How to excel in performance reviews
How to excel in performance reviews and create a growth path for yourself
- Find out who will be in the room - Decisions made in a committee aren’t the best decisions. But leaving it to a single person has other issues as well. So find out who matter and build relationships with them.
- Understand dimensions and expectations - If you work in a company where the dimensions and “bar” is written down, you are in luck. Else, interview each stakeholder to find out what matters. Dig and validate to understand the unsaid norms and milestones.
- Play the game - It is often not easy to read a guideline and self-calibrate against the guideline. It is not just important to meet the bar, it is required to create the visibility and optics for yourself so that all the right people know.
- Get help - Get people’s emotional skin in the game if possible. If someone is committed to helping you identify ways to demonstrate the bar, it often makes them feel inclined to support your case when you met their pre-specified goals.
- Have the talk - Learn to be comfortable initiating these crucial conversations. Listen carefully with to identify and correct the gaps, actual or in optics. Schedule check-ins with people who will give you a thoughtful and unbiased input on your growth areas. Do the same with the people who will have an influence to communicate what you have been working on.
- Own the path - You are responsible for driving your career, not anyone else, including your manager. It is for you to create structure, carve out a journey and execute against it.
If you have done all the above and have given it enough time and chances, change the environment. If you are not getting good opportunities in your current team, role or company, make a move!!
Life is a journey with many interconnected paths and an unknown destination. Keep walking.