Got a Bad Performance Review? What to Do Next

A bad performance review can feel personal—but your response is what actually shapes your career.

In this episode, we walk through exactly how to handle a negative evaluation at work—from figuring out what’s true to deciding whether (and how) to push back.

We talk about:

• How to separate facts from emotions
• Using your “receipts” to support your performance
• When to challenge feedback—and when to accept it
• How to rebuild your reputation moving forward
• Why doing the work alone isn’t enough anymore 

Whether your review felt unfair or just didn’t reflect your best work, this episode will help you move forward with clarity and strategy.

------------------------------------

Our company, Grounded and Global Advisory, is pleased to offer a quarterly advisory retainer. For $275 per month (billed quarterly, with the option to renew each quarter), you'll receive:

• One 60-minute coaching session per month
• Priority access to our calendar
• One annual 90-minute strategic intensive

This offer is for the person who knows what good advisory support feels like and doesn't want to lose it. Spots are limited. 

If you're interested, email us directly at hello@stirringsuccess.com, and we'll be in touch.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, and welcome to the Leadership Tea Podcast, where leadership, culture, and clarity meet conversation. I'm Belinda. And I'm Shelby. And today we want to talk to you all about something that I think impacts almost all of us in the workforce right now. And that is this question of evaluations, right? Like we have all been through evaluation season. Some are better than others. And today we want to talk about what happens when you get a less than ideal evaluation. And I think that's a really sensitive topic right now, Shelby, because evaluations these days don't just feel like feedback, but in some work settings, they can feel like the beginning of the setup, right? And the beginning of pushing you out the door, especially in this economy. So I think that this is a topic that we're all feeling particularly sensitive about.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah, I think it is very timely. And the way that we have today's episode set up is Belinda is going to focus more on how do you even prevent getting a bad evaluation? And then I will take a different spin and talk about well, what do you do? Now you've gotten something that is not ideal. How do you handle it? What are some of the action steps? And we hope you'll stay tuned until the very end. We're going to talk about additional resources that are available to you, especially now if you have just finished your evaluation season and you're thinking about how to prepare or act upon feedback that you've received from your boss. Perhaps you need a thought partner. Perhaps you need to talk to one of us. We're here for you, and we'll talk about that more at the end of the episode. But for now, let's go ahead and get into it.

Face The Truth In The Review

SPEAKER_00 1:54

I'm going to start with this idea of like, let's pretend, at least from my perspective, that you've received that evaluation that you're not really 100% happy with. It has been turned into HR. It is done. It is now the record, whether you like it or not. And so I want to begin with the idea of being honest with yourself. Like, first of all, was there some truth to that? Like, there's usually a little grain of truth, even in things that you don't want to hear. Sometimes the evaluation is actually a mirror being held up to us. So, with that honesty, like, even if you disagree with it now, it's there. So, what are the parts of it that we need to attack through the year? What are the parts of it that we need to be real? Like, okay, the record says I could do better with writing. The record says I didn't deliver on this particular KPI. The record says whatever. That is a fact, and now we have to deal with it. That is where I would begin.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

So my counter to that is now you have a bad evaluation. Are you being honest with yourself? As Belinda said. But my advice would be how do you self-assess the parts that are true and the parts that may be overinflated by your boss? What I mean by that is, are you upset about the way that your boss has written your evaluation? Are we talking about happy versus glad descriptions? Or is there something in your evaluation that is genuinely going to derail your career because your boss has said that you are very difficult to work with in general? Or did your boss say, hey, Shelby didn't do as well on this particular project? But overall, she's a team player because those are two very different things. And I think you need to take a step back and honestly reflect on what is being said. Is there an ounce of truth? As Belinda said, can you self-assess? Are you overreacting? Are you overcorrecting? Really think about what is it that your boss is saying? And is it true?

