How To Rock Your Next Performance Review
First-hand insights from someone who has written and received reviews
The dread of performance reviews looms large in an organization of any scale. If you are reading this, you’ve had this fear. It comes every two, three, four or six months or at any other frequency that your employer deems fit.
Performance reviews are to an employee what customer reviews are to a business:
- They decide whether your product will be bought by discerning customers — whether leaders and managers in your organization will want you on their teams.
- They determine your reputation in the market — what other members of your organization say about you behind your back.
- They will confer a suitable price that customers are willing to pay — your bonus cheque.
The other area of similarity is the reaction upon receiving them. Businesses and employees think that if they do their job well, good reviews will follow suit. Yet, there is often a gap between expectation and reality.
Throughout my career, I have received several performance reviews and have felt similarly. Interestingly, the tables turned recently. I had finally become senior enough in my organization to deliver reviews. I decided to do an experiment- I would observe my thought process of assessing my reviewee to generate insights about what makes for a stellar review.
Here are the most interesting insights I found to help you rock your next performance review.
The Code for a Stellar Performance Review
Meditating on my new perspective as a reviewer, I came up with the equation below:
Performance review = (Job performance) + (Garnish)
The equation quashes a popular myth. Merely working hard and doing your job well is not enough. The right garnish is also critical to increase the probability of a stellar performance review.
Therein lies the explanation for the gap between expectation and reality pertaining to reviews. It is the element of ‘garnish’ that is often lacking. I will thus elaborate on this specific element.
What’s the fuss about garnishing?
Have you ever been one of those who needs a generous garnish of herbs on top of a pizza? I am guilty as charged.
Just as a well-cooked pizza needs herbs to elevate its flavor profile, your reviews too require that much-needed garnish.
The difference is that in the culinary world, the right garnish brightens the dish by cutting through rich, dense flavors while in case of your reviews the right garnish takes care of certain challenges and biases that reviewers face while writing your review.
I realized this as I observed my own experience of writing reviews recently. It is these biases that we will talk about next to successfully derive how you can garnish your performance.
A Sneak Peek into a Reviewer’s Mind
There is no incentive for a reviewer to take pains for your review.
Writing reviews is part of the job. In most cases, there is no extra- time provided to write the performance review which effectively means that it stretches the workday or takes away from me-time. Also, there was a rebuke to be faced if I didn’t submit the reviews to HR by the deadline but there were no prizes if I did.
Recency bias is really a thing.
“Recency bias is the phenomemon of a person most easily remembering something that has happened recently, compared to remembering something that may have occurred a while back.” — Dave Manuel
I realized that I too was quoting most incidents in the reviews from the most recent interactions.
One negative instance is enough but several positive instances are required.
Performance reviews often have sections for strengths and improvement areas. I realized that while even one mistake was enough to establish that the underlying skill needs improvement, a trait had to be demonstrated again and again for it to really be considered a strength.
The person you are outside of work matters.
I shared a good bond with the subordinates I was writing the reviews for. We had interacted over lunches, coffees to get to know each others’ interests, goals, etc. I realized that such bonding not only helped us work together better but also made me appreciate their uniqueness. Therefore, there was no longer just another person with his/her designation but a unique individual with flesh and bones. That uniqueness also came across in their reviews.
This window into a reviewer’s mind has important implications for those who are looking to improve their next review. The actionable strategies in my next section will show you how to successfully bypass these biases.
Actionable Ways to Improve Your Review
Here is how you can garnish your job performance and say goodbye to surprises in your review for good…
Put in a self-assessment.
A self-assessment is a document that lays out your assessment of your own strengths and improvement areas backed by examples from your work. Some organizations have this as a formal requirement, and some don’t. Irrespective, here’s why you should submit one to your reviewer anyway and prepare it diligently…
As I mentioned earlier, reviewers have to carve out extra time from their busy schedules to write your review. They also do not get any rewards for doing so. Sending them a self-assessment can ease this process for them. Suddenly, they now have a reference in front of them and don’t have to spend as much time jogging their memory. This also ensures that everything important that you want to be credited for is taken into consideration.
Have a closing chat.
Reviewers, as we saw, are plagued by the recency effect. As a result, it’s really important to close on a solid note. A great way that I have personally seen working for me is to have an end of project chat with my reviewer to discuss what I did well and what I could have improved. This acts as a refresher and ensures that they take the whole picture into consideration instead of over-weighing the recent past.
Don’t wait until the performance review to learn about your improvement areas.
My subordinates were very proactive with scheduling fortnightly chats with me. In such chats, we would discuss what they were doing well and what they needed to improve on. They specifically stressed that most part of the chat should be dedicated to discussing improvement opportunities. And once aware of them, I saw them relentlessly working towards them. So much so that by the end of the project they had made significant headway and those areas no longer remained weak. As a result, they significantly improved their performance review compared to what it would have been.
Reinforce your strengths.
As we saw earlier, it’s not easy to establish a positive trait as a strength. You need to demonstrate multiple instances of it for it to really be considered a strength. Therefore, it's important to reinforce to your reviewer what you consider your strengths. Ensure that you put enough emphasis on it in your chats, and in self-assessments.
Connect outside of work.
Someone who supervised me once said to me ‘ I was impressed by the perseverance and passion that shows in how you pursue your hobbies outside of work.” I had made no effort to make this impression, I had simply made an effort to connect with my supervisor outside of work and open up as a human being. Being true to yourself and connecting on a human level can make your reviewer see qualities in you that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Such qualities will not make up for lapses that you might be making in your job. But if you are doing well at your job, they will act as a garnishing factor.
To Summarize
- Performance reviews are to employees what customer reviews are to businesses. They determine critical reputational and monetary outcomes.
- We often think that if we do our job well, our reviews will reflect that. However, often our expectations and reality don’t match.
- This is because we often neglect to garnish our performance reviews.
- Garnishing can help address certain key biases and challenges that reviewer’s face: lack of incentive, recency bias, negativity bias, like a person outside of work.
- Garnishing can be done via the following approaches: put in a self-assessment, have a closing chat, don’t wait till the performance review to learn about your improvement areas, reinforce strengths, and connect outside of work.
Following these strategies can help you unlock a high return on the hard work you are investing in doing your job well. Not only will you be able to take home a fatter bonus cheque, but you can also say goodbye to the dread and anxiety around performance reviews for good!
