It feels like you’ve just been sentenced to life in prison when you get that reminder from personnel that it is time for the annual review process. A futile month long exercise in pointless formed, and meaningless comments.
Yes, I am being overly cynical about this, but they are usually nothing more than a personal PR campaign (one where the result can only be either ‘fail’ or ‘carry-on’) and a political minefield.
My personal favorite is the ’360 degree’ feedback regime. In this you must elicit at least two fully completed lengthy forms from each of your staff, your peers, and your superiors. Simple maths tells you that if everyone is send out at least 6 forms, then everyone must be having to complete, on average, 6 forms. And if you have 6 forms to complete, can you guess how thoroughly you think about them? Exactly.
But if we must go through these processes, then we should at least try and morph them to our own advantage. Lets look at the opportunities within an annual review process:
1. It is an opportunity for people who work closely with you to be able to point you where you are going wrong (ie. things you can work on), without having to fall out with them first;
2. It is an opportunity to have frank conversations with colleague that might encourage more helpful behaviour from them going forward;
3. It is the one time in the year when your boss is going to be comparing the merits of you colleagues compared to yours – providing you are doing a good job, then it is an opportunity for him/her to realise how indispensable you are;
4. Further to this, it is a context to sit down with your boss and tell him how damn good you are – do this any other time of the year and you will either look arrogant or stupid;
5. It is an opportunity to increase the moral and development of other people in the organization you respect; and
6. If you are not careful, it is an opportunity to entrench enemies, and alienate friends.
Basically your approach should be threefold:
1. When giving feedback on your boss – be as nice as possible. It is much better to have a private word with him about why he is utterly useless, than to write it down on a form and copy in Personnel. Just make sure you do have that private word!
2. When giving feedback on others, then say you haven’t the time to complete the form, but you will send them an e-mail with your feedback on. More often that not this is fine with them, and allows you to say exactly what you mean, rather than try and fit it in set boxes. You’ll also complete it in 10% of the time.
3. Finally, use the process as your annual personal sales pitch. See your boss with a list of all your achievements in the past year – focusing on those pieces of work that you really helped your boss out. Outline the type of work you want to be doing in the next year, and ask what projects are coming up – can you take first pick? Have two or three things you want to develop ready – it is best if they are things that you really are trying to develop, but it also helps if they are not funemental failing. “I want to work on not spending all day on Facebook” will not improve the next 12 months.
So, what top tips do you have? How do you get through your annual review?
It feels like you’ve just been sentenced to life in prison when you get that reminder from Personnel that it is time for the annual review process. A futile month long exercise in pointless forms, and meaningless comments.
Yes, I am being overly cynical about this, but they are usually nothing more than a personal PR campaign (one where the result can only be either ‘fail’ or ‘carry-on’) and a political minefield.
My personal favorite is the ’360 degree’ feedback regime. In this you must elicit at least two fully completed lengthy forms from each of your staff, your peers, and your superiors. Simple maths tells you that if everyone is send out at least 6 forms, then everyone must be having to complete, on average, 6 forms. And if you have 6 forms to complete, can you guess how thoroughly you think about them? Exactly.
But if we must go through these processes, then we should at least try and morph them to our own advantage. Lets look at the opportunities within an annual review process:
1. It is an opportunity for people who work closely with you to be able to point you where you are going wrong (ie. things you can work on), without having to fall out with them first;
2. It is an opportunity to have frank conversations with colleague that might encourage more helpful behaviour from them going forward;
3. It is the one time in the year when your boss is going to be comparing the merits of you colleagues compared to yours – providing you are doing a good job, then it is an opportunity for him/her to realise how indispensable you are;
4. Further to this, it is a context to sit down with your boss and tell him how damn good you are – do this any other time of the year and you will either look arrogant or stupid;
5. It is an opportunity to increase the moral and development of other people in the organization you respect; and
6. If you are not careful, it is an opportunity to entrench enemies, and alienate friends.
Basically your approach should be threefold:
1. When giving feedback on your boss – be as nice as possible. It is much better to have a private word with him about why he is utterly useless, than to write it down on a form and copy in Personnel. Just make sure you do have that private word!;
2. When giving feedback on others, then say you haven’t the time to complete the form, but you will send them an e-mail with your feedback on. More often that not this is fine with them, and allows you to say exactly what you mean, rather than try and fit it in set boxes. You’ll also complete it in 10% of the time; and
3. Finally, use the process as your annual personal sales pitch. See your boss with a list of all your achievements in the past year – focusing on those pieces of work that you really helped your boss out. Outline the type of work you want to be doing in the next year, and ask what projects are coming up – can you take first pick? Have two or three things you want to develop ready – it is best if they are things that you really are trying to develop, but it also helps if they are not fundamental failings. “I want to work on not spending all day on Facebook” will not improve the next 12 months.
So, what top tips do you have? How do you get through your annual review?
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Tagged as:
Annual Review,
Personal Development
