Holidays season is coming. Before thinking about what you will offer to your guests for Christmas eve diner, you will have to go through the end of year appraisal process.
Don’t forget that people have short memories when it comes to the achievements of others. Take this to your advantage by preparing yourself as if you would attend to your dream job interview.
The challenge will be to increase your bonus as much as possible with a minimum of preparation.
Where should you start?
Of course, you should have began earlier. As a routinologist, I recommend that you prepare your performance review all year long. You can for example, keep all the emails that can help to illustrate your success in a dedicated folder where you can find them easily.
Anyway, if you didn’t do anything yet, keep calm, it’s never too late.
First of all, find out your objectives for this year and read them carefully. Keep in mind that what you want to achieve is to demonstrate that you over performed them.
Take a sheet of paper, browse your calendar and
write down every important thing you have done (task, project, meeting) that helped you to achieve your objectives.
Keep in mind that people like numbers. What number can demonstrate your impact? You may have increased profits or reduced costs, found new clients, but you may also have reduced the
number of meetings of your teams. Brainstorm to find at least 2 or 3 examples.
At the same time, try to identify what were you 3 biggest contributions to your team and your department.
Come back to your objectives, to what extend did this review help you to demonstrate that you have reach them or that you overcame them?
Is there any important task that is not completed yet and which could have a significant impact on your final score? The year is not over yet and it is still time to manage it but hurry up and keep focus on the actions with the most visible results.
Now identify your contributions towards your manager, your colleagues and direct reports. What did you do which help them to contribute to their own objectives?
Did you contribute to other projects which are not described in your job description? Have you been involved in Diversity and Inclusion initiative for example?
Now it is time to wrap up.
How can you describe your year in 3 sentences? Write these 3 sentences on a piece of paper and rewrite them until you feel comfortable with them.
Identify now the people who can influence your appraisal. There is obviously you manager but who else will contribute? Your N+2, a peer in another country? The manager of another team?
When this exercise is completed, like a politician who repeats the same sentences over and over in front of the camera, your mission will be to do your own advertising by repeating these 3 sentences to all the individuals that you just identified and who can influence your end of year assessment.
Use the opportunity of these discussions to ask for feedback. Remember that people may have forgotten what you did, so remind it them. Your manager is also supposed to ask for these feedback, but chances are high that she or he is short of time so use the situation to your advantage and ask for these feedback proactively.
Now you are equipped with all you need to have this important discussion. During the meeting, repeat again the 3 sentences but this time add all the details that your manager will need to understand in more details your achievements. Finally, don;t forget to be clear on what you want to achieve next year and be ready to talk about it during the discussion.