The Art and Tradition of the Review: How to Survive Both
- Courtney Branson
- Dec 11, 2025
- 9 min read
Dear Readers,
Each year, the calendar turns toward performance reviews with a familiar dread—it’s time to play our part in the charade—busywork disguised as development.
I have performed the role of a dutiful employee. I’d hunt through my calendar, scroll through Slack, piece together the highlight reel, and then polish it up just in time to meet the review deadline.
But it didn’t serve me. Reviews moved me away from reflection into assessment. I learned to defend my work. I put ego ahead of growth. I let others sway my interpretation or rewrite my narrative. I got lost in the process.
What I needed was a mirror and a safe space to truly reflect on who I’d been in the prior year and who I was becoming. I needed to be honest and tender with myself about what aligned and what didn’t.
Yet, a performance review wasn’t the right forum. It was just a form, but it carried a lot of weight. Not only did it impact my compensation, role, and opportunities, but it also shaped how I saw myself.
Getting a review or any feedback can mold our self-image, and mine was being molded in an HR platform with phrases like “too sensitive” and “not strategic.”
I lived with these broken processes as an employee, manager, and HR leader. None of us is in love with it. (We might actually all hate it in its current form.)
Reviews aren’t meant for modern work, yet they’re still considered a best practice.
To inject a skosh of empathy—these best practices have been inherited and passed down for decades. All the software was designed around this antiquated version of performance management.
It’s easy to be critical of the system and its flaws, but it’s actually fairly difficult to change a best practice. (I’ve tried!) You may not have control over the process, but you have agency in how you move through it.
Which is why, as you enter stage left, I hope this guide helps you craft your story, plan for your future, and understand the system.
And now we’re about to get deep, so settle in, grab a notebook or open a doc, and take a breath. Reflect on the questions that resonate, skip the ones that don’t.
(Our Seedlings will have access to a performance review prep “side quest” in EverMore to make this process easier and tied to a north star. Sign up here.)
Let’s begin with you and the year you lived.
I’m going to ask you to ignore the review for a moment. Instead, channel your energy into reflecting on your year. (If your review is for a different time period, adjust accordingly.)
First, let’s tap into your memories and what’s lingering.
For my tactile folks, fold a piece of paper like a hot dog, open it up, and draw a line where the crease is. Write highs at the top and lows at the bottom.
Whether through words or drawings, plot your year—what were the highs and lows? Don’t limit yourself to work; capture the holistic you.
Now, close your eyes. I want you to picture your highest high from work. Look around in your memory—who was there, where were you, how did it feel?
Time for the tough one. Close your eyes again. Picture your lowest low from work. Look around in your memory—who was there, where were you, how did it feel?
What did you learn from these memories?
What stories did you tell when someone asked how work was going?
What conditions helped you thrive? Which ones didn’t?
When did you feel aligned to who you’re trying to be? When did you not?
Let’s take this into a self-assessment and tell your story.
We want to find the themes, nuances, and complexities of your year. The power of a good review is in how you interpret and recount your impact beyond the tasks.
What did you contribute?
What problems did you help solve?
What did you improve or make easier for others?
Did you have the support, authority, or resources to contribute fully?
How did you show up?
Are you proud of how you worked with others?
When did you speak up or stay silent? How did it feel?
What feedback or praise stuck with you?
Where did you grow?
What skills did you strengthen internally or in your craft?
When was growth painful, unexpected, or shaped by your natural tendencies (e.g., perfectionism, avoidance, overthinking)?
What did you move toward or away from—and why?
What do you want next?
This one is free form. Set a timer for five minutes and journal on this question until it goes off. There’s no right or wrong answer.
Take a deep breath.
But reflection is about self-awareness, not self-criticism.
It may feel indulgent or unnecessary to take this pause, but this is where your story sits. Otherwise, you’ll just be summarizing tasks and submitting a form.
Now is a good time to go on a walk, call a friend, or chat with an EverMore coach.
Welcome back, it’s time to start circling the themes in your reflections.
You’ve been doing all this reflecting, you’ve basically written the story, now we just need to bring the reviewer into your narrative.
Look for the obvious storylines and examine yourself as the main character.
What went well and what could have been better?
What traits, values, and themes stick out to you? More importantly, are you happy with them?
Considering what you want to do next, what do you need to make it happen?
Weave your storylines into the company’s review template.
Anchor in identity, not achievements.
Pick 3-5 keywords or themes to repeat throughout your review. The goal is to associate you with certain concepts to shape the narrative and attract authentic opportunities. As an example, if I wanted to be closer to the customer, my words may be—Investigative, Empathetic, User-Obsessed.
Describe impact, not busyness.
Tell what you did, like you’re talking to a friend—Share the problem, challenges, outcomes, both tangible and spiritual, and why it mattered. Avoid treating the review like a checklist. Saying you completed Project X isn’t as strong as...
During Project X, I noticed tension rising as priorities shifted. Because I value transparency, I started naming trade-offs early and mapping decisions back to user value. This eased pressure on the team, created trust across functions, and allowed us to launch on time without burnout. We surpassed our adoption goals, and there’s been a lasting impact on team collaboration.
