Are you performing?

You are sitting in your managers office with sweaty hands and wait until they get to the point.

And you wait.

And wait.

Eventually you understand that they do not get into the point. You are disappointed and relieved at the same time.

At least it was not bad news.

But you are left with a lot of questions and feel very unappreciated. Your manager might not even have read the paperwork you prepared.

After the meeting, you get your letter. Empty words and thank you. You might not even get that. Maybe you get a pay rise or not. But you do not really know why.

You have just gone through a performance review.

Performance review is one of the best times for an employee and manager to deeply discuss how you really feel about your work. What your future aspirations are and what your manager wants from you. Unfortunately, all too often this does not happen.

Many managers might be as nervous in that situation as you and do not know how to handle it. They might never have had any formal training and are too busy to learn. This is relatively common in academia.

You might come into conclusion that the review outcome does not really reflect your performance and in many cases, you might be absolutely correct. The result might reflect more of your personal relationship with the manager or the fact whether you are the flavour of the month or just have done some mistake that the manager remembers. Even if it does not reflect your overall performance throughout the year.

This should not be the case.

In case this sounds familiar and you are not ready to move on just yet, there are ways you could try to improve the situation. You probably cannot change your manager, but there are ways to get better results.

1. Discuss with your manager. The straight talk is always the best way to sort of any issues. Tell them you are left unsure of how you have performed and would you be granted another meeting to rectify this. Tell them you want to develop your career and need some feedback.
2. Ask them what is required to get into the new level. If you want a promotion and did not get it, ask what you were missing and how to be prepared for next year. Sometimes it is personal trait that you need to develop, and it might be hard for a manager to discuss. You might want to be in managerial position, and you have great specialist skills, but you lack emotional intelligence. This might be hard for a manager to tell you. Avoid being emotional.
3. Ask others. Other managers could be more qualified to evaluate your performance and you could unofficially have feedback from them. Ask them why they think your manager did not give a thorough evaluation. Again, avoid being emotional and accusatory. In many cases managers do not want to reveal the issues with performance if the person gets angry or defensive.
4. Be proactive. Find out the workplace policy about performance review. Read what is needed for promotion. If your workplace does not have these guidelines (in smaller companies and start-ups this might be the case), propose them to be created.

If nothing is working and you know you are better than your performance review shows year after another, you might want to consider leaving. There are always jobs for high performing people who are willing to develop their career. However, you might want to make a list of positives and negatives at your workplace and take a critical look on what is important to you.

If you decide to change jobs, look for signs at your next job interview. In most cases your future manager is present and if this is the case, critically evaluate how they answer to your questions, how they explain your position description and ask about their performance review policy. It is often better to shop around than accept a workplace that is not better than the one you left dissatisfied.