🤔 Questions to Ask in Your Performance Review
As an employee or emerging leader, it's important to take an active role in your performance review. Rather than just passively answering questions, you should also be asking questions to learn more about yourself, improve your work, and get the most out of the review process. In this article, we'll share 12 questions that you can choose from to get a balanced view of your performance. These questions fall into four categories: overall performance, areas for improvement, future outlook, and company insights.
Overall Performance
Understanding your overall performance since your last review is a good place to start. Here are three questions you could ask:
Is My Work Output Meeting Your Expectations?
This question will help you understand if your boss is happy with your progression and the effort you're putting in. If they answer yes, it's a great confidence boost for the rest of the review. If they answer no, it's a great segue to talk about areas for improvement.
How Do You Measure My Progress?
Understanding how you're being evaluated, what metrics your manager uses, and what ratings they use will help you understand how you can improve or impact those ratings. It's basically giving you insight into what your manager looks at so you can focus on those areas too.
How Much Have I Contributed to Achieving Our Team's Goals?
This question helps you single out your contribution, highlight it in the eyes of your manager, and understand the value that your manager places on you and your importance in the team.
Areas for Improvement
Questions about areas for improvement are essential because the answers you get will help you grow and develop into a more successful professional. Here are three questions you can ask:
What Additional Knowledge or Skills Will Make Me More Effective in My Role?
Here, you're making yourself look proactive and eager to develop and grow into a better professional. Ideally, your boss will respond with one to three areas that you need to improve on, whether they're technical skills or soft skills.
How Can I Better Support My Team?
This question shows that you recognize you're part of a team, you're a team player, and you want to help and support your teammates as well.
How Can I Better Support You in Your Role?
Managers love this question because it shows that you want to help and support them in their role, which helps the team overall. This question will definitely put a smile on your manager's face.
Future Outlook
Questions about the future outlook are essentially asking about your future in the company, whether it's promotions, pay raises, or lucrative opportunities. Here are three questions you can ask:
Are There Any Additional Projects or Tasks That I Can Work On?
Here, you're forcing your manager to think about expanding your responsibility and giving you more opportunities to grow.
What Would Make Me a Candidate for a Promotion?
This question helps you get a roadmap of what you need to work towards to advance in your career.
Can We Talk About Compensation?
This is a bold question, but if you want a pay raise, it's not something that will generally be given to you freely. More often than not, you're going to have to ask for it.
Corporate Insights
Asking about corporate goals, challenges, and direction will give you information on how you fit into the company's goals and your manager's goals. Here are three questions you can ask:
What Are the Most Important Goals for the Company in the Next 12 Months?
This question will either allow you to learn something new or get clarification on something that you already know about.
What Is the Company's Biggest Challenge?
Asking about challenges the company faces is helpful because it gives you an idea and a good understanding about the company and the environment it operates in.
What Goals Are Important to You?
This question turns the focus back onto the manager and gives you an opportunity to understand what your manager is working on, what is important to them, and how you can fit yourself into that picture.
When preparing for your performance review, choose one question from each of these four categories to get a good understanding of your performance. Remember, asking questions is only a small part of the performance review process. You also need to communicate about your achievements, how you have progressed, and areas that you want to improve on.
🌟 Highlights
- Asking questions in your performance review shows that you're proactive and eager to learn and develop as a professional.
- Questions about areas for improvement are essential because the answers you get will help you grow and develop into a more successful professional.
- Questions about the future outlook are essentially asking about your future in the company, whether it's promotions, pay raises, or lucrative opportunities.
- Asking about corporate goals, challenges, and direction will give you information on how you fit into the company's goals and your manager's goals.
❓ FAQ
Q: What should I do if my boss doesn't give me a clear answer to my questions?
A: If your boss doesn't give you a clear answer, ask for clarification or examples. If they still don't give you a clear answer, take note of their response and follow up with them later.
Q: What if I don't agree with my boss's assessment of my performance?
A: If you don't agree with your boss's assessment, provide specific examples of your work and explain why you think you performed well. Be open to feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Q: How often should I have a performance review?
A: Performance reviews are typically done annually, but some companies may do them more frequently. Check with your HR department or manager to find out your company's policy.
Resources:
- https://www.voc.ai/product/ai-chatbot (AI Chatbot product)
