So March is a bit of a quandary to me. It represents everything that is right in the world and everything that is wrong.
March is when the Girl Scout cookies come. I love GS cookies more than just about anything. Thin Mints are basically my crack. And I'm not one of those lame people who freezes them to eat throughout the year. No, I consume 10 boxes in 2 weeks to make sure they are fresh. Today was the day that my cookies arrived and I was happy.
On the flipside, March is when my company does performance reviews. You know, a review of my performance over the course of 2008, that they discuss with me in March...of the next year. It is especially timely, a key component of successful feedback. Feedback must be: actionable, timely and specific in order to be useful in any way. I have never had an actionable, timely or specific performance appraisal in my life.
So, given that you are sure to have a completely retchid review at some point in your life, here are some tips to get through it (feel free to archive this in your Outlook calendar in case you work at one of those ultra-progressive companies who holds reviews in December).
- Learn CPR: Managers really, really hate giving reviews, per my extensive research involving 8 years in Corporate America and a 30-minute Google search to confirm my personal experience: real research here. I once had a manager who literally shook the entire review...and it was a really good review. I cannot imagine what he would have done if he had to say something other than "You are doing an outstanding job, keep up the good work." I'm fairly certain he would not have lived through the experience. Be sure to appear calm and collected and you are already winning the battle.
- Jog your memory: Managers are sure to bring up something that happened at least 9 months prior (in my case, over a year is reasonable given the whole March review timing). In theory, they should have mentioned this mishap directly after it happened, but in practice, they never do. You should feel free to discount anything you are hearing for the first time. I suggest that you turn it right around on your manager by saying something along the lines of "Wow, that is very helpful feedback, I just wish you had told me way back then so I could remember it and we could have a richer conversation about it." Then give a super-charming smile that slowly fades into just a hint of the evil eye, so he/she knows you ain't playing.
- Remember who is giving you the review: If you are getting a bad review, it is likely that your boss sucks and you hate him/her. So, do you really care that he/she thinks you did a bad job? I like concentrating on all of my manager's flaws while receiving negative feedback. For instance, I seem to get fairly consistent feedback that I am often mean over email (likely because I write mean emails), yet everytime my boss tells me I should call instead of blast off an email, I don't hear anything but the voice in my heading egging me to tell him that he has a unibrow.
So, most important thing to remember in case you get a bad review: you only need $15 for a box of GS cookies and a bottle of wine. Second most important thing to remember is what you did for the company and just shove it down your boss' throat the whole review. Or, I guess you could go a 3rd route and listen and try to improve yourself, blah, blah, blah. I would not recommend that route.
Comments