A disappointing performance review can be devastating, especially one that caught you off guard. You may experience a range of emotions like anger, embarrassment, denial, failure, confusion, or shock.

You might even be worried that your job is in jeopardy. For sure, it will affect your confidence.

What should you do to make the best of the situation and rebuild your reputation?

1. Maintain your professionalism.

While it’s tempting to get angry or defensive, especially if you feel the review is unfair or inaccurate, you need to control your emotions. Reacting poorly toward your boss will not help the situation.

Your best approach at the moment is to listen, ask questions, and gain as much detail as you can about why your boss gave you this review.

2. Ask for a follow-up meeting.

Once you’ve calmed down—at least a day or two later—you should ask for another meeting with your boss to better understand the review.

It would help if you reassured your boss that you are not there to contest the review but to learn how to improve your performance. Come prepared with specific questions and ask for examples of what you should be doing differently.

3. Develop a performance improvement plan.

Perhaps you must change certain behaviours, learn new skills, take further training, or try new approaches. Whatever the steps, work jointly with your boss to develop this action plan. You should also include measurable outcomes as part of this plan.

4. Obtain feedback from others.

How we see ourselves often differs from how others see us. This is why you should seek advice from trusted colleagues who have observed you in the workplace. Share the performance review comments with them and ask for their unbiased feedback.

Close friends or family will help comfort you, for sure, but they are not the best at giving objective advice.

5. Ask for an interim review.

Most performance reviews (unfortunately) are only done annually. So if you’ve received a poor review, you cannot wait until next year to learn how you are doing. Instead, ask for an interim review, say, in a month or three months, to check in with your boss. They will appreciate your desire to get feedback on how things are going.

One last thing.

Many successful people have failed at one time or another in their careers and used those failures to go on to bigger and better things. The true test of your character is how you use your poor performance review to get better.