Comments on: It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

By: The Career Encourager

The Career Encourager — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 02:36:00 +0000

Great post. Another good thing to include in your write up is an individual plan for development that will enable you to contribute more to the company’s goals. Don’t just mention a class you want to take – make a connection to where the company is headed and how the class positions you to fill a need. That way even if there is no budget for it (sigh…) at least you prompt your boss to be thinking about how to help you grow in your career.

By: class-factotum

class-factotum — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:35:00 +0000

You forgot about the mandatory self-criticism required by some companies — even if you met your objectives, what are your personal shortcomings and how do you plan to overcome them?

By: Wally Bock

Wally Bock — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:27:00 +0000

Of course you could have a supervisor who sees every day as performance evaluation day and accomplishes that primarily with short, informal conversations. You could have a boss that sees the annual performance dance as an opportunity to concentrate on the future and growth, since performance issues have been dealt with routinely already.

I tell supervisors I train that there should be no surprises at annual review time, either for you or your subordinate. That leaves you both free for a very different kind of appraisal interview.

When I researched top performing supervisors, I found two things about the way they handled the actual formal performance evaluation interview. First, their content was different and focused on growth and the future more than on what happened during the last year. Second, they took three times as long as their peers to conduct the interview, 32 minutes versus 10.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:50:00 +0000

Thanks for the good pep talk. I knew I had to do get started on this but it was helpful to see it in print!

By: Ask a Manager

Ask a Manager — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:36:00 +0000

This is great, great advice. I was going to add the tip about sending an electronic copy and then got to the end and saw you already had it in there!

The Evil HR Lady is so right that pulling out last year's objectives and writing to those is key. And this is an excellent time of year to be reviewing those and making sure that they haven't been shoved aside or forgotten, because it's likely that your company uses a review process that will require your manager to refer back to those.

So many people act as if they can just bury their heads in the sand and ignore performance reviews and they'll go away -- this approach can actually make them a good experience rather than a negative or neutral one.