Underneath
What's going on underneath #
Three things that tend to sit under the words.
All the late fixes, the quiet help, the problems that never happened because you caught them early, can disappear between the lines of a form.
For some people it goes back to school, to a teacher who marked hard but fairly and explained every red line.
Underneath, a rule can sit: “Good work should be seen,” or “If I do my part, the system will do its part.”
Reactions
What people often do #
- Read the written comments again and again, hunting for the real meaning
- Compare ratings quietly with one or two trusted colleagues
- Decide to keep your head down until next year
- Go over the year in your head, looking for where it went wrong
- Shrug it off in public and carry it home in private
The deck
The story in 6 cards #
Six short cards, from the moment to letting go.
'Meets expectations' after everything
Review season in Abu Dhabi. Your rating comes back 'meets expectations'. You hit every target, led the new project, and stayed late through the busy months. A colleague who did less got 'exceeds'. Your manager says, 'The ratings are spread across the team.' You nod and say thank you. Walking out, your face feels hot and your hands are cold.
Reviews should be fair
Underneath sits a rule: 'My company should run reviews fairly.' It sounds like basic justice. Hard work should be seen as it is. But look at what it does: it ties your view of your own year to a process you don't run. Whether your work feels good now depends on a rating shaped by quotas, memories and pressures you may never see.
Why fairness feels like safety
We hold it because fairness feels like safety. Maybe you grew up where good marks were the clearest proof of doing well, and ratings still feel like report cards. Maybe you've always worked hard and trusted that it would be seen. Either way, wanting a fair review isn't vanity. It comes from wanting your effort to count. That deserves kindness, not blame.
Replaying the review meeting
Every unfair rating lingers long after the meeting. You replay the conversation in your head. You compare yourself with the colleague who got more. You start the next year already discouraged and tired. Slowly you begin to judge your own work by the number on the form, and forget the things you know you did well that no form could show.
Is the unfairness worth carrying?
Ask yourself honestly: has holding onto how it should be ever changed the rating? Or has it mostly made the year feel smaller? Review systems are often shaped by spreads and limits more than by what each person really did. Either way, the rating isn't the measure of your year. Holding this rule so tightly costs you more than it gives you.
One number can't change your year
Letting go doesn't mean you stop caring about fairness. It means your sense of your own year no longer depends on one number. You know what you did: the targets, the project, the late nights. You can hold that clearly, whatever the form says. That's where some peace comes back: your year stays yours, and it was a good one.
Threats, shouting, harassment, humiliation, being singled out for who you are, pay or papers held back, or being frightened at work, are something else, and worth taking seriously; staying careful can be the safe choice.
The flip
The old rule, and a new one to try #
The old ruleMy company should run reviews fairly.
A new rule to tryI know what I did this year. One number can't change that.
For next time
Try it next time #
- Step 1
Think of three things you did well this year
- Step 2
When the rating comes to mind, think of your proudest moment
- Step 3
Do something kind for yourself on review day
Want to talk it through?
“Who has judged your work fairly, and what did they do?”
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Everything this deck knows
Go deeper #
What it sounds like, where it comes from, what it costs, and other ways to see it. Every question opens a chat on it.
How it lands
What was said
One word on a form, a whole year behind it #
The review is twenty minutes long. A year of work is folded into one word on a form: “meets”, or “partly meets”. On the walk back to your desk the sentence arrives: “My company should run reviews fairly.”
For some people the hope is really about being seen as they really are at work. A rating can feel like a mirror held up by someone else, and when the mirror looks bent, the year it shows looks bent too.
Think back to a time your work was judged in a way that felt right.
Who did the judging, and what made it feel fair?Talk about this ›
The first few seconds
The face that stays still #
Some people notice their face going very still while the rating is read out, as if a calm face could stop the number. Others feel their ears go hot, or a sudden thirst.
The body often answers before the mind lines up its arguments. A nod that means nothing, a pen gripped a bit too hard, a “fine, thanks” on the way out. The real reply tends to come hours later.
In your last review, what did your body do while you were still in the room, before you could think?Talk about this ›
Why it lands
A year deserves an honest reading #
Hoping for a fair review is not too much. A review can shape the next year: which work comes your way, who listens to you, how you see yourself on a Monday morning.
It also stings because a rating is so small and a year is so big. All the late fixes, the quiet help, the problems that never happened because you caught them early, can disappear between the lines of a form.
What part of your last year at work do you wish had made it onto the page, even in one line?Talk about this ›
The voice inside
The voice that re-runs the meeting #
“They had already decided.” “It’s all about who you know.” “What more did they want from me?” The voice is usually loudest in the lift, or at night, when the meeting plays again with better answers.
Some people find the voice holds a real question and a heavy feeling at the same time. The heavy feeling can grow bigger than the question itself.
The question is fair: how was this decided?Talk about this ›
When the voice goes back over the review, which moment does it return to first, and what does it wish had been said?Talk about this ›
Where it comes from
Where it can come from
Where fair marking was first learned #
For some people it goes back to school, to a teacher who marked hard but fairly and explained every red line. That one teacher can become the picture of what judging work should look like.
