragraph summary sent within forty-eight hours protects both sides from misremembering. Keep it factual, not directional.
- Diary the mid-quarter checkHalf-way through the next quarter, glance at the goals and ask in catchup how they are going. Quarterly reviews work because the cycle is short, but only if you actually use the cycle.
Frequently asked questions
Walk into your next quarterly review prepared
Manager Toolkit pulls catchups, targets, projects, and pinned moments into a quarterly review template so the prep takes minutes, not hours.