1Step 1
Place your marker
Start with your own view of where you are now. The point is to explain your thinking clearly, not to guess what your appraiser wants to hear.
Guidance Suite
Current route:Appraisee
Move between role journeys, reference tools, and source materials without losing your place.
Routes
Maps & Pathways Guidance
Appraisee Journey
Walk into the meeting ready, not defensive
This route helps you prepare for the conversation, place your marker with confidence, and leave with a clearer path forward.
3
Core meeting steps
Live
Notes and progress
1
Shared map to discuss
Meeting Flow
The conversation works best when you keep it simple
This route is built around one clear arc: your view, the shared discussion, then the agreed next move.
2Step 2
Talk through the gap
Your appraiser adds their view next. Use the difference between the two markers to explore evidence, expectations, and context calmly.
3Step 3
Agree the next move
Finish by agreeing where you are heading, what support matters, and what needs to happen between now and the next review.
Before The Meeting
Prepare with evidence, context, and intent
A little preparation makes the meeting calmer, fairer, and more useful.
- Review your role, your standards, and the expectations attached to them.
- Bring examples that show both what you achieved and how you worked.
- Be honest about context without letting context do all the explaining.
- Decide what you most want from the conversation before it starts.
Read The Map
Know what the map is helping you discuss
The map is a shared thinking tool. It gives you a way to discuss what you are doing, how you are doing it, and where the conversation is meant to move next.
Shared Appraisal Map
Discuss what is happening and how it is happening
Excellent
performance
performance
Acceptable
performance
performance
Unacceptable
performance
performance
Unacceptable conduct
Excellent conduct
Appraisee
Appraiser
Goal
Appraisee
Appraiser
Goal
What the three markers are for
The first marker is your own current view. The second is your appraiser's view. The third is the shared destination you agree together. The useful part of the meeting sits in the gap between those three positions.
Quick orientation
- The vertical axis is performance against your current role expectations.
- The horizontal axis is behaviours, standards, and conduct: how the work is being done.
- Your marker goes down first, followed by your appraiser's marker, then the shared goal marker.
- The space between the current markers is the agenda for the conversation.
- Your trust may rename labels such as goal, aim, standards, or conduct, but the structure stays the same.
Marker Placement
Place your marker with honest, role-based judgement
The guidance pack uses example comments to help people interpret the map, but they are only prompts. The aim is not to find a perfect sentence or a perfect dot. The aim is to make your judgement visible and explainable.
Role-based
Judge yourself against your actual role
Place your marker against the expectations of your current role and level, not against someone else's remit or a future promotion standard.
Balanced
Look at both axes separately
Strong outputs do not automatically mean strong behaviours, and good intent does not automatically mean strong performance. Read each axis on its own.
Examples
Treat guidance comments as prompts, not scripts
The deck uses example phrases to help interpret different parts of the map. They are there to support judgement, not to give you words you must match or repeat.
Continuum
Expect professional judgement, not false precision
Every organisation sits somewhere on a continuum from more objective to more interpretive judgement. The point is fair, explainable placement, not pretending the map is mathematically exact.
Context
Know how your trust handles context
Some organisations judge performance in absolute terms, while others allow for context such as complexity, disruption, or challenge. Know which approach your trust has chosen.
Evidence
Explain why you chose that spot
A placement becomes more useful when you can point to examples, patterns, and moments that explain the judgement behind it.
A simple placement check
- What does this role expect at my level right now?
- What evidence supports my judgement on performance?
- What evidence supports my judgement on behaviours and standards?
- What context matters here, and what should not be used as an excuse?
- If my appraiser placed me somewhere else, what would they most likely point to?
Absolute
Judge performance against the stated expectation
An absolute approach keeps the benchmark fixed. If two people deliver the same result, they may be placed similarly even if the journey there looked different.
- Useful when comparability and consistency matter most.
- Needs clear examples so people understand the standard.
- Can feel blunt if circumstances differ materially.
Contextualised
Judge performance with conditions in view
A contextualised approach allows the same output to be read differently when complexity, disruption, or operating conditions were significantly different.
- Useful when the trust wants judgement to include context.
- Needs stronger manager calibration to stay fair.
- Should widen understanding, not lower the bar by default.
Absolute or contextualised performance?
This is an organisational decision, not something each person should improvise in the meeting. If your trust has chosen a more absolute or more contextualised approach to performance, make sure you understand that before the conversation starts.
Using The Platform
The meeting space supports more than marker placement
The wider workflow is designed to reduce friction around the conversation rather than add more admin around it.
Choose when the markers are revealed+
Some trusts want markers placed beforehand and revealed in the meeting. Others prefer all placement to happen live in the conversation. The workflow supports either model.
Work across one role or two+
The same meeting can cover up to two roles for one person, each with its own set of markers. This is useful when one person is carrying more than one substantial responsibility.
Include one or two appraisers when needed+
A meeting can also involve up to two appraisers. They can work jointly or separately, depending on what makes most sense for the role mix and the line-management structure.
Run the same conversation remotely or in the room+
The same meeting can run remotely, on multiple devices in the room, or in single-device mode. Marker movement and notes update live for everyone involved.
Move, reset, and compare markers over time+
Markers can be dragged after the first placement, reset individually, and compared with previous meetings so the conversation is about progress rather than memory.
Capture notes without recreating the record+
Notes can be added before, during, and after the meeting. They roll forward into later meetings while keeping the earlier record intact, and they can be downloaded when needed.
Use different meeting types without rebuilding everything+
The same platform can support appraisal meetings, one-to-ones, induction, or probationary conversations. Notes from one meeting type can feed into another, and marker placement can be turned on only where it is genuinely useful.
Add extra sliders only when they clarify something+
Trusts can capture up to three extra dimensions through configurable sliders. The labels, ranges, and visibility can all be tailored, so only switch them on when they add signal rather than clutter.
After The Meeting
Turn the conversation into movement
The meeting only pays off if it changes what happens next.
Reflect
Capture what landed
Take a few minutes while the conversation is still fresh. What changed your thinking, and what stayed unresolved?
Act
Turn the meeting into movement
A useful review ends with a manageable action, not a vague ambition. Decide what happens next and by when.
Return
Use a model only when you need one
If you want more structure afterwards, the reference section gives you light-touch models for reflection, planning, and listening.
When you need more structure
If you want help reflecting on the conversation afterwards, the reference section gives you short, practical models for listening, reflection, and planning.
Open reference