How do you become fully confident and in control of your emotions and experience at work? It’s by mastering your own psychology and that of others. On this show, we decode the science of success, exploring how to get out of your own way and advance your career to new levels without becoming someone you’re not.

I’m Melody wilding, bestselling author. Human behavior professor and award-winning executive coach. Get ready and let’s put psychology to work for you.

So here we are, mid-October, performance review season is here. We are talking about this on so many of our coaching calls for our Speak Like a Senior Leader program. I have been being brought into companies to prepare their employees around visibility because people are starting to get their self appraisals in their inbox.

HR is starting to send out those friendly reminders to get your 360 feedback done. And for a lot of people, maybe even you, your review may be just around the corner. I know a lot of people have theirs coming up in December, or a lot of people in January, February, 2026. And they are starting to think ahead now about how they wanna approach it, which is smart because performance reviews operate differently once you reach the mid and senior level.

And even if you’re listening to this and your review isn’t until the summer or spring, that’s okay. If this doesn’t apply to you today, guess what? There was always another review coming up around the corner and you are always laying the groundwork for your next evaluation. But if you are still approaching them like you did 10 years ago or when you were an individual contributor, then you are leaving a lot of opportunity on the table and it will eventually come back to bite you.

So today what I wanna do is break down five secrets or really shifts, outdated approaches and perspectives to help you make the most of this opportunity. Because you have a performance review, what, at least once a year. Maybe twice if your company does mid-year check-ins. Over a 20 year career, that’s 20, 40 critical moments that determine whether you hear we’re promoting you or whether you get assigned to that interesting client or the account you’ve had your eye on.

Whether you get handed that bonus or salary bump that allows you and your family to take the vacation you’ve been wanting to. Whether you finally get the headcount you’ve been requesting so you can stop drowning in work. Or whether you walk out with a nice pat on the back when your boss says, good job, just keep doing what you’re doing. And a meager 1 to 3% cost of living adjustment that’s not even keeping up with inflation. What worked fine when you were earlier in your career will start to hold you back now.

And the first of these secrets is that your review, it is not a report card, it is a perception management and positioning session.

We’ve got to stop treating our performance reviews like they are this HR formality and the, just this check the box exercise.

And I understand why it’s so easy to do this. You are already under a crush of work. You have deadlines to meet. You’ve got your team’s reviews to write. And your own review, as a result, it falls to the bottom of the priority list. And you might tell yourself, well, I’ll just wing it. I’ve done that every other year.

I’ll pull something together the day before and hope I sound articulate. And that might work fine enough. But what you’re doing is you’re treating your review, basically like it’s a dentist appointment. It’s something you dread, you put off, and then you grin and bear your way through it just so you can check it off and say, great, thanks.

Good chat. See you next time, and get HR off your back about following up about it. But what the most successful people realize is that your performance review is not just a look back. It’s not a report card for the past six or 12 months. It’s not just looking backward about what you did. It’s also about the next six or 12 months and how you’ll be perceived positioned and prioritized or not.

Once you reach the mid or senior level, here’s what tends to happen. Your manager walks out of that performance review conversation with you, and maybe a week later, maybe even that same afternoon, they are meeting with their boss. In the conversation, it turns to succession planning. Who’s ready for the next level?

Who should get assigned to that new initiative or that center of excellence? And guess what? Or flash forward three months, maybe something comes up where work needs to be presented to the executive team, or budgets are getting decided.

Once again, your review is their reference document, so when you wing it, when you show up unprepared, just hoping for the best, you are handing your manager weak material to work with when they need to advocate for you. And as you climb the ranks, you need other people saying your name, singing your praises in rooms you are not in.

At more senior levels decisions about your career goals, they go way beyond your direct boss. There may be a committee or calibration sessions involved, so you better be sure they are talking about you in the way you want to be perceived, and that your review is the foundation that shows you are the obvious choice.

Secret number two, your boss doesn’t see your work anymore, so you have to translate it for them. When you are more seasoned or experienced in your role, then it’s also probably likely you are reporting to someone who is director level or above themselves. And by the nature of having that rank, they’re more removed from the day-to-day work.

Unlike earlier in your career, your boss now doesn’t see, or maybe doesn’t even know or understand what you’re doing every day. They may not even be a subject matter expert in the same area. They most likely weren’t in the room when you had that delicate conversation that kept a key client from walking away.

