Performance review season

June/July is right around the corner for those of us that are in organisations that conduct mid-year performance reviews at this time.

I chose to write and publish this article just a little bit out of the exact season so that if there are a few nuggets that can help you where you need to get to in this article you can make use of! I typically tend to stick to functions in the HR space I am extremely comfortable with and have actually received extensive experience on or undergone a course or some certification. For this particular topic - full disclaimer I have not so I will be leaning heavily on my personal experiences and those in my close networks and circles. I actually received a request from a colleague turned friend (one of those people at work with you pretty much instantly click with and this is truly one of them!) who wanted to me to discuss some of the nuances she was facing with a performance review season and managing some of the review requests that were literally “thrown” her way. Thrown brings me to my first point:

1. Prep your people A! Are you catching your performance reviewers off-guard? I can relate this to professional references. Are we in the habit of putting current or previous colleagues as our referees without informing them? I hope not! The same process works with those of us in organisations working with a 360 degree performance review. Your reviewers should know you have noted them down as a reviewer and should expect to be contacted about your performance. What I found very helpful in my McKinsey days as we were required to provide 6-9 referees at the time was to let my reviewers know why I put them down. The why being focused on projects, assignments or work pieces we have been involved in together. This helps your reviewer think back to a specific time and experience they had with you. This brings me to my next point….
2. Prep your people B! It doesn’t matter if you were listed as a reviewer 7 days before the review deadline. Does the person you are reviewing know where you stand? This is the time for brave actions. Always have a live conversation (call or in person) with the colleague you are to share a review on if you haven't already. Where are their gaps and what do they excel at? What are you uneasy about. Sometimes these conversations sit alot better when they are relayed in doses over the months because in the back of your head you know you have feedback to share with this colleague or you know they will put you down as a reviewer because of how much you collaborate together. Take those Monday lunches and choose not to catch up only on the weekend but get their views on how things ended last week with project X. This version of prepping prevents us from calling other colleagues at the last minute to ask “what should I say? Because you know I told you about how they did or did not do ABCD but I can’t just say this on an officially review all of a sudden.” Note: You only become the bad cop when you don’t take the opportunities given to you to be the good cop.
3. Prep yourself! In Q1, ideally we should already know who we see on our reviewers list. If you don’t have an open list and it’s just your direct manager reviewing your performance, it’s time to also think about what the last 6 months has looked like… was it strenuous, did you accomplish what you needed to as an individual and as a team? What did you learn from those wins and failures? What are you doing differently and if you’re not, what can you do in the next couple of months to rectify the situation so that you are in decent standing for your next review.

Truly take in the lessons! This article wasn’t meant to help you scrape by your next review to make it to the next paycheck. The reason many of us get anxiety about performance reviews is usually because we know we really aren’t doing that great as per what was outlined for us to achieve, our relationships are strained at work, we play so much politics we lose objectivity in why we were hired in the first place and we think this is just the bi-annual political games coming round the corner, we never advocated for our work so nobody actually knows what you do and what you’ve been doing. If these apply to you then it’s time to take in the constructive feedback received not only at your official performance review with your manager but speak to your peers, clients, reviewers, seniors, juniors etc. to understand what you could be doing better and what you could be doing more of because you are just really a rockstar at it! If you’re not asking what could have worked better at each assignment/ project wrap up meeting then this is your chance to!