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It’s that time of year again. The confetti from your New Year’s celebration has settled and you’ve returned to your work after the well-deserved Holiday season. Although you feel re-energized and ready to take on the year with all its challenges and opportunities that it may have in store for you, you can’t help but feel a sense of nervousness. This nervousness is derived from the fact that it is inevitably the dreaded Performance Review season.

It is a tough time because there is a lot of pressure lingering around this review as they can really impact your well-being. Employers tend to base their decisions for promotions and raises on the content of the performance reviews. In some cases they can even affect your future at the organization as they can impact whether or not they keep you. By all means this is not the norm; however, we have all heard of instances where this has occurred. To top everything off and to add to the pressure (even if you are feeling confident in a good review) is the stress of the unknown. You can’t help but feel a bit helpless as the contents of the review is in the hands of your manager. So to sum all this up it’s starting to sound like a recipe that could derail even the most Emotionally Intelligent person.

IHHP would like to help you through this pressure filled situation and provide you with some essential tips from our world renownedEmotional Intelligence program. If you can follow these steps you should be able to keep your Emotions from getting the best of you in this pivotal situation.

  1. Become familiar with the Performance review process – this will aid in removing some of the ‘unknown’ and help prepare you for what to expect.
  2. Prepare your own review – make a list of all your achievements since your last performance review. Always include how these achievements brought value to your organization. Also identify and communicate areas you want to/need to improve.
  3. Keep your emotions in check at all times with IHHP’s SOSS strategy:
    • Stop – take a moment (or a pause) to stop what you are doing.
    • Oxygenate – take a deep breath.
    • Strengthen appreciation – take a quick moment to appreciate something in life that you have gratitude for.
    • Seek Information – what is my best course of action? In this situation this just means return to objectively evaluating what your manager is saying so you can more effectively learn from it.

These tips are just a high level overview and don’t even truly scratch the surface of true Emotional Intelligence. If you would like to be fully prepared for your performance review and all other situations in your work and personal life please join us at one of our upcoming Public Programs.

So whether you are receiving a good or a bad performance review keep your emotions in check so they don’t get the best of you. That way you can get the most from your performance review and grow from this experience. Ultimately, this is the point of performance reviews in the first place.

On the flip-side of this situation if you are a manager having all of these difficult conversations it is also a very stressful time. Join us in our Three Conversations of Leadership programs to learn how to effectively have these conversations.