3 tips for great performance reviews
At the end of the year or at the beginning of a new one, it’s often performance review time. Are you looking for some advice on how to do this well? I’m afraid it’s too late: you needed to start working on this 1 year ago!
That’s ok, here are 3 tips to do better next time. This post will be about what you can do as a report, and I will share in a following one 3 tips as a manager.
3 tips as a report
Tip #1: regularly ask for feedback about your performance
To start, ignore your eventual performance review and focus on your performance right now. At least once a month, ask your manager: “What do you think of my performance? Are there things I did that you liked or disliked? Tell me so that I can improve”. Ask your peers too. Know where you stand, and act on it.
One feedback I received when asking this question is that as a CTO I should improve my ability to articulate the technical vision of the company, internally and externally.
Tip #2: have a plan for yourself
It’s good to know where you can improve. It’s better if you focus your energy on improving what is preventing you from reaching your career goals. So have a plan for yourself: it doesn’t have to be pretty, you don’t have to plan your whole career, having one goal for the year is already great. Now share your plan with your manager, and commit together on working on it.
One of my goals for this year is to level up in cybersecurity and compliance.
Tip #3: dedicate time for your own growth
Ok, enough information collection and planning: it’s time to act. First, your manager should make sure you work on projects that allow you to practice the skills you want to improve. But that’s not enough: if you really want to make progress quickly, you should also schedule time outside of projects. You want to increase your knowledge on a particular topic? Read a book, enroll in a class, talk to an expert…
You don’t have to do this alone: in the Inato engineering team, Vincent Francois is running regular workshops where attendees solve TypeScript challenges together.
Performance review then becomes a formality: you have put in the effort towards a consistent plan, you regularly collected feedback to adjust… The question is not if your performance improved: it is by how much.
