Your Review Is Coming. Here's 5 Simple Things You Can Do in the Next Few Weeks to Shape the Conversation
5 tips that will help you speak up in meetings, get aligned with your manager, and became your colleagues favorite work friend ahead of your performance review.
Welcome to Reframed! Work is complex, career advice shouldn’t be.
I’m Ashley Rudolph and I write this newsletter for people who are ready for the next level in their careers. Reframed readers describe the experience best: “There’s a depth here that I lack in many a Fast Co click bait article. You push beyond the superficial answers.”
The gap between the people getting promoted and the people getting passed over is often not technical skill. It’s resourcefulness: the ability to figure things out, connect dots others miss, and tell the story of how you did it.
Early in my career, I was deep in execution mode. Every quarter looked the same: head down, shipping work, putting out fires, repeat. I was good at my job. But I was invisible in the ways that mattered.
Then one quarter, something shifted. I’d been tapped to lead a cross-departmental project that, honestly, was so incredibly complex (and messy). Three teams with three different timelines, a leadership team that wanted answers yesterday, and three vendor relationships that I had to build from the ground up. I spent weeks untangling it. Getting people aligned who didn’t particularly want to be.
And then came the test, the CEO asked for a 1:1 meeting with me to hear my strategy. We were holed up in a conference room and I was trying to look like someone who had this under control the whole time (I mostly did. Mostly). I walked them through what I’d done and my vision for the future. There was a moment right when I was sharing a timeline for what was next and my ideas for expansion, when his eyes lit up.
He walked out of the room believing I was the right person to lead the project and told everyone as much.
That quarter’s review was one of my best. Not because my overall body of work was dramatically different from the quarter before, it wasn’t. But because the most recent evidence of my impact was vivid, visible, and top of mind. They didn’t remember the nine months of quiet execution. They remembered the endorsement.
That’s recency bias. And it’s one of the most underutilized forces in your career.
Psychologists have studied this for decades. People disproportionately weigh recent information when making judgments, it’s how our memory works. And in performance reviews, it means the last 4-6 weeks of your behavior can carry as much weight as the previous 10 months. And sometimes that’s a negative thing. But what if you made it work for you in a positive way?
Most career advice tells you to start your “visibility campaign” months in advance. And that’s smart, if you have the runway. But if your review is right around the corner, there are still things you can do to shape the conversation, especially if you’ve been doing a great job up until this point.
CONTEXT
Avoiding the #1 communication blindspot
Here’s what most people get wrong about pre-review positioning: they focus on what they did.
The completed projects.
The metrics.
The tangible wins.
They matter. But having great results and being able to communicate great results are two completely different skills. And the second one is where most people fall short.
Think about it:
Sharing a project update with a skip-level leader is executive communication.
Reframing a task around business outcomes in your 1:1 is managing up.
Recognizing a colleague’s work in front of senior leaders is executive presence.
Sharing an insight in a cross-functional meeting and gaining buy-in is selling your ideas.
The stuff that feels like self-promotion is actually the leadership skill set you’ll need to advance in your career. Roles requiring high social interaction have grown by nearly 12 percentage points since 1980 and employers have tripled the share of managerial job postings emphasizing collaboration, coaching, and influence since 2007. The ability to socialize your work, bring people along, and communicate your impact clearly isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. If you’re a leader (or want to be), it’s the job. And with AI reshaping what execution looks like, the gap between the people getting promoted and the people getting passed over is often not technical skill. It’s resourcefulness: the ability to figure things out, connect dots others miss, and tell the story of how you did it. Anthropic’s 2025 hiring data showed they value adaptability and problem-solving over specific technical credentials even for engineering roles.
So the tips below aren’t just a pre-review checklist. They’re practice reps for the exact skills that get people promoted.
And the best part? Most of them take less than 15 minutes.
THE FRAMEWORK
5 Ways to Positively Impact Your Performance Review in Weeks, Not Months
So here’s the good news, you don’t have to become a different person in order to take action on any of the tips below. But, you do have to become more intentional about the next few weeks.
Here’s how:
1. Speak up in one meeting this week with a prepared insight.
Not a rambling comment. One clear, structured thought: brief context, your takeaway, and what you’d recommend. I wrote about this exact thing in 10 Non-Cringey Ways to Get Noticed and it’s true. The person who speaks with clarity and conviction is the most memorable. Every time. When you speak up, you only have a few minutes to make a strong point. Unfortunately, if your point isn’t clear, it won’t be remembered.
