Completely agree on educating your folks early, as there are far too many that don't truly understand the system. I like the idea of splitting the report, though there's always the chance that the performance report portion could influence a subsequent CO's board report... but maybe that's not a bad thing. Some commands (commanders) are better at this than others, but I've always found the mid-term counseling to be of great value in rendering an unvarnished assessment of the individual's performance. We do far too little mentoring in my experience - formal or informal.