Performance Reviews

What's a Performance Review?

It's an opportunity to impact your reputation based upon management's perception.

Many performance reviews consist of six fundamental components:

• Quality and accuracy of work
• Collaboration and teamwork
• Communication
• Problem-solving
• Ability to accomplish goals and meet deadlines
• Attendance and dependability

Additional criteria may include:

• Productivity and quality of work, meets or exceeds expectations
• Critical thinking
• Adaptability and flexibility
• Accountability
• Attitude
• Decision-making and problem-solving
• Teamwork and delegation
• Time management
• Initiative
• Listening skills
• Goal setting
• Ethics

How to React to a Negative Performance Review

Read and Analyze the Review

Take a minimum of one day to consider your manager's evaluation. This will give you time to carefully—and hopefully realistically—consider everything in it. Try to understand the feedback and create a list of questions about anything that's confusing. Ask yourself if any criticism is truly unjustified, or if it simply just offends you. Don't let emotions get in the way of objectivity.

Tune into channel YouFM. The channel resides in your mind under You, For Me. It's also known as Emotional Intelligence and lives next to Executive Presence. It's that voice in your head that just thought, what's that mean?

According to Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence model to drive leadership performance there are four main priorities:

1. Self-awareness, the ability to assess your emotions and recognize the impact when using gut feelings to drive decisions.
2. Self-management, the ability to control your emotions and impulses and adapt to changing situations.
3. Social awareness, your ability to sense, understand and react to others' emotions.
4. Relationship management, your ability to inspire, influence and develop others and manage conflict.

Decide Whether to Meet With Your Manager

Meeting with your manager may not be required in your organization, but it's usually a smart move. A face-to-face talk should provide a chance to share your point of view. Don't request a meeting if there's no chance your manager will listen to anything you have to say or any discussion will escalate into an argument.

When the criticism is constructive, create a plan together with your boss to improve your performance. Demonstrate that you are proactive by coming up with ideas to share during the meeting. React to any problem areas with suggested solutions.

Make an Appointment

Don't just walk in and demand to meet your manager on the spot. Disrupting his or her workflow will set a negative tone for the meeting. Instead, follow your workplace protocol to schedule an appointment.

Present Your Case or Plan

The purpose of this meeting is to either refute negative feedback if you disagree with it, or to present a plan to improve your performance if what he or she said is true. Prepare for this step even before scheduling the appointment should your boss want to sit down with you sooner than expected.

Stay calm:

During the meeting to discuss your review, and afterwards, do your very best to avoid negativity, raising your voice, or showing extreme distress. This may, of course, be much easier said than done. Take out the emotion!

Make your case: Do you disagree with your review? If you feel comfortable doing so, you can speak up during the meeting to make your case and defend yourself. This is a tricky situation—you want to defend yourself, but not seem defensive. That’s not easy!

Avoid getting personal or comparing yourself to any other employees in heated tones, which can be interpreted as childish. Compare yourself to your own personal progress, not anyone else's. Do defend yourself on the spot if you feel comfortable doing so, but know you can also remain quiet in the moment and give yourself time to assemble your thoughts and respond later.

Ask what you can do differently: Before you leave the meeting you’ll want to be sure you understand a) precisely what you did wrong, and b) the correct behavior going forward. Sometimes this can be very straight-forward.

Here's what to do if you disagree with a bad performance review:

• Acknowledge any valid criticism and talk about your plan to improve.
• Then bring up things you feel are inaccurate, using clear examples that back this up. For instance, if your boss says you have poor time management skills provide proof that you have, indeed, met all your deadlines.
• Be willing to change your mind. Your boss may bring up valid points during the meeting. If so, ask him or her to suggest ways to improve.

If you agree with your manager and the goal of the meeting is to present a plan to improve your performance, here's what to do:

• Acknowledge you understand and agree with your boss's points.
• Present a plan for improving your performance and ask for suggestions to help you do that.

During your meeting, do not:

• Lose your temper no matter how angry you feel.
• Cry regardless of how sad you are.
• Blame coworkers.
• Make excuses.

Follow Up After Your Meeting

Send your manager an email reiterating everything discussed during the meeting. If there is a plan for improvement, put it in writing. Print the email out and keep it in a safe place. If you need evidence to back up claims that you are taking steps to improve your performance, you will have it.

Emotional Intelligence and Executive Presence Impacts Performance and Careers!