Poor Performance Ranking and Your Peers
When you have a poor performance review, it’s a bad sign.
As I mentioned in a previous article, you have to work twice as hard to get back to neutral and another twice as hard to get back to above average.
This may sound easy - it’s hard after factoring in externalities.
There are two other externalities working against you, your peers.
The people you work with hand in hand, day after day, helping out with tasks, getting help with tasks - welp, they are also your competition during performance review time.
Those ratings your boss assigns you: below, average, above, etc. Those ratings are relative to you and your peers.
When you are below, that means someone is above. Unless the whole team is stellar, which means another team is below par.
To get to above average after a poor performance review - you have to work hard, harder than the peers around you as that’s what your boss is ranking you against.
As it’s only fair - rank different people against same work.
Ranking this way is a natural byproduct of the whole performance review - and honestly, as a manager, this type of ranking sucks.
Everyone works as a team, until someone isn’t pulling enough weight.
The best way to overcome this is to not be in a situation where your boss can judge your performance to be below average.
That’s why it’s crucial to stay aligned with what you are doing and your boss expects you to do, regardless of what your peers are doing.
Once that’s misaligned - welp, it’s an easy opening for a bad performance review - and easy for someone to get a great performance review.