How to get ahead on your next performance review

Performance review season is around the corner.

With Q4 starting next week, let's get you ahead of the curve so you're better poised to both give and receive performance evaluations.
 

Here's what I'm covering today:

1. Prep to Give Performance Reviews:

• Notice the good

• Coach your A Players

• Increase cadence of actionable feedback

2. Prep to Receive Performance Reviews:

• Track your impact

• Strengthen connections

• Ask for targeted feedback

Let's get this party started!

1. Prep to Give Performance Reviews

Notice The Good

Here's your gentle reminder that you move the needle more with positive reinforcement than critical feedback.

Consciously look for people doing good and show your appreciation.

Look for thoughtful responses, patience amidst chaos, generosity of time, willingness to help, etc.

Appreciation is about who they are, not what they've accomplished or their output.  Recognize these behaviors because what gets recognized gets repeated.

It's also much easier to write a balanced performance review when you've been consciously looking for good.

Coach Your A Players

A Players hate when their performance reviews simply say, “Keep up the great work.”

A Players WANT to know how they can be even better, have an even bigger impact.

So think of each of your strongest people, what would make them EVEN better?

Then bring that to them in your next 1:1 and commit to being their coach.  Commit to challenging them and helping them continue to feel they are progressing.

Let me also say this, the more senior your folks, the more nuanced your coaching will need to be.

For example, “When you're with X audience, on topic Y, you can have Z tendency and it has potential to hold you back from how you're influencing/impacting/etc.”

Do this now, so you're not struggling in 3 months to write a meaningful review.

Increase Your Cadence Of Actionable Feedback

My #1 rule with delivering performance reviews: no new information.

It should never happen that it's within a performance evaluation that one learns of a new development area.

You can ensure no surprises if you consciously increase your cadence of actionable feedback now.

Noticing a skill gap?  Share it now.

Feeling frustrated with performance? Share it now.

Observing a counter productive tendency?  Share it now.

And, feedback without action is simply criticism.  

Share the observation and then work together to identify HOW they can make progress.

By increasing your cadence of feedback now, you're a) increasing their rate of growth, and b) ensuring no surprises in the review.

No surprises = less stressful review season for you! 

(If giving feedback causes you stress, consider joining me next week for Fearless Feedback Mastery: Driving Performance For Managers & Leaders.  

Course begins Wed, October 2nd and you will increase your confidence and competence by October 9th.  Details & registration are here.)

2. Prep to Receive Performance Reviews

Track Your Impact

We've all been there, we sit down to write our self-assessment and we think, “dear lord, what the hell did I do this year?”

Then we comb through the last 9-12 months of our calendar to see what we were doing, who we were meeting with, all in hopes of jogging our memory.

Save yourself time and effort.

Create a tracking system for yourself so you're easily able to reference back what you did and the business impact you had.

You'll more confidently be able to advocate for yourself when you have data points and a solid narrative for what you actually did.

Not to mention, these points of business impact can and should also be added to your resume, saving you, yet again, time in the long run.

Strengthen Connections

Regardless if your review cycle includes a 360 component, continuing to invest in genuine connections and relationships across the business will always help you stand out in performance reviews.

Do you have a reputation for being easy to work with, or are you perceived as operating in a silo?

Are you seen as someone who is generous and willing to support others, or are you seen as a pre-occupied with your own work?

Whether building connections feels onerous, or it's energizing, there's no doubt that having meaningful connections around the business a) helps you get stuff done, and b) is favorable to you in performance review season. 

Get curious about the people you're working with, learn about them, let them get to know you, and you'll begin to see positive deposits in your relationship bank.

Ask For Targeted Feedback

Ideally your leader operates by my #1 rule with performance reviews and they will not have any surprises.

There's also a high probability that they may not.

So reduce the chances for surprise feedback in your evaluation by asking for feedback now.

But here's the key: it must be targeted and specific.

🚫 Do you have any feedback for me?

✅ I'm really working hard to strengthen my strategy with stakeholders, what 1-2 ideas do you have for things I could be doing differently with my stakeholders?

🚫 Is there anything else you'd like to see from me?

✅ You've been seeing a fair amount of how I'm managing communications on this project, if there were something I could be doing even better, what might that be?

🚫 Anything else I could be doing better?

✅ I'm wanting to be seen as a high impact leader within this team, what advice do you have for what else I could be doing to strengthen my leadership?

Here's the other benefit: get the feedback now and begin making progress so you can aim to impact how you're perceived when rating decisions are made.

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Here's to getting ahead of the curve and feeling more empowered heading into performance review season!

And should you need it, I have 5 videos modeling how to share ratings and tough news in evaluation conversations.  You can easily download and reduce your stress with these conversations for only $25.

That's it for this week!

Have a fantastic weekend…and as always, hit Comment below with thoughts, questions, or requests for future newsletter topics!