How can you use performance reviews to achieve your career goals?

Personally, I like to create a "Visual Portfolio" to showcase evidence of my value and impact. For me, this is a slide deck that I contribute to at least monthly. For this approach, I gather the "evidence", add it to the deck, and include: -"Highlights" with screenshots, links and data graphs to illustrate monthly accomplishments. -A dedicated slide for significant achievements, emphasizing their positive impact on business goals. -Strengths, skills, and lessons learned. I use my portfolio to showcase abilities, how I've grown professionally, courses I may have taken throughout the year, and acknowledge areas for growth. Before the review, I look over the portfolio to prepare. It is the most helpful tool I've utilized for this purpose.

I used to do this myself and later had the PMs in my team build something called "My Wins". What is it? Everytime, you receive an accolade, kudos, recognition, a nice email, capture it and move it to a folder called "My Wins". Why is this so powerful? We often struggle to look back and identify all our accomplishments. Collecting these work immensely to prepare you for Performance review meetings and as a bonus do wonders for your self confidence. These are your wins, your mini milestones, so good for your soul!

Performance reviews are a two way street. So my best advice is have as much evidence possible to remind them of how the work you do impacts the company bottom line: making & saving them money, improving brand reach & reputation, bringing in new customers, keeping them compliant etc) This evidence is your best way to leverage the new opportunities & growth you want as well as to negotiate more money. Also have the areas you want to develop in ready. Self evaluation is an important skill employers want, because if you can evaluate & improve your own performance they’ll feel you can do it for their business too

Setting your career goals is indeed important and how you need to grow to get there. To get your goals clear, you might want to talk to people in your environment to get inspiration on their career, or to a mentor or coach, to help you get clarity on that and ensure it aligns with who you are. Once you have your career goals and milestones clear, you can look at which talents you need to grow, what mindset you need to develop to ensure you realise your goals. Remember, you don't need to do all this alone. Many people are happy to help but if we don't ask for help, it's hard to get it!

Communicating your aspirations is crucial indeed. You can make proposals, come up with ideas in line with your aspirations, volounteer for specific projects, which can bring you closer to yourgoals, help you develop your skills etc. YOU, and no-one else, is in the driver's seat of your career.