Creatives love many things: blank notebooks, well-timed inspiration, a clean Figma file. Performance reviews? Not so much. They’re often treated like a corporate ritual, a weird seasonal tradition where everyone pretends to love “feedback” while simultaneously sweating through their black t-shirt.
Love it or dread it, performance reviews matter more than ever. Our work as creatives is increasingly tied to budgets, KPIs, cross-functional impact, and cold, hard business outcomes.
That means feedback, clarity, and self-advocacy aren’t optional. They’re career insurance. And now that's the season of year-end reviews (hopefully you’ve been preparing all year…), let's jump into how to actually win the process.
This article breaks down performance reviews from all angles:
- Leaders reviewing creatives.
- Creatives reviewing themselves.
- How to tie creative work to business results without sounding delusional.
- How to avoid giving (or receiving) feedback that blindsides everyone.
Why Do Performance Reviews Matter Anyway?
Lynne Williams, Executive Director of the Great Careers Group & BENG, stresses that employees, creative or not, should track accomplishments year-round to prepare for their review. Creative work is not just aesthetics. It ties directly to business outcomes like brand perception, pipeline influence, cost savings, efficiency, customer experience, and stakeholder engagement.
For creative managers, reviews are essential for spotting strengths, retaining top performers, and mapping out team growth in a constantly shifting environment. Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business notes that performance reviews give employees a benchmark for where they stand, highlight areas for improvement, and give managers a structured way to coach and support real career progression.
And yes, sometimes performance reviews feel like a corporate charade or a box to check before everyone disappears back into Slack. But behind the awkward meetings and self-evals, they actually do heavy lifting. Reviews are a big part of promotions and raises get decided, how teams align on what “good” even means, and how you avoid months of simmering frustration caused by fuzzy expectations. Most importantly, they’re one of the few times the business is required to pause and actually hear you.
Whether you’re giving the review or bracing to receive it, the process has real consequences. Creatives, who often straddle strategy, execution, stakeholder management, and brand protection, need to advocate for both their work and their impact. Managers need to be honest about what is working and what is not.
As Kristen Zavo, Executive and Leadership Coach at Find Your Job Joy, puts it,
“The biggest mistake is assuming the work ‘speaks for itself,’ especially when your manager isn’t a creative and doesn’t appreciate the strategy, sequencing, or effort behind the final product… Creatives often underestimate how powerful it is to own their slice of the business engine, even when they don’t have the full dataset.”
Now that we’ve reviewed why performance reviews matter (yes, we’re literally reviewing the review), let’s look at the traditional process itself — how it works, how often it should happen, and where it starts to fall apart.
Performance Reviews: The Typical Process
Here’s the process for performance reviews that many of us know, detailed by MIT:
- Review the job description. The manager and employee look it over together and update it if responsibilities have shifted.
- Submit a self-assessment. The employee provides a written reflection on achievements, challenges, and goals.
- Gather feedback. The manager collects multi-rater input from colleagues, customers, and direct reports.
- Document the review. The manager writes the formal Annual Performance Review based on performance, goals, and feedback.
- Hold review conversations. Annual and mid-year meetings happen to align expectations, adjust goals, and talk through progress.
- Connect performance to compensation and responsibilities.
- Continue ongoing check-ins. Throughout the year, the manager and employee discuss progress on performance and development goals — not just during review season (more on this in a sec!)
This process seems pretty clean-cut, right? In theory, it should be, but in between shifting responsiblities, full inboxes, and you know, real life, it’s hard to keep up with the structure in a way that feels human.
Let’s take a look at where things tend to go wrong and how the process could work better for creative teams.
Performance Reviews: What’s Not Working
While it’s tempting to assume “once a year is fine,” the AI-fueled chaos currently reshaping job roles and deliverables says otherwise. (In fact, we spoke an EVP who said the real AI shift was in the last 6 months alone!) Annual reviews are starting to look like rotary phones: nostalgic, clunky, and not especially useful.
A new approach? Ditch the numbers-only assessment and move toward continuous, narrative-based quarterly feedback sessions because creative work doesn’t always fit neatly into a spreadsheet. Metrics matter, but they're not the whole story.
Teggan Bartos, Founder of Jolt Your Career, puts it plainly: “Advocacy is not a once-a-year activity.” The people who move up aren’t the ones who wait. They have consistent, strategic check-ins and show up with data. Clarity and honesty don’t kill safety; uncertainty does.
She also notes that strong creative leaders set expectations, give real-time feedback, and communicate constantly. Withholding feedback isn’t kindness. It’s sabotage. If someone wants growth or a promotion at a random point in the year, they deserve to know exactly what it takes.
So yes, performance reviews matter, but the traditional version is a mess. Here’s why:
- Annual reviews miss the pace of modern work. Year-old feedback is basically useless and often too late to matter.
- Many companies are moving to ongoing check in models, per HBR. Adobe, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs have ditched number-based reviews for narrative or check-in models.
