I received my 90 day review, how can I do better?

You can ask her why she gave you a 3 for attendance, but then she will probably ask you why you gave yourself a 3 for attendance.

Performance reviews are subjective (and sometimes driven by agendas outside of your knowledge). Yes, as @jca wrote, ask her about the 3 if you’re always there, but you put that too, so she’s likely to say ‘why did you rate yourself a 3 if you’re always here on time?’

I won a significant teaching award two years in a row. I always get exemplary teaching evaluations. The first award was a Commendation, but from a very senior member of the university. I got exceeded expectations in my performance review for T&L. The next year I took out the major award which came with a cash prize. I got met expectations. I queried it and apparently those higher up were concerned overall people (not me) were being rated too highly and so had told those doing the reviews to review more harshly. Ridiculous.

So aim to do as well as you can, but don’t beat yourself up.

As to what you can do. She told you, be more confident. Perhaps pick the things you decide to be decisive about, but avoid asking questions about things where you’ve received guidance before and by now should be able to make a decision.

“Michelle should be confident to think critically based on what she has learned and bring potential solutions to the table.”

From what I understood with her trying to clarify was to basically think of the issue and tell her MY opinions and what I think we should do based on my resources or what I know for input now that I read it and with the examples she gave me.

I don’t want to be a letdown. She did say I’m off to a great start in just the 3 months I’ve been there and knows I’ll grow.

It’s just weird because I think her main thing with me is becoming more confident and assertive with time and intervene and basically tel managers what to do rather than have them “bully” me. Not really bully but you know what I mean.

If you play it safe then you will get promoted more slowly. Its about how much risk that you are comfortable with. If you have a 9 month or more emergency fund and you are in demand then you can take more risks. If you need them more than they need you then you can’t take risks the same as a double income no kids (dinks) 30’s something homeowners. Also there is nothing stopping you from assessing your boss to determine if you stay in the job or you quit. Balance out the fear with equality.

I remember when my husband was a few years into his career in HR one of his employees was pissed he gave her a meets expectations for punctuality. She had never been late to work once. When he told me about it, I said, “so she is basically perfect on this and she can’t get a perfect score?” He argued his point, and I stuck to if someone is perfect and can’t do something better, they should get all points possible.

I’m pretty sure he didn’t change the score.

Review time can be pretty shitty in some companies. Sometimes they tell managers how many averages and above averages they can give out to fit in their matrix for salary increases. Meaning, all 4 employees on a team might be amazing, but the manager might be forced to downgrade some of them.

@JLeslie so what was his point to give her a lower rating? The metrics for salary increases?

^ Exactly @JLeslie. The only way I could have done better when they gave me a ‘met expectations’ is to have won a national, external teaching award. Very few people get them across the whole country.

@chelle21689, because some people will never give a 10. They always like to give you room for improvement. And as @JLeslie wrote, sometimes the grading you get is influenced by the organisation’s processes. So there is a bell curve and they only want so many people to get the highest grade. That’s what was going on when I got my ‘met expectations’. Despite there being a long document with criteria you have to meet, in the end, a human is doing the evaluation and humans are above them. Things aren’t always what they seem.

No, in my husband’s example it wasn’t salary, it was just that the expectation is to be on time and so she met expectations, she didn’t exceed expectations.

Luckily, not many companies do the salary thing, but many do encourage not giving out very high scores. The view with that is that reviews are a time to discuss where you can improve, and everyone has places they can improve.

You would need to ask your manager what you can specifically do to get a high score on your review to really know what she will look for. It sounds like she doesn’t mind questions, so I wouldn’t worry about asking questions in general while working. Like you said, you want to avoid a mistake.

When I was a manager I was encouraged not to give a lot of 5’s (if 5 was the best) for each item. I had a lot of great employees. In my opinion all my hard working employees should have felt great walking out of a review with me, but I doubt that was always the case with some of the constraints I had. No one felt bad I think, but I’m sure some felt like they weren’t appreciated in their review like they should have been.

Sucks.

@JLeslie So do you have any other opinions or advice on me thinking more critically and presenting possible solutions? Or do you think I interpreted her correctly?

It’s been my nature to always ask questions. Even on Fluther in asking questions 90% of the time rather than giving advice.

I think there is no way for me to know what she is thinking. You have the best opportunity by listening to her feedback, watching her body language, and asking her questions about how you can improve when the timing seems right.

