I had my performance review a couple of days ago. It was very positive.
At the end though I was given a report, which included a section where the various managers could give feedback. This was positive too, except that one manager, who I don’t actually work with, wrote some pretty nasty criticism of me that was quite personal (“Perhaps Mijin schedules these meetings because he wants the attention”), and also included insinuations of things that I have not done (e.g. that I criticized a member of my team in front of the rest of the team, something I’ve never done in my career).
I had sensed some animosity from this manager previously, and so I did a 1-to-1 chat with him a couple of weeks ago that I thought was pretty cordial. I’m hoping he wrote the performance review comments prior to us having this chat, because otherwise I don’t know how he could harbor so much ill will.
Anyway, the comments made me so angry I have not been able to sleep these last couple of nights. I’m not sure what to do. Am I overblowing this?
I don’t want to go to my manager with drama. My next scheduled 1-to-1 with my manager is in just over a week’s time, so I am just trying to stay calm and then that’s an appropriate forum to mention it and hopefully clear the air.
It’s a godsend that all this was in writing. Keep everything in writing. Preserve it for future use, in case you need to take any form of action against the company. Does nobody else see these reviews? At my company, reviews would be seen by other superiors as well.
What I would like to do here is to help you find a way to not care* about what this person said about you – but I know how hard it can be to just let it go. The injustice, perhaps, gnaws at you the most, and that other people will have read those remarks and perhaps someone will have believed them. Maybe you are constantly playing back actual conversations in your head, or imagining what you would like to say to this person. I have certainly done that sort of thing many times in my life, and always found it unproductive.
All I can say is that you don’t have to let it make you nuts. There are probably techniques or mental exercises for that sort of thing, but I don’t know any myself. What I’m saying here is probably not very helpful, but I believe you can find a way to convince yourself that his opinion doesn’t matter to you or to anyone else.
*“not care” in this context means strictly emotionally, so you can move on and take care of yourself and the things that are important to you. If it turns out he told deliberate lies about you, you may at some point want to nail his ass to the wall, coolly and without rancor, when the time is right.
Do your performance reviews mean anything? At my job they are entirely pro forma requirements and by contract can’t be used to discipline. They’re merely “encouragements” and “improvement plans.” Hence I ignore them utterly. Not that it would matter anyway in my case, as they get written by my immediate report and that person happens to like me.
However if they mean something career or bonus-wise AND one bad sneering set of comments could be a set back, I might politely and calmly complain to your immediate boss. If the one comment is essentially meaningless I wouldn’t let it bother me unless it became an ongoing issue (every single review has snark), then I might complain depending on how sympathetic you think your superiors might be. It really is very, very situational.
Regardless that old saw about not letting someone live rent-free in your head still applies. If everybody else you actually work with is complimentary, just try to shrug it off as one person with an attitude problem that isn’t your issue. Easier said than done sometimes, but…it’s what you should strive for .
Thanks all. Yes I know objectively this shouldn’t rile me up, and yes it’s inconsequential as it is not linked to the pay review.
I guess I just needed other people to tell me that. I know it’s a bit corny but just venting here has already made me feel a lot better.
I’ll mention it in my next 1-to-1 with my boss but being careful to frame it as wanting to maintain positive working relationships and not whining about mean things someone said (if I start explaining how one of the things he said was false, I’ve already lost because I’d sound like a child complaining about a sibling).
A boss did a similar thing to me once. I asked HR to review the remarks and they agreed that the snark was inappropriate. It was removed from my file and the supervisor was placed into a non-supervisory position.
If your review was mostly positive except for one manager criticizing you, who you don’t even work with, my guess is that this manager makes a habit of being extremely critical of people in general, and your superiors are likely well aware of it.
I also had a similar issue at an old job; I was new to a management position, still learning the ropes, and another manager, who I didn’t work with directly but interacted with at times, was very critical to me, to the point of being insulting. I dreaded having to ask him a question or interact with him in any way.
But I eventually learned he was that way with many people; he was a ‘by the book’ stipler for correct practices, a ‘crossed Ts and dotted Is’ guy, and considered himself sort of a gatekeeper of proper practices. I learned that his manager had told him to “stop scaring all the new people”. I eventually lost my dread of talking to him, and earned his trust to the point where our interactions were cordial, even friendly.
It sounds like you’re doing all the right things— keeping positive lines of communication open with this manager. Keep any written interactions with him (CYA), and try not to take his criticisms personally. Especially if, after proper reflection, you determine that they are not fair or accurate.
Good, this is the right thing to do. Ask your manager about their reaction to the comment. It is very possible that they will basically say that this manager is a jerk - but they won’t be able to say so directly.
