Your Role in the Performance Review

Marie is a client who is presently seeking a new opportunity in her field. When I asked her why she was looking to leave her current role and company, this is what she told me:

There have been a number of disagreements, or misalignments in perspective, with my current boss over the last year and a half. However, the final straw came at this year’s annual performance review. My boss gave me a rating of “Needs Improvement” in the area of communication skills. The example he cited in my written review was of an incident that happened six months ago. My mother had surgery and had some complications from it. Because of that, I was out of the office more than expected, maybe for a total of three days. During that time, I kept up with all emails and answered any questions as best I could. Because of the nature of her health issue, I really had to play this by ear, so I informed my manager of my whereabouts on a daily basis. It is not as if I could have told him at the outset that I would be out for three days when I expected not to be out at all.

At the time, he made no mention that this was a problem at all, so I was shocked, not to mention enraged, that this was the example he cited as my poor performance. His “issue” was that I “did not communicate clearly with [him] about [my] schedule.” I found this comment absurd. Against my better judgment, I escalated this to my HR representative, who told me that this was a perfectly valid piece of criticism. My perspective is twofold: if my communication skills are truly poor, he could have found a much more flagrant example than one in which I did everything I could given that the circumstances were beyond my control. Secondly, if my boss really had a problem with my perceived poor communication at the time, he should have addressed it then. He never did. So, I feel that the “feedback” at this point is bogus, at best.

And so, Marie has decided to leave her current company, because she no longer trusts her manager or the HR folks. Most companies do performance evaluations really, really poorly. Practices such as stacked rankings or 360-degree feedback are dreadful. Everyone hates the performance review. Everyone. However, performance reviews are used to determine raises, bonuses, and eligibility for promotions, so you need to take them seriously and be involved. Here are some things you can do to help drive the review process:

Plan ahead. You need to start thinking about your review a full year before it happens. Set clear, manageable, measurable goals, and work on executing against them.

Track your accomplishments throughout the year. You aren’t going to remember the details of all your superstar accomplishments, so you will need to keep a record. Be sure to quantify your achievements when possible.

Evaluate yourself, and be honest. In addition to thinking about what you’ve done really well, what are areas in which you could improve? How can you improve in those areas in the coming year? Don’t let your boss tell you what you should do. Be proactive.

Look forward, not back. Use the review meeting as an opportunity to plan for future successes, and not a time to simply rehash the previous year.

The Bottom Line

There should be no surprises. If you get totally new feedback in your performance evaluation, something is very wrong. This means your manager is a poor manager. Good managers address issues as they arise. They don’t document minor infractions and use them in the annual evaluation to justify some kind of stacked ranking.  We can all agree that Marie’s boss did a terrible job with her review, and will now lose a solid contributor.