They have no idea how you turned around that struggling project. That was a total dumpster fire. Your one-on-ones with them are probably less than once a week. And if you report to a CC level executive, you are lucky if you are getting a 30 minute sit down twice a month. All of this is to say that the person writing your review often has limited context on you, your achievements, where you want to go next.

They are insanely busy. They have 50 other things on their mind while they’re writing your appraisal or sitting debriefing with you. So you have got to make an impression that sticks with them.

Now, practically speaking, this means you can’t just show up and rattle off a list of the tasks you completed. You have to speak the language of business impact. Your higher level leaders, they don’t care about the task completion. They don’t want to hear well, I worked really hard. I put in so many hours. Or even I finished everything on time.

That’s expected. That is table stakes, and they will think Good for you. That’s what we pay you for. What they care about is outcomes and results. Did you drive revenue growth? Did you reduce a risk? Did you streamline something in a way that freed up money or resources? Did you build something? Maybe a process, a team capability, a system, a tool that’s going to keep paying off in the months ahead?

This is something we spend a lot of time on and speak like a senior leader because it feels daunting to figure out how you do this translation without overblowing what you have accomplished. The good news is that there are only three forces of business impact that everything comes back to, and that helps shortcut and simplify so much when you know that there’s just a few formulas that everything maps back to.

So once you really hone this skill of translating your activities and tasks to those outcomes, that’s when you get taken more seriously because at the mid and senior levels, your evaluator, they are asking themselves consciously or not, is this person ready to sit in my seat? They want to be able to see from the way you are articulating your wins, your growth areas, your goals that you are thinking about the bigger picture.

If you’re thinking beyond your personal projects, beyond even your direct department. You need to demonstrate that you’re thinking like an executive like them. Even if you are not one yet, and if all you’re giving them is a list of things you completed, then the answer to that is no, you’re not thinking like me.

But if you’re speaking their language, that’s when they think, oh, this person knows how to rally mobilize people. They know how to handle complexity. They know what keeps me up at night and are trying to be a partner in solving that. They get it.

Speaking of rallying and mobilizing others. That brings us to secret number three, which is to avoid over-indexing on team spirit and collaboration. At your level, most of the wins and successes that you are getting happen through other people. Just like your boss, you are not always in the weeds anymore.

You’re not the one personally closing a deal, building a model, writing the code, running the analysis. You are probably leading, coordinating the people who are doing those things. And that creates this tough balance to strike because you need to claim credit for what your team accomplished without cutting them out or making it sound like you just did everything by yourself.

But you also can’t deflect so much that your contributions fade into the background. And I see people mess this up all of the time. Especially because the clients we tend to work with in our program, our listeners to this show. They consider themselves to be servant leaders. Trust me. I love that about you.

I love that you care about your people, you prioritize their development. You so generously give other people credit. But sometimes that can go too far. And this is how it usually shows up. You walk into that review and everything you’re saying is, well, my team did this. My team accomplished that. My team really showed up.

And when you are asked about your biggest accomplishment. You may mention that that thing you push through, but you immediately follow that by, oh, but it wasn’t just me. It was really a team effort. Both of those are seemingly harmless. These little five word phrases that can actually really hurt your credibility.

You are so concerned about appearing humble and generous, but your reviewer is then left wondering, well, what did you actually add? If this was all the team effort, then what did you do and what are we paying you for?

So there is absolutely a way to give your team credit and make what you did your contribution clear. This is a both, and it’s not an either or.

Your team didn’t just magically accomplish something in a vacuum. Someone had to set the vision, had to secure the resources, remove the roadblocks, make the tough calls when there were conflicting priorities, someone had to step in when the client was upset, or to coach that struggling team member through a rough patch.

Someone had to navigate the politics when another department was being territorial. Someone had to make a case to the board or the executive team about why this work mattered. And that someone was probably you. So instead of saying the team launched this new product, you need to be able to articulate what you specifically did to make that happen.

Maybe it was identifying the market. You built the business case that actually got it funded. You restructured the team or the org chart to have the right people in the right seats. You negotiated with three other divisions to get a pilot off the ground. And you can absolutely talk about that while still honoring your team’s execution and the role they played.

So if you were someone who finds yourself constantly deflecting credit, I want you to ask yourself, how did my efforts make it possible for the right work to happen? What would have been different or what wouldn’t have happened at all if I hadn’t been in this role? That’s what belongs in your performance review.

Secret number four. Vague feedback isn’t a red flag. It can be a sign you’re on the right track. We’ve been talking about how at the mid and senior level you need to be highlighting different skills, so things like influence, stakeholder management, strategic thinking. And all of that is a lot more intangible.

