How to Handle a Bad Review

admin

4 years ago

You’ve worked hard all year. Things weren’t always smooth sailing, and you learned a lot throughout the year. You feel you made any necessary course corrections. That said, you’re worried about how your performance will be assessed. Will your boss see the mishaps in the context of the tough situation you were in? Will your colleagues share only negative information about you in their peer reviews? Ultimately, you are wondering…”.will I get a bad review?”

In the majority of situations, feedback provided in a review is likely positive and developmental. If any manager is doing his/ her job, any negative feedback should not be a surprise. But, sometimes, for whatever reasons, an employee receives a surprise in the form of a bad review. The purpose of this post is to provide guidance on how to handle a bad review (or even simply negative feedback in an overall good review).

How to Handle a Bad Review

A few years ago, I received a review that was overall positive. There was one piece of feedback for improvement around communication with my peers. I was surprised as I had worked tirelessly to share information with my peers. And, they often thanked me and recognized me for those efforts.

I was tempted to protest that feedback in the moment. However, I knew I needed to go about it carefully as it could be perceived as defensiveness (which is the kiss of death in this situation).

How did I address the bad review? I followed 5 key steps:

Listen

Even if you do not believe the feedback, it is important to demonstrate that you are listening to it. I suggest taking notes and repeating back to ensure you understand. I also suggest asking for specific examples, and what the expectations would have been at the time.

In the situation above, I may have said, “just so I’m clear, my peers perceive I do not share important information with them in a timely manner, do I have that right?” This happened on XYZ project, where the expectation would have been ABC.”

Something like that. If your manager can’t give you the specific expectation, that is a separate issue regarding his/her performance as a manager (see here on guidance if you have a bad boss).

Reflect

Once you have listened to the feedback, I suggest leaving the conversation. I don’t mean just abruptly get up, but rather simply not continuing to discuss the feedback; just let it be.

You can conclude by saying something like, “thank you for this feedback. I’d like to take a week to think about it. I’ll set up a time next week after I’ve had the chance to reflect.”

The idea is that you do not want to over-react in the moment, which is very hard to do. You need to exercise some control by leaving and then having any reaction in private.

Seek additional input

This may not be appropriate in every company’s culture, but I have coached people to share the feedback they’ve received to solicit thoughts from colleagues. Oftentimes, managers who lead in cross-functional organizations are simply collecting feedback from others and aggregating; they may not have as many direct observations.

So, unfortunately, their feedback can be high level if they don’t do their homework. And, as such, the homework to really uncover the true meaning of the feedback falls on you.

In the situation, I described above, I spoke to my peers and said, “I’ve received feedback that I need to be more inclusive and communicative. I want to make sure I meet those expectations. What would good look like going forward?” In my situation, it was here that I better understood the nuanced gaps I had on communication.

Develop a plan

Based on the feedback, I suggest developing a plan to address it. The plan should have a goal, “improve presentation skills” or “increase proactive communication.” Then have ~3 things you will do to address the feedback (i.e., receive presentation coaching, weekly status report to cross-functional partners to communicate progress, etc).

Follow up

At this point, I suggest following up on the review with your manager. I think you can re-iterate what he/she told you, how you’ve come to better understand that, and that you have a plan to address.

Furthermore, you can ask for his/her input on your plan and align on how to check in on it to ensure progress. By doing this, you’re getting your manager’s buy-in and commitment to your growth here. As a result, you are also holding your manager accountable for being more aware of what you are or aren’t doing compared to expectations.

If you do this, I think you are effectively addressing feedback, but you’re also in control of it so it feels more empowering. If, for whatever reason, the feedback was unfair, you will benefit from having a documented plan that you discuss with your manager so the facts are clear going forward and misperceptions can change. This approach also demonstrates great leadership through a tough situation, which can only benefit the perceptions of your contributions.

In the situation above, when I followed up with my manager, I was able to explain the clarity I received on the feedback. I felt I heard that my peers wanted to know more about how everyone else was impacted by my work, not just his/her function. I also shared that I had a plan to do that by distributing weekly status reports to all key partners.

My manager realized she didn’t have all the correct information about my performance. She went on to update the review with the feedback specifically meant for me. I couldn’t have been happier than to have more accurate feedback documented, and a path forward on a specific area of development.

If, for some reason, you didn’t feel comfortable with your manager’s final assessment, here are some suggestions from the Muse about discussing with HR: https://www.themuse.com/advice/so-you-got-a-bad-review-should-you-go-to-hr

So, that is what I have on how to handle a bad review. I’d love to hear more of your experiences and advice below!

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