Build Receipts With A Brag Sheet

SPEAKER_00 4:20

And then next I would say, now again, taking the perspective of the evaluations happened. It's in the past, it's the record. And now we are, we've got a clean slate and we're building for next year's evaluation because we've got to bury it under paper. I think it's really important to think to yourself, how will I set the scene? Right? How will I create the data that we're all going to use for this evaluation? And so for me, first and foremost, that is going back to the fundamentals of what is your job? What do you have to deliver on? I need you to deliver on that. Okay, so just we're gonna accept that you're gonna deliver on those. The next thing is you're gonna keep records, not in a punitive way, not in a I saw my boss take an extra 15 minutes for coffee, so I'm gonna note that. Like I you're gonna keep like a brag sheet, right? And you're gonna aim to keep that brag sheet every workday. You're just gonna write one sentence. You're not gonna write a novel every day. You're gonna write one bullet point of something you're proud of. Okay, but if you don't do it every day, that is okay. Don't punish yourself just when you can, but at least two or three times a week for this year, you're gonna write down something that you're proud of. If you're really awesome and you got an extra 30 seconds, you're gonna like link to the thing that you're proud of. Maybe it was a memo you wrote, maybe it was a whatever. You're gonna keep the receipts handy. And if you're really awesome, if somebody sends you an email that says, like, thanks for delivering that report on time, it saved the day, you're gonna take that quote and you're gonna copy and paste it into the brag sheet. Because this is gonna be the basis of what you demonstrate next year for all the haters, right? And I've taken some time to prepare some bullet points for you, boss. And you're gonna take the real receipts and you don't have to go dig through stuff and try to remember and try to get quotes. You've got it all. So just we are gonna control the data now that we're starting with a clean slate.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Love all of that. It kind of goes back to the points that you've made in other episodes where it's like what you do in practice, you do for the game. And so you've been practicing throughout this evaluation season, building your receipts, building your stamina, so that you have a record to show that when it is game time, boom, my evaluation speaks for itself because I've already done the work. So the counter to that is a question. And it's similar to what you just said, Belinda. If you do get a bad evaluation, what does the data say? What do your receipts demonstrate? And again, you have to navigate this in a way that's very careful. You don't want to come across as defensive, but if you've got a whole record, if you've got a whole spreadsheet, or you've got a whole folder full of emails giving you kudos, or you've received awards during the evaluation period, or whatever it is that you've done where someone else has recognized, hey, so-and-so, awesome job on that, great job on this, excellent memo, excellent briefing. What does the data say? Conversely, if you have data where your boss pointed out, hey, that didn't go so well, or someone from a different team or a different office or a different section wrote something that wasn't necessarily as flattering as you would have wanted about your performance, that's also a data point that you can't ignore. So, again, collectively taking all of the data into consideration, what is the arc of your performance? What does the narrative say? Because if you are going to push back on your boss because you've gotten an evaluation that is not positive, you want to be able to point out the receipts again, non-defensively, but to show, hey, the data says this, but what you wrote about me doesn't match what my record shows.

Allies And Office Politics Matter

SPEAKER_00 8:36

You know, this all just comes back with constantly being honest with yourself. And when you're honest with yourself, you know which moves to make. Which brings me to my next point of again, we're back in the frame of mind of it's the new year, the bad evaluations behind us, and we're building for the future. So, how are we building relationships with allies? Meaning, are there people who can influence our boss? What do they think of our work? Are there peers who are signaling to us, oh, I heard about that project. How are you? Are you are you okay? That's a signal that everybody's talking about something I did wrong.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

And that everybody sees that I'm doing something wrong, and that there's a narrative developing, my brand is changing, and I need to influence that, not panic about it, influence it. So we're at the new year. How are we influencing those around us in ways that are natural and not fake and weird? And so this is where early conversations with your kitchen cabinet, with your mentors, with your thought partners, where that comes into play. Hey, everybody, you know, I messed up that thing last week. You know, I've been to three meetings and everybody's been like, oh, are you have you are you okay? I heard about last week. You know, oh, it really relates to like that evaluation I had last year. I really got to turn this around. Get advice, but don't wait until mid-year reviews. And your boss is like, you know, you haven't improved that thing yet. You know, I could really see this coming up at the end of the year evaluation. I'm not sure if you're gonna get a bonus, or I'm not sure if you're gonna get promoted, or did now we're at we're at a difficult point where you're an influence operation may not be able to help you, or the advice of others may not be able to help you. So before we get there, when you just get little inklings of things, check in with people, think about how you can influence so that you can, you're constantly throughout the year making little adjustments. And so I will end this point, Shelby, but just saying that this sounds exhausting. And it is. Welcome to like the realities of the workplace. You have to both do the work and create a brand and manage the politics. If you fail at one or two of those, it's not great. It's not easy. You could probably win the team and build allies and not do the work. But you gotta do at least two of the three. Yeah. Right. And so too often, especially like people who are making that transition from early to mid-career, or in some respects, even mid to senior career, are still stuck in this mode of do the work is enough.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Yeah. And it's not.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