Most people ramble without making a clear point. That doesn’t have to be you.
Try structuring your insights in this way instead:
Brief context → Key takeaway → Call to action.
Weak: “We should launch a mentorship program.”
Strong: “Employee retention is down 15%, with 40% citing lack of career growth. A structured mentorship program could increase engagement and retention.”
People listen to the second version because you appear well-researched and prepared.
2. Give credit to a colleague, in front of leadership.
This sounds counterintuitive for a visibility play, but it’s one of the most powerful moves you can make. When you recognize someone else’s contribution in a meeting or a Slack channel where leadership is present, you look like a leader.
When you lift people up, they will return the favor. Think about it! That colleague you publicly shouted out may be someone that gives you 360 feedback and they’ll remember that moment.
Sharing the love with my colleagues over the years taught me that people do remember how you make them feel. They remember being seen. And long after the metrics and project deadlines have faded, they remember who acknowledged them when it mattered.
3. Reframe one accomplishment as a business outcome, not a task.
Don’t say “I managed the vendor transition.” Say “I led a vendor transition that reduced our processing time by 30% and eliminated a recurring escalation point for the ops team”. Same work. Completely different signal. This is the difference between being seen as someone who *does things* and someone who *drives outcomes*. Practice this framing in your 1:1 this week. If you’re stuck, refer to my IMPACT framework.
I - Influence: How have you shaped decisions, strategy, or team dynamics?
M - Metrics: What measurable results have you delivered (e.g., revenue growth, efficiency improvements)?
P - Profitability: How have you helped the company save or make money?
A - Accountability: What high-stakes projects have you owned and delivered on
C - Culture: How have you improved team morale, retention, or workplace collaboration?
T - Transformation: How has your work created lasting change or innovation?
WORK WITH ME
The tips above are a great start but if you want someone in your corner helping you build these skills in real time, that's what I do. My clients don't just prep for one review. They learn how to position themselves for every conversation that follows.
Learn more here → Elevate for High-Achievers
4. Zoom out. Ask your manager: “What would make this quarter a success in your eyes?”
A lot of people stay laser focused on their work, their tasks, their checklist and hope that their manager values it. That approach can keep you stuck. Instead try asking your manager about what success would look like, to them. It takes 30 seconds and can reframe your entire review.
Most people walk into their review hoping their manager noticed their work. The people who get promoted ask what their manager is paying attention to and then make sure their final weeks of work align with it. It’s being strategic about what you emphasize.
5. Plan out how you want to show up in your next meeting.
Most people only prepare for meetings when they have something to present. But the way you carry yourself in a room is a signal and people read it whether you’re aware of it or not. Before your next meeting, pick a mode:
The Contributor: You’re there to add value. Come with one insight, one question, or one piece of data that only you can offer. Even a well-timed “I actually pulled the numbers on this, here’s what I found” changes how people perceive you.
The Anchor: You’re there to bring order. When the conversation spirals, you’re the one who says “Let me summarize where we are” or “What decision are we actually trying to make right now?” This is leadership and it’s highly visible to senior people.
The Motivator: Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone starts to pile on and are no longer focused on the topic or moving a project forward? There’s usually 1-2 people that can get a group like that back on track OR offer a different perspective that signals not all is lost. Try being that person. That’s leadership.
You don’t have to do all three at once. Pick the one that fits the meeting. The point is: you don’t have to be on autopilot. The people who get promoted are the ones who treat every meeting like it matters, because someone in that room is always paying attention.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Here’s the thing about reviews, the last few weeks before your review can reinforce a story that’s already working for you. A few visible, well-timed moves can shift how people experience your work and that experience becomes the lens they bring to every piece of feedback they give about you.
So before your review, ask yourself: *What do I want people to remember about me?*
Then go make that come true.
I’m curious, what’s worked for you in the weeks leading up to a review?
Good luck!
Ashley
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Adding this to my 1:1s for the week! ♥️
Love this - particularly the call out about show up with an insight! I tend to share insights in the flow of the meeting, and can already reflect on some opportunities these insights would have landed more if I had been a bit more prepared with specifics. Thank you!