- From SHRM: 95% of managers hate their review systems, less than 20% of employees feel inspired by them, and disengaged workers cost companies $1.6 trillion a year. Millennials and Gen Z want ongoing feedback—not random annual verdicts.
So what would it take to make performance-review season actually useful and maybe even tolerable for creative managers and employees?
Best Practices for Creative Leaders Conducting Performance Reviews
Before you even open your notes, Zavo recommends starting by inviting your employee into the conversation. Ask what they’re proud of, where they feel stretched, and what they want next. If you launch straight into a monologue, you’ve turned a review at them instead of a review with them.
“When people articulate their own growth edges, the review stops feeling like a reprimand and starts feeling collaborative,” shares Zavo.
From there, ground feedback in shared goals.
Think about saying something along the lines of, “Here’s what’s strong, here’s what’s missing for the next step, and here’s how I’ll support you.”
That combination of transparency, partnership, and actual resourcing keeps the conversation safe while still pushing momentum forward.
1. Before You Review: Do the Prep (Yes, You Actually Have To)
Clarity is kindness, especially in creative work. Don’t let an underperforming team member believe they’re on track for a promotion next quarter when… no. Misleading people is not kindness; it’s career whiplash.
Zavo sums it up well: feedback shouldn’t appear once a year like a cursed calendar event. The healthiest creative teams deal in ongoing, real-time feedback: what’s working, what’s not, and what the “next level” actually looks like.
If an employee is shooting for that next level, she urges that managers co-create a development plan and revisit it regularly.
“Promotions get contentious when expectations are implied instead of explicit,” she states. “When employees understand exactly where they stand and what the path looks like, there’s no false hope, just transparency, direction, and mutual accountability.”
2. Use Rubrics (Really — They Work)
Williams suggests a tool every teacher already knows: rubrics. And before anyone rolls their eyes, hear her out.
“Just as teachers use rubrics for K-12 students, or interview panels use them for candidates, creatives can use rubrics to ensure expectations are clear and consistent,” she explains. “Rubrics translate subjective creative work into objective, observable behaviors.”
Rubrics prevent surprises. They make feedback fairer. And if you hand them out at onboarding, employees know exactly how they’re being evaluated, sans plot twist.
3. Focus on Growth, Not Judgment
Williams makes another golden point here, communicating that reviews should feel like coaching, not sentencing.
Tie your critique to shared goals and business outcomes. Show specific examples, not vague “be more strategic” nonsense. Invite dialogue so it feels like a conversation, not a lecture.
“Team members need to feel safe and supported while being given leeway to experiment, grow, learn, and improve,” she says.
4. Be Specific (Portfolio or It Didn’t Happen)
Don’t focus on tasks; focus on outcomes:
- What changed because of the work?
- What did it drive, move, or improve?
- What business goal did it support?
- Where are the metrics that prove it?
Pull examples from their portfolio. Show where their work hit the mark, and also where it drifted. Specifics are grounding; vagueness is where misunderstandings breed and morale goes to die.
Key Tips for Employees: How to Measure Your Performance and Advocate for Your Work
Performance reviews aren’t the moment to wing it and hope your manager “just knows” what you did all year. As several experts agree, your work does not speak for itself. You do.
Here’s how to enter a review prepared, confident, and impossible to overlook.
1. Track Your Work Like a Pro (Not From Memory)
You don’t need fancy software — a notes app, a Google Sheet, or an Excel file with a pulse will do. What matters here is consistency.
Williams urges that you track things like:
- Project name
- Dates
- Final outcome
- Team size (or note if it was a solo lift)
- Obstacles you overcame
- Metrics tied to business impact (money saved, revenue influenced, time reduced)
Here’s a pro move most creatives skip: connect with people across the business to understand how your work actually landed. Talk to sales, product, customer success, ops (whoever touched the thing you made). Your impact story shouldn’t stop at “I finished the project.” It should show how that project influenced real outcomes: revenue, efficiency, customer retention, deal velocity, brand perception, or cross-functional alignment.
That’s how you build a narrative that goes beyond tasks and ties your work directly to the business engine.
And while you’re gathering all this evidence, use it as a cue to update your portfolio, even if you're not job hunting. Performance reviews force you to collect your strongest work, metrics, and wins, so it’s the perfect moment to translate those into fresh portfolio entries or case studies. Future-you (and any future negotiations) will thank you.
Zavo also mentions not to forget the “work behind the work.” You know, all the research, iterations, and decisions that drove the outcome.
“Pair that with evidence gathered throughout the year, like stakeholder feedback, cross-team wins, measurable improvements, and enter the review with a clear ask,” she states. “Advocacy lands best when it’s both well-documented and clearly explained.”
If the company can't give you the numbers? Pull what you can; even directional data is better than hand-waving.
2. Translate Your Work Into KPIs
Strong examples:
- Directed a three-person video and content team, producing campaigns that increased qualified leads by 35% and contributed to landing eight new partnerships.
- Managed a cross-functional UX and product squad, improving user onboarding flow and driving a 28% increase in first-week activation.