I bet as a result you are also getting intangible, maybe even ambiguous feedback in return when you talk about the areas you need to improve. So often we hear that people are told, well, you need to work on your executive presence. Or maybe it’s, I want you to be more visible with senior leadership. Or the classic, you need to show up with more confidence.

And then you are sitting there thinking, well, what am I supposed to do with that? Because it feels vague, unhelpful, and sometimes maybe a little bit unfair. And you might just be thinking, can’t you just tell me specifically what I’m doing wrong so I can just fix it? And it can feel like a jarring transition because when you were earlier in your career, the feedback probably was more concrete.

We need you to be more responsive to emails. Your presentations need more data. Very clear problem, clear solution. And for those of us who are always striving to be the gold star student who want to do everything right, we think just give me my marching orders and I will execute them. So can be so frustrating to get that ambiguous, squishy feedback.

But let me tell you, that is actually a sign you are heading in the right direction. And let me explain this. If they are telling you that they want you to be more decisive and assertive, for example, that means they trust your judgment. They wouldn’t be asking you to use your judgment more if they didn’t believe in the direction you had taken things in the past.

So what they are really saying is stop asking for permission. You already know what to do. Just do it and do it faster. If they’re saying we want you to be more vocal or visible, that means they want more of you. They think you have valuable insights and they’re not getting enough of them. So it’s not necessarily criticism.

It’s actually an invitation. And if the feedback is about visibility presence, there’s signaling that they see potential in you for the next level. They would not be spending time coaching you on how to show up with more powerful people if they didn’t think you belonged in those rooms.

So before you spiral into self-doubt or annoyance about those development areas you get on your review, just realize this isn’t them telling you that you are failing. This is them telling you that you are close. And also once you reach mid and senior level leadership, again, by the very nature of those levels, you are being judged less on hard skills, much more on soft skills.

If you think about the executives at the very top of your organization what separates the great ones from the just okay ones? It’s usually not their technical skill. Often, it’s not even their intelligence. It’s things like their gravitas, their political savvy, their ability to read the room, knowing when to push or when to let something go.

Success becomes way more about those intangibles, how you build relationships, how you make people feel when they work with you, how you are showing up under pressure. So yes, the feedback gets squishier because. Often your reviewer is trying to describe something that is very hard to describe or to nail down.

Sometimes it’s very subjective and they may be trying to guide you on things that they don’t have a clear rubric for, or they maybe have never taken the time to clearly define for themselves. I wanna be clear, it is not necessarily fair that this happens, but it is reality.

The trick is not to just accept the ambiguity at face value. I want you to gently dig deeper and two quick ways to do that. The first is to use binaries. Give them two clear options and ask them to choose. So if they say, we need you to improve your executive, you might ask.

Okay, I got it. Is it more about how I’m communicating? So do you want me to be more concise or is it more about the substance? Um, of what I’m saying, for example, that I need to be connecting my ideas to the broader business goals. So in that example, you’re not just making them come up with the answer from scratch.

You’re giving them two options. You’re asking them to choose, which is so much easier for them to respond to. It takes much less effort on their part.

The second technique is to ask them to tell you about a time they saw this done well. Or about another person who does this effectively. So if they say you need to get better at building influence, you can say that makes sense.

I hear you. Can you think of a situation recently when someone did that well? Or is there someone in the organization you think does this really well that I could learn from? So now they’re not just giving you abstract advice, they’re pointing to a real example that you can study and learn from. Or you can also ask them to describe a specific moment where they wish you had shown up differently so you can get that contrast.

So you can say, can you think of a recent meeting or a situation where you would’ve liked to see me handle things differently and what would that have looked like?

Last and definitely not least, secret number five. Frame your development areas as preparation for the next level, not personal failures. So let me walk you through what I mean here. When you are writing your self appraisal for your performance review, I bet you immediately go into self-critical mode. You may write, well, I struggle at public speaking.

I know I need to work on my time management. I tend to get too in the weeds. You’re confessing weaknesses. You’re just listing off problems. You’re basically handing them a list of reasons why you might not be ready for moral responsibility. And again, I get why we do this. We are trying to be self-aware.