I know for me, I always encourage and reassure my staff that I want them to ask me questions and not struggle through figuring things out themselves too often. It’s a waste of time if I can tell then in a minute how to do something. Eventually, I expect them to know what they are doing on their own. Either they are getting it or they aren’t, but questions about new situations, or something only shown to you once or twice before is perfectly normal in my opinion.

Take good notes and make sure they are “filed” in a way that you can find places in your notes. Most of mine is in my steno pad you might remember, but some of it I’m going to start typing into a word document. I’ll do a table format, so I can “find” key words through the search mechanism even if I don’t organize it well. Plus, these notes will be available for the person I might train in the future if I leave the position.

Stop underselling yourself. If you deserved a 4 for attendance you should give yourself a 4. Confidence != cockiness.

@JLeslie gotcha. Yes, I actually did the tab thing although it could’ve been prettier lol, but I’ve referred to it a few times but less as less as time goes on. Luckily we have an “HR bible” also.

If you get to work every day that you’re scheduled to work (except for the excused and planned absences), work your proper hours and don’t goof off when there is work to be done, take short lunches and work occasional overtime when required, then why would you not earn a top rating in attendance and punctuality? After all, that’s an aspect of your work that is under your almost complete control (outside of various emergencies that you can’t overcome). This goes to what was on the evaluation. When you know what you know, admit it, and don’t feign modesty.

“Not being timid” is not the same as being cocky. Don’t be timid.

You’ve been on the job for three months now, and you know some things about the job. Don’t continue to ask questions about the things you do understand, even when you’re moving onto somewhat unfamiliar ground sometimes, as long as a mistake won’t result in actual “disaster”. That’s another aspect of timidity: presuming that “mistake” = “disaster”. Yes, as I’ve described in earlier threads on this topic, sometimes they can, and you can’t afford to make those mistakes. But in a general office setting it is very rare for a mistake to result in “disaster”.

I think you really need to work on cultivating an attitude of “what’s the worst that could happen?” and acting on those assumptions more often. When your imagination tells you – in a believable way! – that a particular mistake could result in actual disaster: fatal accident, serious injury to people, catastrophic structural failure or heavy economic loss, then that is something that you should bring up to your superiors – and this is the second part of that – recommend solutions which can be implemented at relatively low cost to prevent that potential mistake, or at least those awful outcomes.

And if a potential error could cost – what? a few dollars in loss? a required report being a day late? being late to a meeting? some ruffled feathers? – then don’t be afraid to take the risk that might have that result. If a mistake occurs and if that is the result, then you learn from it. Next time, you’ll find a better way to do the thing.

Your boss doesn’t want to keep holding your hand and walking you through simple things. She wants you to take on more challenge, think things through and take action on your own. That way, she can continue to trust you to do more of that, because taking those risks successfully will help to build your confidence in your own abilities.

*I meant to say “get to work on time every day.” A mistake that didn’t cause any disasters, I’m sure.

@CWOTUS that was really well written, thanks. I’ll try to take that into consideration and see how I can apply it. I’m definitely planning to be more aware now. It’s very different from my first job where they were mean and I felt so stupid. I think that’s why I’m scared to take risks.

I think someone on Fluther told me about a time their boss took him aside and basically told him to stop second guessing himself and just do it, something along those lines. I’ll have to find the quote.

“drove my boss crazy with the 4 times daily questions and finally he took me aside and made a motion like he was taking off handcuffs and told me I was free to just go do my job as he knew I could do better than I thought I could. It was the best thing he did for me and yes I made mistakes as he knew I would but it allowed for a greater payoff for all involved.” it was @cruiser

It seems to me that they are satisfied with your work. With time you will become more familiar with how the company works and will ask fewer questions. One thing you can do is to try to anticipate what the answer will be before asking a question. It you find yourself being right often enough it will boost your confidence and cut down on the number of times you need to ask.

@LostInParadise thanks, that makes sense. She did keep saying “in time she will…” And “I’m confident in time she will” so they mentioned how it’ll probably take me a year or so to really master.

I would not be surprised by the 3 for attendance since this was your first review as I would concur that a 4 right out of the box is perhaps premature which allows you both some wiggle room for your next review. I think the 4 is reserved by the reviewer for a years review where it is more apparent that you deserve that 4 for consistency over a greater period of time. On your second review if you again arrive on time and stay a little later each day then do not hesitate to give yourself a 4.