How to prepare for a calibration meeting with your manager?

Calibration is a part of the performacne review process where managers, after completing the review of their teams, discuss the manager assessments with the skip-level manager.

Companies like Google, Facebook use committees made up of skip level managers of various teams and the business human resource partner.

Some companies let skip level manager and the manager to calbrate in a 1:1 meeting between them.

A calibration meeting with your skip level manager is important and a manager should prepare by:

1. Writing down his own rating of individual team members
2. Agree on the criteria for example - decide what "exceeds expecations" means.
3. Keep a record of concrete examples over the entire performacne summary cycle to avoid the recency bias, halos and horns bias and availability bias.
4. Consider the situational factors (workplace related) that affected performance e.g. lack of resources
5. Playing devil's advocate especially for the employees the manager is rooting for.