It's not. Low scant. Like it's not.

Share Strategically Not With Peers

SPEAKER_01 11:45

It's so true. Like it is exhausting, but we speak from a place of experience and frankly, success in navigating office politics, having high emotional intelligence and really doing the work, doing our jobs, doing the work, buckling up, creating allies, building relationships, all of it. But my counterpoint to your point on building allies, again, you have your bad evaluation in hand. What do you do? Share the evaluation with a few trusted people, some of these allies that hopefully you've already built over time. And I don't mean share it with 20 people. I don't mean get into chat groups and start talking about your boss and what a jerk he or she is, and blah blah blah, and how could they do this to me and all of that? Don't do that. Don't do that. You need to think strategically about a couple of people that you trust who will give you straight-up honest feedback on whether the evaluation is poorly written, if it could be toned down, you know, if there's a lot of hyperbole, whatever it is that's going on, you want to share it with a couple of people who you trust. Ideally, people who are not at the peer level. Because sometimes we get caught up in our own echo chambers where it's like, oh, well, I know my girl is going to think that this is not a good write-up because it's not a good write-up, and you're all caught up in your emotions. If you're really trying to get a better outcome to a bad situation, listening to your echo chamber is not going to help you. You really do need to think about sharing your evaluation, again, with a couple of people that you trust to give you an honest objective analysis or an assessment and even some advice on things that perhaps you could request negotiating with your boss. And this is tricky because sometimes your mentors may be well-intended and give you a whole laundry list of things that, you know, you need to just do a rewrite. You have to think again: who are people that you can trust? Who are people that will give you a good, objective, neutral analysis of what's written? People who are truly looking out for you and only want the best from you or best for you, and see what pieces of that advice can you go back to your boss with and perhaps negotiate what we call a Batna, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Because if the evaluation truly is not great, it's not gonna matter too much if you give your boss a whole laundry list of, you know, well, my mentor said this, and my allies told me that I should ask you for, you know, this laundry list of things to correct, because that's probably gonna piss off your boss. You want to be strategic in your pushback. But again, being strategic in that pushback will more likely result from you sharing it with a couple of trusted mentors as opposed to sharing it with a dozen peers.