You’re trying to show that you’re honest, you’re reflective, you’re willing to grow, which are all good instincts. But I want you to just shift this framing just slightly. Instead of presenting these as issues that need fixing, which can inadvertently suggest you might be struggling to keep up or excel where you already are,

I want you to shift to present your areas for growth as building capacity for bigger challenges. So just think about it from the perspective of your evaluator for a second. If you say, I really struggle with delegating, what they might hear or interpret that as is, well, this person can’t let go of work, which means they’ll probably become a bottleneck and I can’t have that because I can’t be worrying about how this person will actually scale as a leader.

But if you say, as I’m thinking about the next level, I want to get even better at delegating high impact work, not just the day-to-day tasks so I can focus more on planning and positioning the team for what’s ahead. Totally different. What they hear more so is, oh, this person is thinking ahead. They are preparing themselves for bigger responsibilities ’cause they understand what that entails.

So the difference here is intent. One sounds like a liability. The other sounds like someone who is stepping up. So the difference is are you developing this skill because you’re falling short of expectations right now?

Or are you developing it because you want to be preparing for what comes next? Let me walk you through a few more examples so you can really see and understand this contrast. So instead of saying, I know I need to get better at conflict. You may reframe that as I want to continue developing my ability to navigate disagreements and drive alignment when there are competing priorities.

Instead of saying, I’m bad at saying no, that’s an area I need to improve, switch that to as my scope increases, I’m focused on getting better at prioritizing ruthlessly so I can protect my capacity.

I’m not saying at all that you should lie, that you should pretend you don’t have real areas where you need improvement. Of course you do. We all do. That’s not the point. The point is that growth is inevitable at every stage of your career. So the question is, what story are you telling about why you are growing?

All right. We have covered five critical secrets for navigating performance reviews once you hit the mid and senior levels. Let’s recap those real quick.

Secret number one, your review is in a report card. It’s a positioning session.

Secret number two, you’re no longer being evaluated by someone who sees your work. Your boss has limited context, so you need to translate your accomplishments into the language of business impact.

Secret number three, avoid over indexing on team spirit and collaboration. Yes, your wins happen through others now, but you can’t deflect so much credit that your own contributions become invisible.

Secret number four, vague feedback is not a red flag. It can actually be a sign that you’re on the right track because at your level, you are now being judged on the intangibles. So dig deeper, get the clarity you need.

And secret number five, stop framing your development areas like personal failures. Reframe them as preparation for what’s next, not problems you are trying to fix.

Since you are listening to this, I can guess a few things about you. Number one, you are busting your butt every single day. You are the reliable workhorse of your team, and because of that, you deserve more than bare minimum. You deserve better than that gut punch moment where you were fully expecting an exceeds expectations rating because you’ve been going above and beyond all year.

But instead you get slapped with that meets expectations that then keeps you up for weeks making you question everything. The five shifts we talked about today can help you walk into your review with confidence and walk out with that recognition and the rewards you deserve. But one last thing I need to mention.

This is very important. You should never be walking into your performance review, nervous about the rating you’re going to get. Your review shouldn’t be this high stakes moment where you’re walking in, crossing your fingers, and just hoping for the best, not knowing what’s coming. It should feel like a conversation that’s confirming what you already know.

Because you’ve been shaping perception every single day. And that’s exactly what we teach you how to do. Inside my program, Speak Like a Senior Leader. We’re not just giving you tips for your annual review. We are showing you with hands-on coaching and training, how to position yourself, how to build your reputation, how to demonstrate that executive level thinking in every interaction, every meeting, every conversation you have.

We would love to see you inside of this program, especially since right now, from October 20th through the 24th, you have one last chance to join for the 2025 introductory pricing before it goes up for good. You will lock in your spot for the January cohort, which is important because the last time we sold out at record time, and you’ll do so at the lower rate.

And with all of this, you are also getting four months of bonus access to my coaching tools library, which in itself is packed with tons of resources you can use right away.

Better yet, you also get access to the Performance Review Playbook Masterclass, which walks you through eight often overlooked locations that you can uncover big wins that you may have missed, a genius way to spoonfeed your manager exactly what you want them to say in your review, and have them thank you for it, and lots, lots more.

So make sure you head to speak like a senior leader.com or head to the link in the show notes. That’s all for today. I will see you on the next episode.

Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode of Psychology at Work. If you enjoyed the show, I’d be so grateful if you could take just a minute to rate and review Wherever you are listening, it’s how we reach more professionals just like you. And if you’d like to see even more content on how to feel more self-assured, grounded, and in control of your emotions and reactions at work, follow me on LinkedIn or head to the links in the show notes.