title: The Year's Two Most Important Career Conversations: Annual Review and Making a Move
Planning for an annual review or promotion and planning your next career move are the most important career conversations you can have.
That is why I support clients with two distinct career-advancement processes.
- The Year-End Review and Advancement/Getting Promoted Process
- One-week Career Focus, Clarity, and New Resume Process
The Year-End Review and Advancement/Getting Promoted Process
A few weeks before the annual review is a natural time to look honestly at the year, assess your contribution, prepare for an annual review, seek advancement, or decide whether it is time to look for a new job. Too often, people wait passively for the organization to define their future. They wait for a review, a manager, a reorganization, or an opening somewhere else to tell them what is possible.
But the only thing you can truly count on at work is your own commitment, attitude, action, and behavior. Everything else is beyond your control.
This is a focused three-to-five-day process for people who want to advance within their current company.
It is designed for someone preparing for an annual performance review, seeking a promotion, wanting expanded contribution, or needing to speak more clearly and confidently about the value they create.
Performance reviews often disappoint for two simple reasons:
- Employees and managers are not adequately prepared for the conversation.
- Important decisions may already have been made before the review conversation takes place.
That does not mean the review does not matter. It means the preparation is exceedingly important.
In a few days to a week, we prepare for that conversation directly. We clarify your accomplishments and contribution. We identify what has worked and what has not. We examine where you may be waiting, complaining, or withholding. We prepare you to stand for your results, make clear requests, and communicate what you want next with greater confidence and effectiveness. Clients describe it as getting decades of maturation and professional development in a single week.
This is not a promise of a raise, a promotion, or a particular outcome. It is preparation to pursue those outcomes with a new level of maturity, responsibility, clarity, confidence, and the skills to take practical next steps.
Juan-Carlos Gomez, Divisional Controller, Motorola—now CFO of Epson America—came to me years ago during a mid-year slump. He was burned out and considering quitting. Instead of staying stuck in resentment, he got clear about what mattered, made direct requests for a promotion and a move to Miami, and within a few months, he was promoted and living back in Miami with his family.
One-week Career Focus, Clarity, and New Resume Process
This is a separate focused one-week process for someone considering a new job that may require a recasting of skills, passion, and search clarity.
It’s not easy to synthesize and recast decades of experience, possibly across different industries and diverse roles on your own. Sometimes, the next step is not obvious. And it's a whole lot easier when someone else does the hard part for you.
This is not a simple resume-writing service. It is a one-week coaching experience that we do together in lockstep. In that process, I draw out and take in your full experience—your diverse skills, years of work, strengths, passion, accomplishments, and desired contribution. Together, we integrate what may have felt scattered, recast your experience in a focused, authentic, empowering, and inspiring way, clarify the direction you are genuinely prepared to pursue, and create a new resume that expresses that direction in a way that feels congruent.
I take full responsibility for writing the resume from that integrated understanding. Together, what emerges is not just polished language, but a document that reflects your clarity, direction, and readiness for what is next.
And, you have the opportunity to be profoundly heard and understood in a way that releases burdens of the past and frees you to excel.
Steven Lefton Sharp, CEO, Chairman Lefton Companies came to me looking for a big change. As he put it, “After I grew and sold my company, I grew a few others and then managed the family foundation. When I decided to get back into growing companies again. I hired you to coach me. After about one week, I got more focus, clarity, confidence, self-awareness, and determination than I ever imagined… I don’t know how Matthew does it, but he is a rock star and an executive coach. I couldn’t have done it. I never imagined that life could be like this. I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me.”
This process promises clarity, focus, confidence, and the ability to share that passion with materials for your search that are congruent with who you are and what you want.
Both paths are preparation for career advancement. One is for advancement in the company, usually through the annual review process; the other is for moving into a new role where a new resume is needed. Sometimes, we do both.
What the One-Week Process Includes
Whether you are preparing for internal advancement or recasting yourself for a new job, the one-week process is built around five practical moves:
- Be profoundly heard and understood so you break free of current limitations, beliefs, and assumptions.
- Do the work to clarify your accomplishments, contribution, passion, skills, and what you actually want.
- Share the results through honest, effective communication.
- Create what is next by making clear requests and defining practical next steps.
- Stay in action so the conversation becomes movement rather than another private intention.
If you are preparing for the performance review or an internal promotion/move, you leave with greater clarity about your skills, results, and contribution, a stronger sense of responsibility, a clearer path to overcoming deficits, and stronger preparation for the review or promotion conversation, clearer requests, and a practical next step.
If you are preparing for a new job and need a resume, too, you leave with greater focus, clarity, confidence, language for your search, and a resume written from an integrated understanding of your experience that expresses the direction you are prepared to pursue.
In both cases, the purpose is career advancement through deep introspection, being profoundly heard and understood in a way that completes the past, and the clarity, communication, and motivation to be effectively in action. Along with new materials, as needed.
A Responsibility Shared by Managers and Employees
Managers can share these opportunities with employees as a meaningful investment in their contribution, satisfaction, and productivity. For the individual, the process creates clarity and action. For the company, it can strengthen the team, communication, commitment, and results.
Take the Next Step
If you want to prepare for advancement within your current company, this is the time to get ready for the conversation that can shape your next year. A focused one-week process can prepare you for an annual review, promotion discussion, or expanded contribution with more clarity and confidence.
If you are considering a new job and need a new resume to boot, this is also the time to get clear. A separate focused one-week process can recast your experience, integrate your passion and skills, and produce a resume that expresses the direction you are ready to pursue.
Both are practical, direct, and designed to move you forward.
Learn more about executive coaching for internal advancement or a new-job transition, and schedule an introductory call to explore which one-week process is right for your next performance review, promotion, or career move.