- Oversaw a two-designer creative pod that delivered a rebrand, resulting in a 50% jump in brand recognition and a 30% lift in customer trust scores.
- Led a social and copy team in launching a multi-platform campaign that grew follower count by 45% and lifted click-through rates by 62%.
- Coordinated a four-person web and design team to revamp the company site, increasing session duration by 40% and reducing bounce rate by 22%.
- Managed an integrated creative group to produce a sales enablement overhaul that shortened deal cycles by 15% and supported $2M in influenced revenue.
You might be thinking, “Wow, these are impressive; I’m not sure I have any metrics like that!” Yes, you do. Everyone has metrics. It’s all about finding them and understanding what an achievement in your position looks like.
Client acquisition, conversions, engagement, shareability, operational efficiency, brand affinity, customer comprehension, pipeline influence, error reduction, and time savings are all strong examples of achievements within a creative role.
Bottom line: If your work improved it, moved it, or clarified it, it matters.
3. Start Thinking Like a Business Partner (Not “Just” a Creative)
When you become so enwoven in the business and driving impact across your team, it’s easy to lose sight of the value you're creating. This is a missed opportunity. But to do that, you need to speak the language of the business.
Creatives are often incorrectly viewed as a “cost center.” Your job is to gently (or not-so-gently) dismantle that myth.
Bartos suggests that you first start with conversion metrics, such as:
- Engagement
- Click-throughs
- Demo requests
- User actions
- Lead quality
- Sales enablement usage
These show how your work drives pipeline and customer behavior.
4. Next, highlight operational improvements.
Creatives often build:
- Templates
- Workflows
- Automation
- Martech improvements
These save time, reduce costs, and create consistency. Translation: actual ROI.
5. Show your cross-functional impact.
Demonstrate how your work strengthens every team it touches, from smoother product launches to faster sales conversions to better customer adoption and retention. This is the “hidden value” most creatives never showcase.
The key takeaway here is that you must shift your framing from “Here’s what I made” to “Here’s what my work enabled.”
“That is how creatives demonstrate true return on investment, even when the impact is not tied directly to revenue,” explains Bartos.
6. Bring It All Together: Advocate Like Someone Who Knows Their Worth
By the time you walk into your review, you shouldn’t be scrambling for receipts or trying to remember what you accomplished back in March. You should already have a running story of your year and the impact you made, the problems you solved, and the ripple effects your work had across the business.
Your manager can’t champion what they don’t see, and they definitely can’t champion what you don’t articulate.
This is where your preparation actually pays off (literally). When you can clearly explain what you did, how you did it, and what changed because you did it, your review stops feeling like judgment day and becomes an actual strategy session for your next big role/raise/slice of pie within the company.
Harvard Division of Continuing Education backs this up, noting, “The best time to initiate a salary negotiation is after a positive performance review, so you can leverage the recent acknowledgement of your contributions and achievements.”
Translation: Don’t ask on a random Tuesday two months later. Ask when your wins are fresh in everyone’s mind, as you’ve just spent 30 minutes walking your manager through a highlight reel of your impact.
Come in with a clear ask. More responsibility. A promotion. A leadership opportunity or ownership of a new area. Spell it out. Ambiguity is the enemy of progress.
When you combine tracked results, clear storytelling, business-aligned impact, and a grounded, confident ask, you stop hoping the review will go well. You shape how it goes.
The Real Review Is the Dialogue, Not the Document
At the end of the day, performance reviews rise or fall on one thing: communication. Not the corporate kind with jargon and slide decks. The real kind, where both sides show up prepared, honest, and willing to understand each other’s perspectives.
Anaïs Nin said it best: “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
And that’s the truth at the heart of every review. A manager brings their lens, an employee brings theirs. The goal isn’t to decide whose version is “right.” It’s to translate both perspectives into alignment, clarity, and a shared path forward.
What most teams forget: performance reviews were never meant to be another piece of dreaded corporate paperwork. Stacey Larsen stresses this point in her LinkedIn newsletter, stating that performance reviews are in place to help leaders and employees talk openly about expectations, development, and what “good” actually looks like.
“When reviews are used for that purpose — not as annual report cards or corporate rituals — they become lighter, more meaningful, and far more effective,” she says. “... The goal isn’t to get through the reviews. It’s to grow your people and make next year’s reviews significantly easier because you did the work all year long.”
At their best, performance reviews aren’t vanity rituals or bureaucratic hurdles. They’re checkpoints that keep careers aligned with goals, prevent misunderstandings from quietly snowballing, and strengthen the partnership between creatives and their leaders. They help people grow, teams evolve, and businesses operate with more clarity and less chaos.
If both sides commit to real communication, transparent expectations, and ongoing advocacy, performance reviews can actually become what they were supposed to be all along: a meaningful conversation about where you’ve been, where you’re going, and how to get there, together.
And if you want those conversations to center on real business impact, not just pretty deliverables, you need creatives who already think that way. That’s the kind of talent Artisan Talent spends time finding and vetting, so your next review cycle starts with a team you can trust and ends with results you can measure.
