JT8 | Hard Work Alone Won‘t Get You A Good Performance Rating

Year-end is when everyone slogs it out to complete their projects and do a good job so they can try and gain some brownie points in their performance reviews.

But does that work? And is a last-minute blaze of glory the only thing that you can do to try and boost your rating and bonus?

Actually, no. If you start planning now, you can do a lot more for your performance review calibration.

Discussion Topics: Hard Work Alone Won‘t Get You A Good Performance Rating

• Contrary to popular opinion, hard work alone will not get you a good performance rating, let alone a promotion.
• You also need to deliver results, have a good reputation amongst your peers and have credibility among management. To make these happen you need to do five things, as below.
• Reconfirm your OKRs so you don’t waste time on things that don’t matter.
• Focus on the things that have a maximum impact, even if it means dropping the rest.
• Proactively handle feedback and perceptions among your peers so you reduce the possibility of negative feedback.
• Ensure at least a couple of people on the calibration committee vouch for you.
• Write a great self-appraisal focused on OKRs and outcomes and explain the challenges you overcame.

Transcript: Hard Work Alone Won‘t Get You A Good Performance Rating

It’s getting close to year-end and you know what that means!
Holidays!
Err, no sorry. I meant appraisals. It’s appraisal time. Sorry for getting your hopes up!

Year end is when everyone slogs it out to complete their projects and do a good job so they can try and gain some brownie points in their performance reviews. But does that work? And is a last-minute blaze of glory the only thing that you can do to try and boost your rating and bonus? Actually, no. If you start planning now, you can do a lot more for your performance review calibration.

Hi there and welcome to JobTok, My name is Amit and I’ve spent almost two decades in various large and small organisations as well as startups. I’ve been an individual contributor, as well as a leader managing hundreds of talented individuals in fast-growth environments. In the process, I’ve learnt a lot about what it takes to be successful in the corporate world. In this show I share with you everything I’ve learnt so you can accelerate your career, land exciting roles and shape the career of your dreams.

I’ve had the privilege of managing a lot of people throughout my career and, come appraisal time, there were always a few people disappointed. “But Amit I worked so hard this cycle. I really believe I deserve better than this calibrated performance rating.” And all I could do was to explain the situation and try to give them reassurance that their work was indeed valued.

But now I’m no longer a manager. And I can tell it like it is haha. So listen carefully.

Working hard isn’t good enough. Yep you heard it right. Hard work isn’t good enough. There are three other things you have to do in order to make a solid case for a good calibrate rating.

• First, You have to deliver results. Now that might sound like the same thing as working hard, but it isn’t. You can work hard and have nothing to show for it because you did the job wrong, worked on the wrong things or because you weren’t set up for success.
• Second, you have to be well-liked and respected by your peers and stakeholders. How you do things is almost as important as what you do. It is possible in many companies to be a jerk and still get good ratings, but that group of companies is shrinking and you are better off in the long run being a good person who is good at their job rather than being a brilliant jerk. Plus its better for your own mental health to be liked than disliked.
• Third, you need to be known amongst those that matter in your evaluation. If you are a great performer but nobody knows you, it makes it pretty hard for your manager to secure a great rating because they have to educate leadership about you while also explaining your results. It’s pretty hard when all you have is 5 mins to present a case in a ratings discussion. I’ll tell you all about how these discussions work in a future episode, but for now, trust me.

So how can you overcome these and increase your chances of a good rating? You need to do five things. Oh, don’t worry you don’t have to write them down – they’re all there in the show notes on CrazyTok Media.

First, reconfirm your OKRs and priorities with your manager. There are just 3 months left in the year. Make them count by putting your best efforts into those things that management cares about. If you have too many things on your plate, try to get your manager to rank them in order of importance so you can work. Especially if you work at a growth company, you’d be surprised at how many things you were asked to do that nobody wants or even remembers now. If some of these are your own initiatives, it might be time to put them on the back burner. Be ruthless about what you’re going to deliver.

Second, focus on the needle movers. Among the items still left on your plate, assess which ones are going to be most impactful to the business. Usually things that involve making or saving money get the most acknowledgement and credit from management so if you have anything in that area, you may want to double down on that. And even in this area, those that are more obvious, tried and tested or lower risk would be a better bet than new initiatives with higher risk and unknown outcomes.

Next in line would be things that indirectly impact money eg improving sales or marketing conversion rates, increasing productivity, launching a new paid feature etc. After this come things that strengthen the core eg quality improvements, reducing technical debt, improving processes, better training, etc with longer-term impacts that may not be immediately visible in this cycle.

Now, it goes without saying that the prioritization will depend on your role. If you are a trainer, obviously you can’t deprioritise training! But perhaps you could prioritize sales training over, say, quality management training so you can demonstrate that your efforts resulted in a better sales force with higher revenue per person. On the other hand, if you are a business owner, you would want to prioritise revenue activities over people development activities at this stage.

The third point is to proactively handle feedback and perceptions. Reach out to the people you work with, especially those who are likely to provide a peer or stakeholder rating at year-end, and ask them for feedback on your performance till date. And because most people don’t like to give unfiltered development feedback, make it easier by telling them to offer 2-3 positive and 2-3 development feedback. By laying out the expectation of negative feedback, you give them the implicit permission to be honest about your shortcomings rather than hiding or glossing over them. This is very important, because you need to address these issues immediately and well before the appraisal period – and confirm with them that the issue has been resolved to their satisfaction. This way, you can handle your detractors ahead of time and in fact might be able to turn some of them into promoters.

This works well in an open, transparent, growth environment where people get ahead on merit and don’t gain through back-stabbing. It works less – and maybe won’t work at all – in a highly political environment where people actually want to see you fail so they can succeed. But either way, it’s worth a try.

Fourth, you need to make a good impression with a couple of people on the calibration committee – at the very least your manager’s manager. This is to ensure that when your case comes up for discussion, you have more than just your manager making your case for you. At least a couple of others should be in agreement or, even better, step in with their own positive experiences interacting with you. So, find a way for them to get to know you. Speak up in meetings, offer to present your team’s update at the next review, and start sending a short weekly or monthly update talking about all the things you and your team have achieved. If all else fails, ask whether they could give you 15 mins for coaching and feedback. But be careful, this last one is a high risk, so do it only if you have something great to share and are confident you will make a good impression. Otherwise, they’re going to leave the meeting thinking it was a total waste of time and almost certainly bring it up in your rating discussion. So think twice and prepare well for this meeting.

Last, certainly not least, make sure that at appraisal time, you write a good self-appraisal. That’s a whole topic in itself and we’re almost out of time today, so let me just say that you need to make sure it’s connected to your OKRs and focuses on outcomes and metrics, not just effort. And please make sure to write a few paragraphs that do full justice to your work, not just a couple of lines. At the end of the day, if you won’t help yourself by putting in one hour to present your work, why should your manager be expected to do any better?

Summary: Hard Work Alone Won‘t Get You A Good Performance Rating

So that’s it for today. Hard work alone won’t get you a great rating, But if you plan well and start now, you could do enough to have an impact and create a positive impression, which together will make it easier for your manager and leaders to recommend a high rating. In summary, reconfirm your OKRs, focus on where you can have the highest impact, proactively address peer feedback, create a good impression with some of the leadership and ensure you write a good self-appraisal.

If you found today’s chat useful please do Follow/ Subscribe and tell others about JobTok so we can help even more people accelerate their careers, find great opportunities and shape the lives of their dreams. A summary of what we discussed today is on our website.

Thanks for listening. This was Amit with JobTok. See you next time.