All too often, companies reward volume or visibility. But your career isn’t shaped by noise—it’s shaped by impact. The real story lives in how you changed the work, strengthened the team, and shifted what became possible.
Tell the truth about your edges
A review may not be a confessional, but it’s okay to name when you grew despite everything, when you weren’t supported or set up to succeed, and how you kept moving. It shows that you intimately understand what didn’t go well, so it can be navigated in the future.
Draw the line from this year to the next.
Reviews are backward-looking by design, but your career is the unfolding path ahead. Write what you want next. Managers and leaders appreciate when someone already has goals and plans for their near future. It makes their life easier and clearer.
(Another shameless plug here—EverMore makes it simple to build and export a growth path that marries your north star, strengths, and company goals.)
Sharing a self-assessment feels like tossing your soul into a black hole.
While you wait, you can chill, craft a growth plan, or campaign. I like to take the themes from my review and work the room. My goal is to ensure that my review isn’t a surprise to my manager, and that if I’m getting peer feedback, those folks know who I’m trying to be. I want folks to comment on the themes I’ve chosen.
Our Death of Honesty article really dives into how to receive and process feedback that’s authentic to you. But here’s a synopsis and my two cents:
Not all feedback is equal—some is helpful, some is biased, some is projection, especially if the giver is insecure or inattentive.
Don’t worry about accepting the feedback wholesale; focus on:
What part of the feedback resonates or feels like a mirror?
What makes you feel defensive? Is it touching on an old wound? If you strip away the tone, is what’s left useful?
Are there any follow-up questions to ask or context to clarify?
Your goal is to consider and process feedback, not absorb it all at once.
Post review process, you’re going to make some decisions.
Those could be as simple as setting a goal for the upcoming year or as major as a career pivot. You already know what you want next, so now it’s time to contemplate if anything’s changed for you, what support you need, and if the environment you’re in still aligns with your values. (Maybe it never did.)
Ground back into yourself-post review:
What patterns do you want to continue because they feel like you?
What did your review reveal about your strengths and talents?
What conversations do you need to have next?
Throughout all this, you'll also be navigating the emotional bits of feedback.
In reading a review, it’s easy to get caught up in the negative. The areas of improvement section can be a minefield. Some feedback will be about your potential, and some will be about things your company wants you to change.
After you read through the “areas of improvement,” go back and sift feedback into two categories: 1) This is about my future potential or natural development, or 2) This is a criticism of my work impact, or behavior.
The first bits can loop into your future goals as long as they feel aligned. Having potential doesn’t necessarily mean you need or want to act upon it. It’s just information or inspiration to use as you see fit. But criticism is tough.
You have to decide what you want to do, are willing to do, or won’t do.
You’re going to get feedback in your career from people who can see something you can't. Be it experience, intuition, or proximity, someone will hold up a mirror that you’re not ready to look into.
Everyone will tell you it’s a gift, but it’s also a wrenching experience complicated by the fact that you’re also going to get a ton of bullshit feedback.
When processing criticism, I sort it into three buckets:
Resonates with me: This is feedback I already know. It validates my instincts, whether positive, neutral, or negative. So, it’s ready for action.
Trash: This could be vague or inauthentic feedback, or it could be from someone with no skin in the game when it comes to my career. I call it trash because it’s not helpful for me to consider feedback from someone who’s measuring me against their yardstick while also not caring about me. In a way, you could still find gems here; while I trashed the criticisms of being “sensitive,” I also learned how valuable my sensitivity actually is.
Come back to later: This is feedback that’s new information from well-intended folks. If I’m not ready to listen to it, I take space from it. It could be days or years before I return to it. I may look for evidence to prove or disprove, but this is feedback that’s not ready for action, or the trash can. This is where my uncomfortable growth has lain.
That’s the heartache of reviews—They impact us while only evaluating a sliver of who we are.
So, if reviews have ever felt confusing or unhelpful, that makes sense. The system wasn’t built with you in mind or for this era of work.
It may feel silly to do all this soul-digging for a review, but it’s not really about the review. It’s about you. A review on the surface is a form, so if you treat it that way, it will feel like a chore. But if you treat it as your story, it’s disarming.
Treat this time of year as a ritual of recognition—who you were and who you’re becoming. Celebrate what you built, leave behind patterns that don’t serve you, double down on strengths, and vocalize what support or change you need.
Reflection gives you a way to understand and tell your story, so you can navigate to the next chapter. And if you're in a position of power, you can start to reshape the process, so it does what it was meant to do: help people grow, not shrink.
xoxo,
Courtney
p.s. This is part 1 in our three-part series. Up next is giving feedback as a peer or manager without collapsing their spirit, so subscribe to follow along.
Courtney Branson is the cofounder of EverMore, the workplace reflection engine. She's a former Chief People Officer and will forever be designing kind and innovative cultures. You can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and as the cohost of the Dear Evermore podcast.
