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There’s a common five-word phrase that sounds humble and collaborative, but can also undermine your hard-earned impact and even tank your performance review: “It was a team effort.”
You might also say:
- “Everyone pitched in.”
- “Others did a lot of the heavy lifting.”
- “I played a small part.”
Of course, you should give recognition to your colleagues where it’s due. The problem is when you downplay your role so much that your individual contribution disappears. If everything was a team effort, then what skills did you bring to the table? What outcomes did you create? It’s much harder for your boss to justify a raise or promotion with no concrete data about your personal performance.
As an executive coach, I’ve spent the past 15 years helping high performers at organizations like Google, Amazon and JPMorgan build influence with powerful people. I’ve observed that those who emerge from performance review season with the biggest opportunities proactively communicate the value of their work. They don’t simply hope their boss can decipher and remember what they accomplished.
You can still be fair and generous toward others. But instead of insisting that “it was a team effort” and leaving it at that, follow up with these strategies to advocate for yourself in your performance review conversations and year-round.
1. Highlight your decision-making
Even if a project was a collaboration, someone still had to choose what to prioritize, how to tackle the plan and how to respond when things changed.
Clarify your role in the choices that drove the group’s execution or identify what obstacles you personally cleared. This puts on prominent display your judgment and problem-solving, which are two essential skills for higher-level responsibilities.
This might sound like:
- “I made the final call to delay one component of the launch for Product 2 so that we could get Product 1 to market faster.”
- “When costs started creeping up, I recommended that we audit expenses, which led to $10,000 in savings.”
- “The hardest part was getting buy-in from our faculty. I decided to host a focus group to build support before the accreditation deadline.”
2. Show your before and after
Compare what you did on a recent project to what you handled six or 12 months before. Measuring yourself against your own past performance makes it easier for your boss to grasp your growth.
For instance, explain how your scope or level of influence has grown. Perhaps you’re managing larger accounts, presenting work directly to executives or setting project strategy.
This might sound like:
- “I’ve expanded beyond simply preparing the analysis to leading conversations with our business-unit leaders across the clinical and operations teams.”
- “In the last quarter, I’ve onboarded three new team members, which means our capacity has doubled.”
- “You might recall that last year at this time I was overseeing one event. But now I’m overseeing our entire portfolio.”
3. Point to a tangible asset
Reference something concrete you created that has added value to the team effort. Maybe you built a dashboard, documented a process or designed a template.
This proves your efforts have a longer-lasting impact on how the team operates. Explain how this asset has now made everyone’s work faster, more productive or more consistent going forward.
This might sound like:
- “I’m proud of the new system I put in place tracking compliance issues. We’ve already saved time on going back and forth with legal as a result.”
- “It was challenging, but I standardized the entire monthly reporting process. So now we have a clearer picture of program outcomes.”
- “Writing briefing materials for our board meetings was a great exercise. They’ve been rolled out to all C-suite members as of last month.”
4. Reference a third party
I’ve seen how people tend to take someone seriously when they come recommended. So mention how a colleague specifically sought you out for an opinion, an executive tapped you for an initiative or someone praised your effort. It’s evidence that your individual contribution stood out within a larger project.
This might sound like:
- “It meant a lot that the head of finance asked for my input before they finalized the budget. I was able to negotiate more grant funding.”
- “After the presentation, the client pulled me aside and said he was really impressed by our due diligence. I think that played a role in landing the deal.”
- “A few colleagues from other teams have started coming to me directly for guidance on this, which is giving our entire department more visibility.”
Your performance review is one of the most important career moments of the year. Take the opportunities you have leading up to it — and all year long — to make your results visible to your boss and to build the case for better projects and more money.
Melody Wilding, LMSW is an executive coach, human behavior professor and author of “Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge.” Get her free training, 5 Steps to Speak Like a Senior Leader, here.
