What Your Performance Review Really Evaluates

Performance reviews often feel confusing, not because you’re underperforming, but because they’re no longer evaluating what most people think they are.

In this episode of The Career Edge, Leslie Ferry explores a critical shift in how performance is assessed at work. While reviews still reference goals, metrics, and output, leaders are increasingly evaluating something else entirely: the signals your work sends about how you’ll perform next.

As work becomes more fluid, ambiguous, and collaborative, execution alone no longer tells the full story. Judgment, collaboration, and how you move work forward with others have become visible and decisive.

This episode unpacks what’s really being assessed, why feedback often feels vague or misaligned, and how to start noticing the signals that shape your future trajectory.

In This Episode, We Explore:

• Why performance evaluations are less about past accomplishments and more about future readiness
• How “soft skills” became visible as work grew more dynamic and cross-functional
• What judgment actually looks like in real work situations
• Why collaboration is now a prerequisite for getting work done — not a bonus
• How to interpret feedback that feels abstract or hard to act on

A Simple Reflection to Try This Week
Instead of defending your performance, get curious about how it’s being interpreted:

• When you share ideas, are they adopted or repeatedly questioned and re-explained?
• When you show up, do people lean in or subtly disengage?

Then notice what happens immediately after you give direction or propose an idea.
That moment often reveals more about your future impact than any review.

About Zandra
If this episode resonated, it reflects the kind of work Zandra is designed to support: helping people decode how their work is interpreted and build judgment and collaboration intentionally, not reactively. myzandra.ai.

Transcript

Welcome back to The Career Edge. This time of year, performance conversations tend to surface, whether that's a formal review, a calibration discussion, or a manager suddenly asking bigger picture questions of us. For a lot of people, these moments can create a particular kind of tension, not panic, but awareness. You know these conversations matter, but you don't always know how the decision behind them are being made.

This episode kicks off a series designed to change that. Over the next few conversations, we're going to unpack how work is actually evaluated today, what promotion readiness really signals, how managers shape growth long before formal reviews, and most importantly, how to operate differently once you see the systems clearly. Not to add pressure, but to turn that tension into clarity and into growth that you can act on.

So let's get started. Most of us walk into evaluation conversations thinking the same thing, what we delivered, what we achieved, what we can point to. But here's what I want to explore today. What if those conversations aren't really about what you've already done, but about what your work is signaling you're ready to do next? On the surface, performance reviews still look familiar. You talk about goals achieved, projects delivered, metrics hit, value added. But if you look closely, something else is included in evaluations and these conversations. Language like teamwork or collaboration, judgment or strategic thinking, communication effectiveness, leadership presence, influence and impact. These all might possibly be grouped under a vague heading like soft skills. And this is where many people get confused because they are delivering. They are dependable. They are working hard. And yet feedback feels fuzzy. It's hard to pin down and sometimes even surprising. So here's a shift that's easy to miss. Human skills didn't suddenly become important. They became more visible. As work has become more complex,

more ambiguous, more cross-functional, more AI-supported, execution alone stopped being enough to explain performance. Everyone has knowledge. Everyone has access to information. What's being measured now is something different. It's judgment. The ability to activate the right knowledge in the right moment, in the right way, with the right people. Not reacting.

not just responding quickly, but being complete, thoughtful, intentional, and strategic. Understanding how your actions actually drive results, not just in theory, but in practice.

This is what managers are evaluating. They're asking questions like, can I trust this person with ambiguity to understand a goal and then go figure out how to achieve it?

Do they understand how their actions land on others? Do they elevate the thinking of a room or narrow it? How does this person represent our team across the organization? Are they making an impact or just executing someone else's ideas? You may have achieved your goals, but did you leave a wake of frustration behind you as you did it? Those answers don't show up in task list, but they absolutely show up in evaluation conversations.

And this is why so many people walk into a review conversation thinking, I did everything that was asked of me. And they walk out thinking something harder to name. I don't actually know what that conversation was about. Because we assume reviews are about how we performed in the past, when in reality, they're evaluating how we're likely to perform next. Let me say this a bit more plainly.

Performance evaluations, whether formal or information, are increasingly assessments of judgment and collaboration. Not as abstract traits, but as indicators of whether someone can keep progress moving forward in dynamic situations. Loose work today, it's not stable or linear. It's extremely fluid, cross-functional, and partially undefined.

So leaders aren't just looking backward at what you delivered last quarter. They're looking forward and asking, can this person help move forward when conditions change? And collaboration here matters more than most people realize because work is collaborative by default now. If people don't want to work with you, if your style creates friction, defensiveness or fatigue,

you will eventually lose the ability to get your job done.

Not because you're wrong, but because our ability to execute depends on trust, adoption, and followership of others. Judgment shows up in moments like what you prioritize when everything feels important, how you communicate when the answer isn't clear, how you adjust when your intent doesn't match your impact, how you show up when there's no playbook,

and no authority to defer to. These aren't soft skills. They're interpretive skills. And interpretation is now central to how work gets evaluated. The problem is most feedback systems name the outcome, but not the mechanism. You'll probably hear things like, you need to be more influential. You should think more strategically or work on your executive presence.

But without reflection, those comments, they stay abstract. They don't tell you what to look at. They don't tell you where to adjust. So people either dismiss the feedback or internalize it without quite understanding it. Neither leads to growth. So here's the opportunity hidden in these evaluation conversations. Not to defend your performance, but to get curious about how your work is being interpreted.

Ask yourself two questions and answer them based on what you can observe, not what you hope is true.

First, ask, when I share ideas, what happens next? Are they picked up and moved forward? Or do I find myself repeatedly re-explaining them, tightening my rationale, or being asked to come back with more justification? Second, ask, when people see me coming, what's the energy shift? Do they lean in, or do they...

kind of brace, disengage, or go quiet.

That reaction isn't about likability, it's data, about how workable you are to collaborate when under pressure. Here's a simple place to start this week. Notice just one signal. Pay attention to what happens immediately after you communicate direction or an idea. Movement, hesitation, clarifying questions, or silence. That moment tells you more about your future impact.

than any review will. This is why reflection matters so much right now, not as self-criticism, but as sense-making and understanding and awareness.

And if this resonates, it's exactly the kind of work we designed Sandra to support, helping people decode how they're being evaluated and develop judgment and collaboration intentionally, not reactively. Thanks for listening. In the next episode, we'll take one step further and talk about how these evaluation signals turn into decisions about promotion readiness. I'll see you in the next episode of The Career Edge.