ISBN: 1-57023-184-2

Click here to view the back cover.

By Ann Coil, Ph.D., and Ann Hult Crowell

Did you know that every time you talk to your co-workers, managers, clients, and customers about work-related issues, whether you are at a company picnic, in the cafeteria or the hallway, or on a business trip, you are communicating your value?

Most employees don't realize they are constantly onstage in the workplace, instead of just once a year during their annual performance evaluation.

Here's the book that lifts the mystique from the dreaded ritual you and your manager go through each year, and shows you how to turn it to your advantage and, in the process, enhance and elevate your career.

Organized to help you discover yourself through numerous checklists, quizzes, and questions, the book shows you how to:

• put together your skills, accomplishments, and experiences
  
• identify what gives you career satisfaction
  
• keep informed about your organization
  
• investigate career opportunities in-house
  
• captivate your audience through engaging career stories they won't forget
  
• prepare for the all-important performance review
  
• handle the performance review with poise and finesse
  
• get and give feedback about your performance

Written by career development experts, Performance Reviews, Empowered Careers leaves no stones unturned in its discussion of that hidden aspect of the workplace, the annual performance review. Beginning with a crash course in preparation for an imminent review, and filled with numerous examples and checklists, the book:

• explains why the performance review is vitally important to the future of your career
  
• shows you how to gather your work history in preparation for your evaluation
  
• outlines the different review formats and how to handle them
  
• discusses how you can better understand your manager
  
• shows how to tactfully request a review when managers fail to schedule them
  
• explains how to bounce back from a bad review

Don't have another performance review without first reading this insightful book. It could change your career forever! 140 pages. 6 x 9. 2002.



CLICK HERE TO READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK!



TABLE OF CONTENTS

• The Performance Review: A Crash Course
  
• Preparing Your Story
  
• Docu-Dramas: Telling True Stories That Reel in Your Audience
  
• The Stage Set: Your Organization
  
• The Character: Your Career Preferences and Goals
  
• Dress Rehearsal for the Performance Review
  
• Dealing With an Imperfect Performance
  
• Dialogue: Getting and Giving Feedback

CONDENSED EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 5: Six Major Options

You have six major options as you consider if and where you want to move. But before we introduce them, take this quick inventory to help pinpoint your career issues and see what options might be best for you.



A Quick Career Decision Inventory

Check as many items as apply.

1. I like the work I currently do.
   
2. I don't see a reason to make a change.
   
3. I feel sufficiently challenged and stimulated by my current job.
   
4. My current job gives me what I want from work.
   
5. I need new challenges.
   
6. I would like to acquire new skills.
   
7. I would like to acquire new knowledge.
   
8. I need more training and development.
   
9. I want to advance in my career.
   
10. I want more money.
    
11. I need higher-level responsibilities.
    
12. I want work that holds more interest, passion for me.
    
13. I want a better fit for my skills and talents.
    
14. I want out of my current situation.
    
15. I'm too stressed with my current level of responsibility.
    
16. I feel burned out.
    
17. I want to do a good job but have less pressure.
    
18. I'm not sure my personality fits into this culture.
    
19. I don't have a strong interest in the organizations products/services.
    
20. I don't see a place in the organization for my skills, talents, and/or interests.

Let's see what your answers reveal about which of the six career decision choices might be right for you. These are the choices, discussed in detail below:

1. Stay Where You Are
   
2. Enrich the Job You Have
   
3. Move Up
   
4. Move Laterally
   
5. The Stress-Saver Move Down
   
6. Move Out

OPTION 1: Stay Where You Are

If you marked questions 1-4, you're happy where you are! Career conversations with management and your performance reviews are important opportunities to drive home your value to the organization.



OPTION 2: Enrich the Job You Have

If most of your checkmarks fall in items 5-8, you may be a candidate for job enrichment. Career enrichment means staying where you are and enhancing your current position to expand the scope, visibility, autonomy, challenge, attractiveness, meaningfulness, or potential of the job.



OPTION 3: Move Up

If you find checkmarks in 9-11, your decision may require a promotion so you can achieve a higher level and/or broader scope of responsibilities and the increase in compensation that goes with them. Consider your interest, skills, and readiness to take on a management position.



OPTION 4: Move Laterally

Marking items 12-14 indicates that you may need a change in the work that you do and the functions you perform. Rather than staying in place or rising higher in your current area, you may need a lateral move to another part of the organization where your interests and desire to use new skills can be satisfied.



OPTION 5: The Stress-Saver Move Down

Checkmarks 15-17 indicate you are under too much stress. If the pressure you feel is a result of the responsibility that comes with the level of position you hold, you may want to consider a move down.



OPTION 6: Move Out

In any discussion about career choice, we can't ignore the option of leaving the organization. But before you make a drastic decision to move out, make sure you give careful, thorough consideration to Options 1-5.

---

0408