By MATT VILLANO


Q. For the first time in your career, your boss has given you a negative performance review. How should you react?


A. It’s only natural for a negative performance review to hurt, but try to maintain your composure during the review and focus on the message.

“It’s important to see bad reviews as wonderful gifts,” said Wendy Kaufman, chief executive of Balancing Life’s Issues, a corporate training firm in Ossining, New York.“At the very least, they are going to make you stronger and give you a road map of strategies to do your job better down the road.”

Q. What are the potential ramifications of a negative review?


A. If your review is tied to salary increases, you could be looking at a lower raise or no raise. But, often, one bad review is nothing more than a wake-up call.

Strung together, however, a series of negative assessments could be seen as a pattern of underperformance and could lead to demotion, or, eventually, dismissal, said Scott I.Barer, a labor and employment lawyer in Woodland Hills, California.

“From a legal perspective, the review process exists to create a paper trail to call upon if they need to put an employee on notice,” Mr.Barer said.

From a practical perspective, he added, most review processes are intended to promote career development by providing employees with feedback on how they can improve performance over time.

“It’s in the company’s best interest to give every employee a chance to right his or her ship,”he said.


Q. Should you ask your manager to detail the concerns?

A. Asking for additional information is perfectly acceptable, so long as you phrase your requests the right way.


Q. What if you disagree with the substance of the review?

A. Objecting to aspects of a negative review is a risky proposition, since your manager could interpret your actions as selfish and destructive. Still, if certain facts are unequivocally incorrect, it is important to set the record straight.
The key is to disagree respectfully.


Q. After the review, how should you go about rebuilding credibility at work?

A. First, meet with your manager to lay out a step-by-step checklist for improvement. Next, deliver weekly status reports to keep your manager apprised of short-term performance achievements. Finally, request periodic meetings with the manager to discuss cumulative development.