Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum. We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com. Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. The year is closing out, and you are likely heading straight on into performance review season. If you have not already, you know, that fun exercise that you have to do in corporate America, where you think about all of the amazing things that you've done, but at the same time, you try not to brag too much or sound overly confident for fear of coming off a certain way? Today, I'm gonna put my cheap people hat on for you and walk you through all the things that you want to make sure you include on your review so that you can wrap up 2022 with confidence, impress your leadership, and set yourself up for that next level position or raise. Now let's dive in. First, I want you to get a blank sheet of paper and list out all of your big wins. These should be the things that you can easily think of that come straight away to your mind that were huge projects or accomplishments that you were able to knock out this year. I highly recommend that if you don't already do this, that you keep a review folder for yourself so that you don't have to dig through the cobwebs of your memory every year come review time. You can simply open up this folder and then just copy and paste all of the big wins straight on over into your review. You're gonna want to write out what you did that made that project, that big win a success. Map out the challenges that stuck out to you and how you resolved them. Did you implement a new system under a tight deadline? Did you pull a project out from in the red zone by working with a client for a creative solution? Did you increase net new sales in a market that was thought to be tapped out? Whatever the big win is, detail it out and also detail out the challenge, but you're not done yet. The critical part is to then write out how that win impacted the company. I really want you to think about how did the company win. So let's take that new system that you implemented as an example. You could say, I led my team through a new system integration that will reduce manual entries, decrease errors, and increase the accuracy of revenue predictability. Now that sounds a whole heck of a lot better than just, I successfully implemented a new system. You see how that last piece that I added on about revenue predictability impacts the entire company? Another example might be pulling a project out from the red. Now you could put that just plain Jane boring. I pulled a project out from the red. Or you could write, I inherited the project x y z after the lead resigned. This project, if it went well, had the potential to lead the additional sales contracts for the next five years. By meeting with the client biweekly, I was able to steer the project back into the green, reduce concession, and increase the client engagement satisfaction score. The direct feedback I received from the stakeholder is below. And then you could copy and paste some kudos that maybe you received from the client directly into your review. When you tie those accomplishments together with direct impact to the company and you go that extra mile, you take the extra time to detail it out, you make it easier for your leader to see how awesome you are. The second thing that I would do once you map out all the big wins, just how I showed you, is I would detail out your leadership skills. Now if you lead a team, this may be easy. If you're individual contributor, you'll want to talk about how you mentored, trained, or advised somebody. Leaders wanna see that you were involved outside of the bubble of you. How are you contributing to the betterment of the team? What did you do to set your team up for success? Were there additional trainings, skill expansion, team planning sessions to brainstorm creative budget saving ideas? Whatever it is, tell them. You'll also wanna list out an opportunity where you're growing. So perhaps you're missing the mark or you're falling short somewhere just a little bit as it relates to a stretch goal or the next level position in a company. You could just list out what you're working on and how it relates to the next role you want. You know? And if you're having a hard time thinking this one through, hear me out on the next example. Say you are a VP of marketing, and, eventually, you want to move up to a c suite role, chief marketing officer. You have different expectations when you're moving from a VP to a c suite. Right? What are those expectations? What are you doing to work towards them? You could say, looking ahead, I'm focused on driving results and streamlining the efforts of the entire marketing team. As I work to increase my expertise and strengthen my thought leadership in this area, I want to continue to educate myself and work with the c level leaders to gain exposure, support, and their buy in. The trick here is to share the idea that you are capable of moving into the next level role and to get others to buy into that as well. This is a perfect example of sharing positive feedback with developmental suggestions that puts you in a positive light. Now a bonus that would make you look really good with your company will be typing out your actions and tying them to the core values, mission, and vision. When you're able to tie those actions that you took throughout the year and how they sync up to the bigger picture shows that you are in lock step with the organization. You are one of the key players that understands and is driving the business forward. I once worked for an organization whose mission was to save lives. And in my review, I would tie back what I did or what I was doing directly to saving lives. Instead of saying I conducted an engagement survey with an 85% success rate, I would say I conducted an engagement survey with an 85% success rate gathering feedback from employees across the region to enhance the employee experience and further the mission of saving lives. Is it extra? Absolutely. Does it show the commitment to the mission? Also, absolutely. I also want you to take a minute and note any shortcomings that you have. You know? Go ahead. Own up to the big ones, and note them as opportunities. How did you learn from these mistakes? What did you do differently throughout the year after you learned from that experience? How did you handle the setback of failure? Leaders know that success and perfection is not a guarantee, and it's not going to happen a 100% of the time. They do expect some sort of failure. The important piece is framing it in the right light, the light of learning, looking at it from a growth mindset perspective, how you will take that failure and turn it around. Now sometimes that does mean eating a big old piece of humble pie. If you really messed up taking ownership, understanding the misstep of failure, it does show growth. It shows accountability. It shows respect for your leaders and the organization. When you take ownership, Do not underestimate the power of admitting you were wrong. The key is to still show up with what you have learned and what you would do differently next time. Now depending on how your review is structured, if there's a place for other or additional feedback you use, this is an area to highlight where you wanna go next and how you wanna make that happen in the next few years. What projects do you wanna be a part of? How do you want your role to evolve? What do you not have experience with that you want to get exposure to in the coming year? Now don't be embarrassed or afraid to say, you know, I've never been responsible for a p and l before. I'd love to have exposure this year. I often see women who are afraid to state that they don't have experience in a certain area as if admitting it might taint them in some way, but girl, own it. When you lay it out there, your leader can find the ways to add you to the right conversations, add you to the meetings that you may not have been invited to before. Not because you're being excluded, but maybe because they just didn't know that she wanted to experience. So in short, when you are writing up your annual review, make sure that you, one, list out those big wins and successes. Two, tie those big wins into the overall mission, vision, and core values of the company whenever it makes sense. Three, list out your leadership skills, what you did for the team, for a group, for your colleagues. Four, frame your failures as opportunities. And last, detail where you want to go next. The easier that you make it for your leader interview time, the better they understand your contributions and how you help drive the organization organization forward, the better this is gonna go. If you leave it just to them to recognize all that you did, you are going to cut yourself short. If you enjoyed this stepping stone episode, you will love my level up your LinkedIn content kit. If you struggle with how to best utilize your LinkedIn for success, this content kit has all the answers. What to post, when to post, and how to maximize my secret posting strategy. This kit will guarantee 10 x your network. Give yourself the gift of easy growth by purchasing my ebook today. The link is in the show notes.