Check In Early To Avoid Surprises

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Your bat and a comment also makes me think that you also need to be clear in what why are you fighting so hard about this evaluation? If you're fighting because you're afraid you're gonna be about to be laid off or losing or fired, okay, that's like one discussion that's different. We should definitely really push, push, push this. But if you're just pushing this for like pride, or I also uh have an experience of a couple of people really flipping out on me over constructive feedback because they thought it was endangering a bonus because they had made purchases or like I just bought a house. You can't say this, like it's gonna affect my bonus. Like, I didn't again, you're now annoying me. I'm this is now meeting number five about this because you decided to buy a house. No, like this is not, I can't. So let's just be clear on like what are we fighting for as we decide to burn bridges. Okay, well, that I think that ties nicely with my next point, which is checking in strategically. And I'm gonna go, Shelby, to an extreme because I know there's someone out there in the audience who's going, like, they're saying all this stuff, they don't know. My boss is a jerk, my boss hates me, my boss, whatever. So I'm gonna go with like one of I've had worse than this, but one of the worst bosses I've had. And this was a boss who honestly was violent. Like he would throw things at people if you said certain trigger words. Now, let me tell you who he never threw anything at. How about that? You but he never tell me, like I first of all, I learned the trigger words, but also my work, but also I was strategic, right? Like he never threw anything at me, but I knew he was capable. But I also knew that like he could potentially escalate to throwing, right? So when I could see, like, I'm walking past his office and like, oh, he's playing music. Oh, he's in a good mood. I dip my head in there. Hey, just came back from meeting X. It went really well. I did everything you said I should do. Anyway, while we're here, is there anything I could be doing better? Boom. Anything you need from me? Here's what I'm giving you. Should I give you more? Just a little check-in, just a little tap-tap. Oh, we're good? We're good? Okay, cool. Great, great, I'm out of your way. Once in a while. Once in a while. What you don't want to get into is where you've let things get so bad that you're now forced into almost like a pip-like situation where the boss says, Oh, you didn't deliver on that thing. You know what? Let's check in every Friday to see how it's going. Like, we don't want to get there. We're on our way to a bad evaluation. The boss is hyper-focused on you. Right. So, where we can get that occasional feedback in an informal way so that we can make adjustments to avoid the situation where we're getting a bomb. That's great. Two, we're also getting that occasional feedback from and also from peers, from other partners in other like areas and your boss is to avoid being surprised. And I've been reflecting, Shelby, and I don't think, even when I received information that I did not ultimately was not pleased with, and say a media review or even a final review, I was never really deep down surprised. I remember being devastated by a boss who told me that I was pushing my team to work too hard. When I thought I was, this was like early, like it was my first time managing a large team, actually. I thought the team was happy. The team, I mean, I think they were. The team was happy, but told me they were. Like we're all still in touch. Like we're all still good. So I'm gonna say we were good, but I had not done a good job of explaining to my bosses that the things that the team and I were doing, we had come to a collective agree. Like we had decided, we as a team had had strategic meetings and decided this is what we're gonna take on. And we as a team constantly met to evaluate should we be doing this? And here's the purpose and how we're using that to meet our mission, right? So it was a lesson to me and better communicating, whatever. But it was the truth. The team was working very hard, harder than normal under my leadership. And I did make adjustments and right, I took the feedback and I still made adjustments. So that is one of the rare occasions where I was like, that was out of the blue for me.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

It was out of the blue, but it also was not true. Right. I was gonna say it wasn't inaccurate.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

It wasn't inaccurate, but it should not be normal to be surprised by the feedback because if you're surprised, it's easy to say my boss is crazy and they hate me. Yeah, so there's just scenarios out there. But it feels more like you're not being honest with yourself and you're pushing away anybody who's being honest with you.

Ask For A Real Conversation

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Oh, that part. I mean, that part, pushing away those who are honest with you. Yeah, that's gonna be an eventual episode on mentoring and how to mentor and how honesty affects mentorship. But back to the topic of the day in terms of evaluations. So you've got this bad evaluation in hand. My counterpoint to yours on checking in strategically is the golden rule that we talk about in just about every episode, which is to communicate, communicate, communicate, and communicate again. And so you have this bad evaluation in hand. Ask for a conversation with your boss. Don't go litigating everything in an email. Don't go waxing poetic about all the things that your boss got wrong and all the wonderful things that you did that somehow your boss overlooked. Don't do that. Don't let your emotions get the best of you. Even if deep down in your gut you feel that your boss has wronged you, that things just haven't gone the way that you wanted them to go, all of those things can be true. And it is best to just ask for a conversation so that you can discuss it face to face. Hopefully, if that's possible. I know that with a lot of work situations, perhaps your boss lives in another part of the world and it may not be possible to have a face to face. That's fine. Ask for a Zoom call. But don't get into an email back and forth where again, you're coming across the Or that you're not listening, or that you're being, you know, insubordinate. You don't want it to escalate to a point where your boss is like, okay, this person really is a problem, and it's gone beyond what I wrote in an evaluation. It's now escalated to a point that's unnecessary. You really want to try and have a conversation and come to the conversation prepared and have your receipts, or at least have the points that you want to get across. And again, timing is also part of it. We know that we're talking about a lot of things and it is exhausting. But if you truly want to get a better outcome to a bad situation with your evaluation, it's worth taking the time to sit down and write out what is it that I want to get out of this conversation? Am I upset with the entire evaluation? Are there points during the year where I tried to get feedback and I didn't? You know, perhaps that is worth bringing up where it's like, okay, well, we didn't have a counseling discussion or we didn't have a chance to sit down and talk about ways where I could have performed better. And so this part of my evaluation surprised me. Or I felt that, you know, this example that you used didn't give, you know, the full picture of my performance or my potential. Whatever it is, take a moment and sit down and really think about what is it that you want to get out of the conversation with your boss. But first, ask for the conversation. It's really important to try and level set because maybe your boss doesn't even realize that you're over here spinning and you're upset or whatever. Maybe they do, and that's a different challenge. But they will appreciate if you come to them with a thoughtful request for a conversation as opposed to going off in an email or barging into their office and creating a confrontation that's just not going to go anywhere positive.

