And how they’re hurting your career.
On a scale of one to five, how annoying do you find annual reviews? (With one being, I can’t get enough of them, and five being, I’d rather spend a week filling out expense reports than sit through this awkward 20-minute meeting.) It seems like most people hover around a three: Managers often find these conversations to be massively time consuming, while many workers feel they’re intimidating and unproductive.
Still, more than half of companies use either annual or semiannual reviews to measure employee productivity, growth, and satisfaction, according to a survey conducted last year. So it pays to take them seriously, whether you’re providing the feedback or receiving it, says career coach Madeline Mann, who’s developed an impressive social-media following for her practical advice on how to level up at work.
“A lot of employees don’t typically initiate conversations about their performance and their career trajectory,” Mann says. “This is a great opportunity to have those discussions.”
Mann gave us her tips for how to prepare for a review, the most common red flags she sees in manager comments, the big mistakes you’re making in your self evaluations, and much more.
Katie Couric Media: What are some of the red flags in a performance review that should put people on high alert?
Madeline Mann: If a manager gives feedback that’s vague and won’t provide any clarification, that’s not a good sign. They may say something like, “You could be more friendly, Madeline.” And when you ask how or what they mean by that, if they don’t give a clear answer, that sends up a red flag, because their feedback should be more specific and it should be about something that you can actually work on. Typically, it’s not good if your manager starts criticizing your attitude, because that’s often seen as a fairly unchangeable aspect of a person.
Another thing to keep in mind is how a company is using the rating system. In my first performance review, I got a bunch of twos and threes out of five, which kind of threw me because in school you’re taught that anything below isn’t good. But they reassured me that that’s just par for the course, so in some companies a middle rating really means that you’re doing a solid job. If you’re falling below that average, though, that’s a really big sign that you could be heading for a PIP [performance-improvement plan] — and so is any sort of acknowledgement that you’re not hitting your quota or output goals.
If you’ve gotten a poor review, what should you be doing to get back on track?
First, you need to make sure that you know exactly what you’re doing wrong and you want specific examples of that. Because you might hear that feedback in your meeting and then walk away and think, “Wait, how do I change this behavior? Or, what do they mean by that?” The second thing is you need to show a willingness to improve. If you come back with a growth mindset where you’re saying, “Thank you, that feedback was a gift, and I’m going to rise to the occasion and be better,” that’s very encouraging to managers. The third piece is to develop a plan, which ideally you’d do with your boss so that they’re brought into your growth.
What kinds of mistakes do you see people make in their self reviews?
There’ve been a lot of funny memes about this. I saw one yesterday that’s like “When you have to do a year end self-evaluation,” and there’s a clip of Trump giving himself an A-plus. It’s funny and it also brings up a good point: Self awareness is a really important component of being a great employee, so you should exhibit that in your evaluations. That doesn’t mean you have to call out all the things you’ve done wrong, but instead it’s about showing an interest in improving for the future.
People swing the other way, too. They don’t take enough credit in their self-reviews for what they’ve done. That’s usually because they’re already a high performer and they’ll just view their consistently high performance as par for the course. One thing that helps with this is to keep a running list of your smaller achievements every week, so when you go into your self-review, you can be specific about your accomplishments and not undersell yourself.
If you’re angling for a promotion or raise, is the review period the time to bring that up?
You can absolutely discuss promotions during this time, but I think waiting until a review to bring it up is a big mistake that too many professionals make. Because now you’re competing with all the other people who are looking for that bump too, so it’s almost too little, too late. Sometimes by that point, your manager may have already allocated their budgets to give other team members raises, so you should really be having those conversations before the review cycle.
What about for managers? What are some of the mistakes they make when giving reviews?
I would also encourage them to take notes during the year, so they’re prepared when they’re going into reviews. Otherwise what happens is they end up giving a review of how they feel about a person over the past four weeks, instead of the entire review period.
Another big no-no is giving surprising feedback. If there’s anything in your review that’s going to shock your direct report, you should have told them sooner. The review is meant to be a deeper discussion about performance and ways your employee can grow and improve; it should not be a space for you to suddenly vent about an issue that you’ve been thinking about for months.
I think a lot of managers have a hard time delivering critical feedback. Do you have any advice?
I’ve struggled with this in the past. It’s so easy to want to do the feedback sandwich, where you say something positive, then drop the negative thing really quickly, and then end on a compliment. I’ve found that when you do that, people will not hear what you’re actually trying to tell them and that message gets lost.
I think Kim Scott, who wrote Radical Candor, has some great advice for this. She suggests starting with empathy and then delivering the feedback. So if your direct report has trouble following through on projects, you can say something like: “I notice that in your role, you’re balancing multiple departments and you have a lot of competing priorities. What I’ve seen as a result is that I’m often following up with you on deadlines, and that’s causing X, Y, and Z to happen.” I’ve found that by explaining how the issue’s impacting the team or the business and delivering the feedback with empathy, people are generally more receptive.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length.
