I’m a big believer in looking at life every 6 months or so to see where you are, where you’ve been and where you want to go; I’ve alluded to it in a previous post find that while I may not have ended up where I wanted to be, it helps me to be aware of that and then decide if I’m happy with that situation or want to change it.

Employers do the same when you first join and also on a regular basis throughout your time with them; the not exactly friendly sounding “probation meeting” and “appraisal meeting” are the times when you will sit down with your line manager and possibly someone from HR and discuss how you are feeling about the work that you do, the company and your career. It is the ideal forum for them to identify different aspects about the work that you do, your relationships with colleagues and your future with the firm.

A lot of people seem to approach these meetings with feelings of nervousness or negativity; something which will naturally get them off to a bad start, if only in your own mind. The acronym for this is FEAR: False Expectations Appear Real. The best way to manage this is to prepare, so why not have your own mini-appraisal in readiness?

There are many questions you could ask yourself, but I would start with the following:

• What have I done since joining the company/last appraisal that I am proud of?
• When could I have done something better? What stopped me performing well?
• Have I fulfilled the promises and commitments that made in the last meeting been mutually fulfilled? If not, have there been discussions along the way to talk about it?
• Am I genuinely working well with the team?
• Are there any issues that I have that I have struggled to resolve? Are there any that I am hiding from?
• Do you feel that there are things your manager will bring up that you are uncomfortable with? What are they and what can you do about them?
• What do you want to achieve in the meeting?
• Some of these are hard questions, but the point of the exercise is to best prepare you for what should be a frank and open discussion with your manager and to help you get the most out of it.

The great thing about asking yourself hard questions before some else does is that you already know the answers and you will be in a better position to give a strong response. The other real plus is that if things are not entirely positive, you will be able to make them more so by having a plan in mind to put them right, or at least thought about what the best way forward is mutually.

The main thing that I would mention is that we are typically much more critical of ourselves than others will be. By that measure, if you can survive your own grilling, anything that anyone else can give you will be a walk in the park!