How to enjoy your performance reviews

Performance reviews are coming up soon at many places if done annually. Some companies run those reviews in a formal manner where employees need to answer a questionnaire and then discuss the results with a number of managers. Some are more relaxed and casual with only a single one/on/one with your immediate line manager.

Performance reviews can help you understand what you are doing right and how you can improve. You can check how you are aligned with company goals and what is expected from you. It is also an excellent tool for managers to identify high-performing employees, discuss expectations, and promote growth and development.

Performance reviews are done by people…

Yes, I do enjoy performance reviews. Getting objective feedback, a nice salary increase, or even a promotion is great. Unfortunately, there is also one negative side - most of the time, reviews are done by people with their own biases. Let’s quickly touch what the seven most common ones are:

1. Recency bias. People tend to value recent accomplishments or failures more than something that happened some time ago.
2. Gender bias. It is the tendency to focus on women’s personalities but on men’s behaviors and accomplishments.
3. Idiosyncratic rater bias. It happens when people evaluate skills that they are good at lower and skills they are bad at higher.
4. Similarity and strictness bias. You rate people that are similar to you higher. And if someone is different - you tend to be stricter with them.
5. Leniency bias. It occurs when managers give inflated ratings to employees with notable room for improvement.
6. Horns and halo effect bias. Individuals believe that negative (or positive) traits are connected to each other.
7. Centrality bias. It is the tendency to rate most items in the middle of a rating scale.

How can you prepare for the review?

There is a nice saying that you need to prepare your winter sledges in summer. The same goes here - you better start preparing in advance. First of all, you want to actually do a good job at work; I won’t elaborate on this.

Much more interesting would be the ways to overcome those biases or, even better - make them beneficial for you! The best thing you could do is to try and have regular one-on-ones with your manager throughout the year. Do informal mini-reviews all the time. That way, you will be able to present your accomplishments when they are fresh, show constant progress, and show how you fixed issues. It will also build up your relationships and help you find similarities with your manager. It can also be beneficial to have a small work diary where you will note your achievements, so you won’t struggle when you need to back up your claims with examples.

And even for the tiniest of reviews, prepare notes on topics you want to discuss, if there are strengths or weaknesses you plan to improve, and what are your long-term goals. It would be great (see the previous idea about the diary) to share concrete examples of how you have met old goals set at the last review. Another exercise you should do is self-evaluation. Try to wear your manager’s shoes. Finally, come prepared with questions, almost like for the job interview. I hope that the performance review in your company is treated as a safe environment and you can ask what needs to be asked.

Good luck with your next performance review!