Winning at Performance Reviews

One of the most stressful and time-intensive periods of my Facebook tenure was the performance review cycles that happened every 6 months. I’d spent decades working at startups and design firms with erratic approaches to giving feedback; so despite the mental impact, I remain grateful for a formal, if flawed system of performance reviews.

Performance reviews are inherently nerve-wracking. In theory, you should be aligned with your manager and already have a good sense of how you’re doing. This should happen through regular feedback and 1-on-1 conversations. Yet in practice, even the best managers and organizations get distracted with the thousands of urgent requests that take precedence over long-term people development. Most people I’ve worked with and coached still get blind-sighted with the feedback and ratings they receive.

Sometimes we put on an armor and pretend not to care or we retaliate by criticizing the process. But we all really care. And it’s OK to care. Most people reading this are going to be growth-minded high performers who are used to succeeding and achieving throughout their lives and careers. This performative culture is the norm in technology and especially so in Silicon Valley. We are all human. And being human, it’s important for us to have recognition, security, and the external validation that we’re doing OK.

We may also vaguely feel that there’s something wrong with us for caring so much about a performance review, especially if it’s a negative one. Or perhaps you’ve received a glowing performance review yet can’t let yourself trust that wealth of positivity––instead you flip to the growth areas and keep pushing to improve and make yourself better. We do this because we care. And it’s OK to care.

It’s important to keep in mind that performance reviews are for the company’s benefit. Similar to going through a school system, with a large enough company, there’s a curve or a distribution for how many people are in the top 10%, next 10%, average and so on. By definition, the majority of employees will be average and get a Meets All Expectations rating. This is innately hard for us to understand because we like to believe that we are all above expectations. But that’s not how the company works. It’s hard to feel that Meets All is a good rating. For high achievers who are used to having been the best throughout their lives, it feels mediocre, like getting a C in school. But if you’re working for a world class, top tier company, the comparison pool is of the highest caliber. Comparisons can be healthy if they push you to learn and improve, without hating on yourself (see my article Want to Dream Bigger? Start with Envy). But sometimes you may not want to keep pushing or striving because it’s putting you on the edge of burnout.

There’s another perspective to consider. What if you frame the performance review as being selfishly for you and your growth? I’ve used this three-question framework both within tech companies and also with clients that I support. This framework is the key to truly winning at performance reviews.

1. Why do I work here?

Ask yourself why you work at the company. I’ve heard a variety of reasons including:

It’s a name-brand top-tier company / Their clients are the top name brands
I want to impact people’s lives at scale
I value the mission of the company
It pays well and I need the money to finance other parts of my life
I’m simply grateful to have a job that pays me and is the start of a career

You might share these reasons or have your own. It’s important to be clear with yourself why you work there. It’s what will get you through the long hours, the difficult feedback, the conflicts with other people, and remind you of the purpose of your professional life.

Many people know this when they apply for a job and decide to accept the job. Yet this can often be forgotten after months or years and taken over by an overwhelming need to be conditionally successful or happy. For example, telling yourself “I’ll be happy when…”

… I get that raise or bonus
… I get promoted to the next level
… I start managing managers
… I make partner
… I make it to the C-suite

The challenge with tying happiness to a future event is that we so often move the goalposts once a goal is achieved. This leaves us perpetually unhappy or malcontent in the present, and continuing to strive for an unknown future goal.

Instead, try to get in touch with the original why, the purpose for working at the job. And then consider this next question.

2. What do I want to learn?

Beyond the money, title, and prestige, think about what skills you want to learn or opportunities you can explore at the job. I was recently chatting with a product manager who was considering switching to a more hands-on, craft-oriented role either as a designer or as an engineer. Rather than have to leave her current job, I coached her to have a conversation with the engineering director, leading to a plan for her to work with a mentor and be responsible for a small part of the code base.

At larger companies, there’s often the opportunity to show impact at the company-level by contributing to initiatives such as recruiting, diversity & inclusion resource groups, or working with interns. You could find opportunities to share your expertise through teaching, speaking or writing.

Within your current job responsibilities, consider what do you want to learn and get better at. Many designers I’ve worked with will pick an area of craft to focus on for 6 months or a year. This could include learning to code, becoming a master prototyper, creating vision videos, or aspects of physical graphic design.

I was able to spend a lot of time at Facebook coaching women across the company, working on diversity efforts within the design organization, as well as broadening our pipeline to seek out more diverse interns and university hires. All of these skills helped me to switch careers into leadership coaching.

3. What have I done?

Finally, take a hard look at what you’ve done through this performance evaluation period so that you can self-assess for what matters to you, not the company. You figure out what matters to you based on why you work here and what you want to learn.

Get into the habit of setting your own growth goals for the period and sharing them with your manager. Also, at the end of each week, capture what you’ve done and what you’ve learned. All too often, we forget all these details when it’s three or four months later and it’s now time to write a self review.

These are some ideas of what you could capture for each week’s progress. They’re written distinctly from a product perspective, but can help as a starting point:

Work or project tasks completed; This could be numerical such as number of design iterations, or number of bugs closed
Processes you’ve initiated
People you’ve helped, whether it’s colleagues or end-customers
Skills learned
Meetings that were collaborative
Times that you were in a state of flow, and what you were doing
Milestones such as features or product releases and major research or design initiatives
Celebrations, including moments you were proud of and also praise from others

Over time, you’ll have a history of your weeks and months. In looking back, you can pull out what feels like success for you. This lets you discover what matters to you in addition to what matters to the company.

Bottom-Line

Performance reviews are stressful times where you yearn for external recognition, feedback and reward. As humans, we want to know where we stand and how we’re doing from other people. To truly win at performance reviews, start asking yourself this three-question framework to gain more insight into what success looks like for your personal standards, and not simply the company’s expectations.

Tutti TaygerlyJanuary 20, 2021