Overcoming a Negative Performance Review

A performance review can be glorious or the worst nightmare, depending upon the results of your review. The review, in theory, is designed to provide an orderly way for your superior to meet with you, usually on an annual basis, to tell you what the company thinks about your job performance and to improve it by pointing out key positives and negatives about your on-the-job performance over the past year.

Its primary mission is to give you feedback to help you strengthen your capabilities so that you can be a more productive member of the organization, and in the process receive additional compensation or grow in responsibility.

The review is used to justify both satisfaction with your job performance (leading, hopefully, to a raise) and dissatisfaction (which could be the precursor to a demotion or even a termination).

Separate perception from reality

To grow with an organization when one has received a less-than-sterling review, one has to learn to separate the "learning" areas ( i.e. what one has to do to improve) from the "hurting" parts of the message ( i.e. the personal or work related negatives that say to you, "I am not a valued employee and don't have a future here. They don't like me.) For you the employee, the bottom line of a performance review is often fairly short range: "What was the size of the raise?" not "How am I doing within the organization and have I got an opportunity to grow?" These are important issues, often relegated to a secondary place in the discussion.

Handling a poor review requires discipline

Most people come out of a review that is critical of their performance understandably upset or angry. One important thing to remember is that you're still at the company ( not applying for a job) so there's a lot you can do before resigning yourself to being terminated or being forced to leave.

The key is whether you want to stay.

If you like your job and want to remain with the organization, your response to a less-than-favorable review becomes that much more important, because ( believe it or not ) many supervisors hate to deliver bad news. Your ability to digest it and learn from it without becoming antagonistic may be critical to your getting back into the company's and your supervisor's good graces.

It's not an easy task. It takes the ability to stand back and get outside of yourself , to view yourself dispassionately, at least for the duration of the review.

The "trick" is to understand, going into the review, that there may be some negatives and that you have to be able to separate your performance on the job from your perceptions of yourself as a bad or unworthy person because you were criticized.

This also allows you to determine, with a clear head, if those negatives can be fixed.

Even if you disagree with a negative perception, it's still your supervisor's perception and unless it's a factual issue that is in question ( i.e. sales growth or the number of new accounts added ) there will be gray areas that are matters of personal objectivity.

Example: Supervisor: "Well, Jim, one area that we're rather disappointed in is your handling of customer complaints. You seem to handle them in a curt, rude manner and that's a critical part of your job."

Your reaction initially may be: "That's baloney. I'm not rude. I'm very pleasant, 99 percent of the time. It's just that one person you heard that gave me a difficult time. The one day, by the way, that you took the time to listen to my customer conversations."

Certainly, if the perception is just plain incorrect, in your opinion, you want to know how you supervisor arrived at that conclusion. It may not make any difference, but at least you'll know how opinions were formed.

Your goal is to maintain your "cool" while conveying the sense that you want to improve. To do this you need to understand the specifics of what you have to do to correct this perception, in your supervisor's eyes.

Five keys to help you cope with and overcome a bad review

1. Go in with a list of accomplishments that you have accumulated over the past year. By recording (daily) completed projects as you do them, even you will be surprised at how much you've accomplished. You'll also short-circuit a generalized, unthoughtful criticism of your work, if it's not based on the facts.
2. Go into the review assuming there will be some negatives, and thinking of your meeting as a way to learn what specific issues you have to work on to get to that next step. It's your boss' job to let you know about areas where you can improve, so try not to be offended. Your goal is to convince your supervisor, in a positive manner, that you are willing to make that commitment.
3. Before going into a review, separate a page into two columns. The first should be headed "Specific Areas of Strength"; the second, "Specific Areas of Improvement." It's very important that you hear both the good and the bad comments, because you'll never improve, to your boss' satisfaction, if you deny, in your anger, that there were any areas needing improvement. Remember, we're talking about your supervisor's perception, not necessarily yours.
4. Ask for clarification and specific examples if you hear generalizations or don't understand what the problem is. But try hard not to be too argumentative. Offer specifics of your own to buttress your argument if you feel that there is an incorrect perception.
5. Find out how your boss might solve these issues, and ask for another review in thirty days to address these specific issues, to see if headway is being made.

Remember that if you spend your time being hurt by or defensive about what is said, and not learning about what you can do to change your boss' perception, you're doing yourself a disservice.

What you are trying to accomplish is to leave the meeting with a good idea of what you can do to improve your boss' perception of you before the next review.

You're also creating an image of a thoughtful employee who is willing and able to modify behavior.

To do this, you have to be prepared to hear what the issues are, so that they can be addressed.

Remember, perception is often someone's reality.

Separating the "learning" from the "hurting" parts of the review is the key The hurt over a bad review may not go away, but by taking pains to separate the "learning" from the "hurting" part of the meeting, you stand a far better chance of correcting perceptions and having a more positive review the next time out.

Good jobs are hard to come by, and if you like your job this approach should help to give you a fighting chance to assess and correct areas that your supervisor feels may have been overlooked, without allowing your personal feelings to dominate.

David Gordon, President of Gordon Communications, a marketing and outplacement consulting firm in Highland Park, Illinois.