If your review was good - and fair - I’d bring it up but not lose any sleep about it. Idiots will be idiots, and thank your lucky stars you don’t work for this person.
What TruCelt said. If they’ve written false statements about you in your review, I think you should respond via your human resources department. Maybe not a direct response but at least a change or written response in your file. The next person who reads that may think it’s true! You can protect yourself against that.
Update: It’s not a very exciting update but I think I should give this thread closure…
I mentioned it to my manager, just as a “just one more thing” issue at the end of our 1-to-1.
He said he was also surprised to see the comments, and basically knew that they were bull. It helps that, for example, the specific time that “bad manager” is insinuating I acted unprofessionally was a meeting that my manager was in.
I didn’t need to prompt any of this btw, I just mentioned the performance review and my manager guessed where we were going.
So all good now, I needn’t have lost sleep over it. Thanks all
Anywhere on your review to write your own comments?
I had a review a number of years ago that I received a “needs improvement” under the section for community involvement. Basically I didn’t participate in the company sponsored community events like Arbor Day, Earth Day, Bell Ringing, etc…
I responded that I coached both Parks and Recreation softball and soccer for my kids (coach of the year twice!), Earth Day ditch cleanup with the service club I belong to, a member of our local crime watchers program, along with other community involvement activities that the company knows nothing about.
My supervisor said she couldn’t rewrite my review but my comments were written down and she apologized (without apologizing, as management is good at) by saying she didn’t realize what I did outside of work. My feeling is, it isn’t any of their business.
I later spoke to the plant manager about why community involvement (either through work or outside of work) has any bearing on how good of a worker I am. Next year this category was not listed.
Well there was a place to write my own comments but I had to fill in my bit before seeing what the managers had written.
I think I am going to leave it there for now. Of course I would like the comments removed, but I don’t think it’s worth it.
Come my next pay review, I know I can say 1) The people who actually work with me consider me great at my job and 2) I actually covering two jobs right now, so…yeah, I’m needed.
I don’t know about your place, but at mine reviews were never looked at again unless you needed them as justification for firing someone, which you don’t have to worry about. They get used in performance review and setting raises, but since your boss is behind you you are fine there also.
When I was on a performance review committee the biggest complaint people had was that managers would do things like this, even for more work related items. The review would say that person X did not do something which they did, often so efficiently that the manager never had to get involved. We changed the process to require employee sign off - with comments - before the managers meeting that did the review, so that everyone could see disputed items.
But I can see their point - they don’t care about the good stuff getting done, only that the company gets credit for the good stuff getting done. Typical.
Glad it worked out for you. Many years back, during a review my boss said another jerk of a manager told my boss I had messed something up - which I actually had done quite well on. But the review was meaningless, so I let it slide. But then the next review and the next, she keeps bringing up this same BS criticism. I finally had to say, “Look, I disagree with what that guy said. He’s dead now, so we can’t even ask him about it. Moreover, it is several years old by this time. I’m sick and tired of hearing about this. What do we have to do to have you stop bringing it up?” Last I heard about it.
But, yeah, if it is ever mentioned again, ask how to get your written statement to the conrary place in your file.
If it’s like most companies, a written rebuttal will go into the file along with the review. My boss wrote a very unfair review on me years ago. I wrote a rebuttal and showed it to her first, which resulted in us having a much-needed conversation about things, and ended in her retracting and rewriting the evaluation.
Honestly, given that you and your boss agree it’s unfair, I would def get it dealt with immediately. Ten years from now, that could be the deciding factor in someone else getting your promotion. Get it out of there. Or at least get a response in signed by both you and your boss.
“Boss, this is still bothering me. I need it addressed in - or removed from - my HR record. What can we do about it?”
You handled it well, there’s always things that will give you sleepless nights if you don’t address them quickly - bringing it up in a calm discussion is always the best thing to do. Whether you feel it needs removing from your record entirely depends on how much weight the company puts on these forms - it wouldn’t matter in my company.
But third party comments like these are precisely the reason we got rid of peer review comments on reviews - it’s a ‘he said, she said’ situation, where you have no opportunity to discuss the feedback with the person giving it, and is not, therefore, a fair way of dealing with performance.
Are “managers” your superior, subordinates, or peers? That is to say are you a Director or Vice President and these are managers who report to you or is this one of six bosses you report to?
In any event, the feedback does seem unprofessional. Unless you were scheduling the meetings to do a magic show or sing karaoke or something.
Ten years? I mean it would be nice to have that sort of job security. But in this day and age, I assume @Mijin will have either been promoted at least once or moved on to a new job.