Sometimes it is the opposite: a report card that did not match the effort, or a sibling who seemed to get the easier marks. A sharp sense of fairness can grow out of a moment that was not fair.
Who in your life has judged your work in a way you trusted, and what did they do that made the difference?Talk about this ›
The belief under it
The rule about being measured #
Underneath, a rule can sit: “Good work should be seen,” or “If I do my part, the system will do its part.” It is a hopeful rule. Reviews are run by people, with all their hurry and blind spots, so the rule can be let down often.
The rule is not wrong to have. It can sit beside a plainer fact: one form, filled in by one or two busy people, is a narrow window onto a whole year of someone’s work.
Where does your rule about being measured fit this company, and where does it ask more than a single form can give?Talk about this ›
What it costs
What it costs
What a stinging rating can take #
It can mean weeks of going over the meeting, a coolness towards a manager, or a quiet decision to try a little less. Small shifts, and they can shape a whole year if nobody notices them.
There can also be a cost to how you see your own work. If one word on a form gets to decide whether a year was good, the parts you know were good can start to feel smaller than they were.
Over the past year, which piece of your work do you know was good, whatever the form said about it?Talk about this ›
If it stays as it is
Review after review, read the same way #
Hold up a picture, nothing more. Several review seasons from now, the hope is still loud. The ratings come out, and people compare them in whispers by the lifts.
Perhaps a long lunch spent going over who got what, a manager’s face read for clues all week, a year of good work judged only by the word at the end.
Nothing in this scene is fixed, and you can set it down at any moment.
Where do you stand in that little group, and what are you saying?Talk about this ›
What else is in that season?Talk about this ›
As you look at it, what do you notice first?Talk about this ›
Another way to see it
Another way to see it
What a review can and cannot see #
Reviews in many companies have to fit people into set shapes: a few at the top, most in the middle. A rating can be partly about the shape the company needs, not only about the person in front of it.
That does not make an unfair review fair, and it does not make the wish wrong. It may mean the form is measuring something narrower than the one you use for yourself.
If you wrote your own note on this year, in three plain lines, what would it say about the work you did?Talk about this ›
What is already there
The year you know about #
Next to the rating, there may be things the form never asked about: a colleague you helped through a hard week, a skill you picked up, a problem you saw coming, a customer who wrote back to say thanks.
Seeing these does not make the review right, and the hope for fairness stays. They belong to the same year. You get to notice them for no reason except that they happened.
On an ordinary working week, what do you already do well that no form has ever had a box for?Talk about this ›
Making peace
Your own note on the year #
Peace with this hope is not a decision that the rating was fair. What shifts is that one word on a form stops running the months after it. If a review puts your job, your income or your visa at risk, that weight is real and different from this hope; someone you trust can help you think it through.
When ratings follow who people are (gender, caste, religion, colour, age, a disability or where you come from), that is not a matter of perception or a hope to loosen. It is worth taking seriously, and any notes you keep for yourself can stay.
Threats, harassment, humiliation, being singled out for who you are, unpaid work demanded, pay or papers held back, unsafe work, or being frightened, from a boss, client or colleague, are something else too. Going along or staying careful can be the safe choice.
Basic respect and safety at work are never “expecting too much”, for you and for them.
Imagine the week after a review, held a little more loosely: what would you spend your evenings on?Talk about this ›
A truer sentence
A line to keep next to the form #
Next to “My company should run reviews fairly”, some people keep this: “I wanted a fair reading of my year, and I know what my year held.” The first line stays true. The second gives it some company.
It may not fit straight away. Some people change one word, some write their own, some come back to it after the next review. Any of those is a fine way to use it.
What would your own line be, one that keeps your hope for fairness and your own knowledge of your work together?Talk about this ›
What to let be
The form can go back in the drawer #
Not every review needs to be argued with tonight. It can be read once, felt, and put in a drawer, still there, still yours to think about when you choose.
The wish for fairness can stay. Threats, harassment, humiliation, being singled out for who you are, unpaid work, pay or papers held back, unsafe work or fear are a different matter, and worth taking seriously; staying careful can be the safe choice.
Putting the form away does not settle anything. It only means the evening gets to belong to you.
What would you like to fill it with?Talk about this ›
If it loosened
If the rating weighed a little less #
Hold the same season in mind, with the hope still yours, only softer. You read your own review once. Then you write your own note on the year, in your own words, and keep it.
It might be a lift ride with no comparing, or a Monday where the work in front of you feels like yours again.
There is nothing to report and nobody to tell. Still to come: what peace with this hope could mean, and what your days already hold.
What is the first thing that feels lighter?Talk about this ›
What would your first sign be?Talk about this ›
Small things to try
Something to try
A few small things people try #
- Name, in your head, three plain things you did this year
- Notice when the rating starts speaking for the whole year
- Think of one person whose judgement of your work you trust
- Notice which part of the review is a fact and which part is a feeling
- Name one thing from the year you would happily do again
Private and optional. One is plenty.
Pick a question
Talk it through #
Tap one. A chat with Dr. Thoughts opens on that question: free, private, no sign-up to start.