Toxic Workplaces And When To Leave

SPEAKER_00 24:07

And Shelby, I feel like the things that we've outlined here today are actionable in a functional to quasi-toxic workspace. For spaces that are extremely toxic, where your boss just, you know, whatever, is all the has all the isms, all the phobias, all the whatevers, is just there's nothing that you can do to make this better. I still feel that following these steps that we've outlined, if nothing else, they prepare you to have a very substantive and well-documented complaint, dare I say lawsuit, you know, definitely talk to a lawyer first before and find out what you really need. But whether it's you're gonna be able to change, like if you have a halfway reasonable human that you're dealing with, you should be able to take these tips and change the outcomes. But if not, you've got a lot of arrows in your quiver now to escalate, should you need to.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Yes. And I would add to that if your boss truly is hell on earth, it's more likely than not that you are not the only one who is experiencing that type of treatment. And so you really have to take things with a grain of salt and figure out, you know, what battles are worth fighting and what do you need to calibrate? And again, it goes back to having some emotional intelligence and really thinking about what is it that you're trying to accomplish? Is it worth the pushback? You know, is this person a jerk to everyone? Or did you truly get an evaluation that you weren't thrilled about but points out some things where you just didn't meet the bar?

Build Your Village And Get Help

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Sometimes a bad evaluation is a signal that this just isn't gonna work. This work wasn't meant for you, the speech wasn't meant for you. Fish where the fish are, take the hint and begin to take the steps that you need to take, which is difficult in this economy right now, but like maybe it will take a long ramp, but maybe you need to go somewhere else. Maybe this can't be fixed. But you know, these are still best practices no matter where you go.

unknown 26:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

So with that said, Shelby, I just want to like highlight for listeners like look, we do have, I would agree, Shelby, both as employees, I think we have strong soft skills and strong emotional intelligence. And so this feels very natural for us to navigate. And as bosses, I think we were able to turn that around and I think create space for our employees to do these things. Yeah. However, I don't think either of us did that alone. Whether it was me picking up the phone, calling you, and I should say, when building one's village, don't build the village with people who are not thriving. That part. Like I mean, like, don't call your friend who's about to get fired and ask them for work advice. Like, build your village with people who are succeeding, right? Get people around you who can help you think through the nuance. Shelby and I like to highlight for people that we are here to provide that. That is so much of what we do for people. You can come to us and just say, where I'm at is not working. I want to make it work. I want to make the adjustment. I just don't know how. I don't see what they see in me. I don't see what this report says. Can you help me navigate through this?

How To Support The Show

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Yes. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. And we will put additional information about how to get in touch with us and to look into some of the services that we provide. We will include that in the show notes. As we like to say, community is clutch. As Belinda said, a lot of things that people are going through, they're suffering in silence, they're suffering alone. And we really do want to make ourselves available to be the thought partners that you need, whether it's a bad evaluation, a difficult conversation, whether you're just looking to level up your game, your performance. We want to be that thought partner for you. And we are very appreciative of your listenership, your support. If you are listening to this episode, please come on over to YouTube, like and subscribe, share this content with others that you think would find it useful. And we look forward to sipping wisdom and stirring success with you again real soon.