KW Roundtable: Preparing for Year-End Performance Reviews & Team Reflection

The year is winding down, and for engineering leaders, that means performance reviews, team retrospectives, and planning for what's ahead. But let's be honest - turning these end-of-year activities into meaningful experiences that actually drive growth and improvement? That's where things get challenging.

This is an opportunity to network with engineering leaders in Kitchener-Waterloo and dive into practical strategies for making year-end performance processes more than just administrative tasks. How do you have conversations that genuinely help people grow? How do you make fair promotion decisions across different teams and contexts? How do you set your team up for success in the new year?

This is a peer-led roundtable format where local leaders share what they've learned through experience. We'll discuss our agenda topic and then roundtable a challenge from each person, so come prepared with a specific year-end performance or team reflection challenge you're facing right now that you'd like help solving.

Discussion topics will include:

1. Meaningful Performance Conversations - Moving beyond checkbox exercises to discussions that genuinely help people understand their impact and growth areas.
2. Calibrating Evaluation Across Teams - Ensuring fairness and consistency in performance assessments when teams have different projects and challenges.
3. Fair and Consistent Promotion Decisions - Making promotion decisions that team members can understand and trust, even with disappointing outcomes.
4. Setting Development Goals That Matter - Creating actionable development plans that align personal growth with team and business needs.
5. Reflecting on Performance as a Team - Facilitating retrospectives that celebrate wins, learn from challenges, and drive real change.
6. Preparing for a New Year - Setting clear expectations and creating momentum for continued growth and achievement.

Come join a fantastic group of local leaders who can offer practical insights and share their experiences to help you tackle whatever year-end performance challenges you're working through.

Organized by local leader: Sasha Hall, Engineering Manager @ Planitar, Makers of iGUIDE

We hope to see you at this event as we continue to grow the KW Chapter!