Welcome back practicing leaders today. We're going to tackle a topic, which I have found to be difficult, even for myself to do. And that's writing performance reviews. No one likes doing it. Everyone dislikes it, but you know what? It's a fact of life and we have to go through and do it. But don't worry, I got you covered today. We're going to go over some helpful strategies to make the process easier. This is the Practing Leader podcast. I'm your host, Parul Bhargava, and let's discuss through some of your past mails, your calendar events, see if you can identify patterns in the type of work you've been doing. Use this as an opportunity to be able to create stretch goals for your next review period. Going back and reviewing the some things that you've written or some things that you've put together may help you identify, Oh, wait a second. I forgot about this, this achievement that I had because you know what? I didn't write it down, but having gone through and reviewed it. Now you can recall some additional detail that you can now could include. Inside of your review. Tip number three, review the training that you took. This is gives you an opportunity to build a reflect on the type of training that you did, the type of work that you've been trying to learn about, and then figure out, Hey, is there something new I can learn in this space? Is there some way that I can, I can apply this work when you're setting your future goals, take a moment to figure out how do I apply the learning I've just gotten? And how can I apply it to something else that I can work on in the future? That way you can lock in that knowledge and make sure it's always at your fingertips. And then next gather feedback, seek feedback from your colleagues, from your supervisor, from your customers, or your, the people that you work with to be able to figure out how is it that you're doing and how is it that you appear in front of others? Because the thing that you're trying to figure out is how do you show up as your best self each and every day? This will provide a different perspective and insights into your strengths as well as areas for improvement. You can then incorporate that as part of your self assessment because that way you can be about areas that you could improve on as well as be able to reinforce the things that you've done well. Number five, be objective and be specific. Talking in generalizations and talking as objective statements in your performance review is not going to help you. Instead, provide concrete examples with specific metrics to support your points. This will help make your review more credible and provide a clear picture of your performance. Another thing that you can consider here is You don't want to use we statements. You want to be able to use I statements. It's not to say that you want to take credit for other people's work, but you do want to talk about the things specifically that you did. Tip number six is talking about those outcomes that you've achieved. and making sure that you focus on the impacts as well. Highlight the results and the impact of your work. Describe how those efforts contributed to the success of projects, achieve goals, or improve processes. By quantifying your value, you can help the reviewer understand the significance of your work. When I talk about the, uh, the quantification of your value, the things you want to consider are Things like revenue, expenses, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, or time and how either those things increased or decreased in order to have them be improved from where their previous value was. And how is the work that you did contribute to that success? Next one, number seven, address areas for improvement. There will be places where you have to figure out, you know what, I wish I knew more about X. I wish I could have done this better. I wish I could have done. I could have delivered this message better. Acknowledge where you can improve and discuss steps that you can take and plan to enhance your skills or knowledge. This is where you can tie the work that you're doing from a training perspective and how you're learning how to do things to be able to show a proactive attitude towards growth and development that is essential for your personal growth. Having a growth mindset and making sure that you're saying, I don't know this yet. Is a critical component here where you want to be able to show you're willing to learn and willing to change tip number eight Be honest and balance Bounced about how you communicate your achievements, your impacts and places where you could, you could improve while it's important to highlight your strengths as part of your performance review, having the open and honest and objective perspective about how you could be improving as well as being. Careful not to embellish the impacts that you've gotten will allow you to be able to make sure that the review itself will stand on its own. This is where you can focus on what you've learned from those experiences and how you plan to improve. And tip number nine, take your time. Writing a performance review is a significant task, so don't rush through it. Take the time to reflect on your performance, gather supporting evidence, and craft thoughtful responses and impactful statements. Seeking feedback from trusted colleagues or a mentor can also ensure your review is comprehensive. Bonus tip number one. You did the hard work. You've already documented all the things that you've done and what a great job you've done at them. Now take a moment and now integrate all of that great content into your resume. We already know that we need to be doing that on a quarterly basis, but you know what? Sometimes we fall behind, we don't get an opportunity to do it. Take this moment to be able to take those impactful things that you've already outlined. We're using those indicators for customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, revenue, time, or expenses, and then use that to be able to then fill in the blanks in your resume, so that way you have those things at your fingertips. You don't need necessarily to keep all those statements, but you know what? You can trim the resume later. Just toss all that stuff in. And the second bonus tip is keep a review later email folder, go back and make sure that you're keeping a copy of mails that you're especially proud of things that were impactful to you. Things that were memorable. That way, when you go back to go take an inventory, that step is so much easier. Take a moment to go through and record those things. That way, when you go back to go reflect, It's much easier for you to reflect. You may not capture everything, but if you capture some key moments, it'll allow you to be able to generate a narrative that actually describes the work that you've done over the last review period. This entire process is ridiculously hard. And I'm just gonna say, welcome to the club. All of us go through it. And I find that the best thing I can do is just start writing, and as I go through, I slowly improve and I slowly revise until I get to a place where I feel it is representative of my work. Take the moment here and be able to go through these strategies so you can look at your performance review and make the process of writing it easier for yourself and make it more effective to be able to deliver a compelling narrative about how you're doing great work. Remember, it's an opportunity to be able to showcase accomplishments, highlight the places of growth, as well as set goals for the future.
