Joao Alves
Engineering Manager at IndeedFlex
Performance Season - To LLM or Not To LLM?
This article was originally posted on my LinkedIn account, you can read it there as well if you want.
100% to LLM. BUT…
The short answer is to definitely leverage an LLM to support you during this process. But it’s important to use it for the right reasons and the right outcomes. Don’t mistake it for a shortcut. Use it as a tool to refine your ideas, analyse data, and structure your thinking.
⚠️ Please DO NOT USE IT to write your self-assessment, feedback to any peer, or a performance review for your direct reports if you’re a manager. In a world where most of us work remotely or in hybrid setups, where tools like Slack and Teams are used hundreds of times daily, we can easily tell if a message was written by a specific person or not.
The last thing you want is for your peers, manager, or direct reports to receive something from you that feels unauthentic. The focus of performance season is individual and personal growth, and authenticity is key to making it meaningful.
There are ways you can use an LLM to help you get better outcomes from these exercises though. Some examples of things I used successfully from different perspectives.
As an Individual
🧩 Organising Your Self-Assessment
An LLM can help you structure your self-assessment by clarifying your key achievements and demonstrating their impact more clearly
Try this ⬇️
✅ Pass your list of highlights to the LLM
✅ Ask it to clean them up and break them into different impact categories
✅ Ask it to review each highlight and suggest ways to better showcase impact and your contribution to it
This will enhance your self-assessment by making it more clear and conveying your contributions rather than just listing projects your worked on. Your manager won’t have full context on everything you worked on. Trust me I know 😅. If you make it easier or them to see your impact it’s a win-win situation.
🎯 Connecting Your Work to Career Framework Expectations
Now that your highlights are structured, take it a step further by aligning them with the behaviours and expectations listed in your company’s career framework.
Try this ⬇️
✅ Pass the list of behaviours and expectations for your level (or the next level if you’re aiming for a promotion) to the LLM
✅ Ask it to match your highlights to specific behaviours you demonstrated
Now your self-assessment is not only clearly conveying your contributions but also aligning them with the expectations for your level. This can help massively, especially if you’re putting yourself up for an above expectations performance rating or going for a promotion. Being proactive and answering the questions ahead it’s key in these scenarios.
📈 Identifying Career Growth Areas
That’s the overall part of your self-assessment done. But if the template you have to follow is any close to all I’ve seen so far, there will also be a section about next steps, career growth or something around those lines. Use the LLM to go a step further on the above and spot gaps in your demonstrated behaviours. It’s a great way to identify growth opportunities.
Try this ⬇️
✅ Ask the LLM to summarise which behaviours you exhibited and which you didn’t.
✅ Use this insight to list the things you want to work on the next cycle focusing on key areas for improvement.
💡 Pro Tip: don’t wait for performance season to do this. If you’re aiming for a promotion, regularly tracking your demonstrated behaviours will help you build a strong case over time.
💡 Pro Tip 2: unless you just got promoted and want to get better on that specific role, try to repeat the exercise against the next level in the career framework as well. This will give you an idea of how far you could be from a promotion. And it makes for a great regular topic of conversation with your manager.
🗣️ Providing Feedback to a Colleague
Feedback is super important for good teamwork and individual and group growth. Some believe feedback can create conflicts between individuals and teams. If well managed and coming from a place of good intention, it actually creates a very nice culture of trust within teams.
So once again, DO NOT use an LLM to write any feedback for your colleagues. Use it to help you validate that feedback and enhance it with the relevant context.
Try this ⬇️
✅ Ask the LLM to clarify your thoughts on constructive feedback situations.
✅ Ask the LLM to pass that feedback through a structured model like SBI (Situation, Behaviour, Impact) and to challenge it where lacking.
This should help you write more meaningful feedback with the right structure and context. It will focus on the growth of the individual you’re sharing your feedback with rather than how you feel about whatever happened that required the constructive feedback in the first place.
⚠️ But ultimately, YOU need to write the feedback. No copy-pasting. It should be personal and authentic.
💡 Pro tip: When thinking about sharing feedback with others I always go through the brilliant The Engaged Feedback Checklist from Brené Brown. Check it out, it’s a powerful tool to centre your mindset for that activity.
As a Manager
✍️ Writing a Performance Review for Your Direct Report
⚠️ You know what’s coming: DO NOT use an LLM to write the performance review. Your direct report needs to trust that you care about their career and progression. An unauthentic review written by an LLM can destroy that trust.
However, you can use an LLM to help structure the review and identify key areas for development. One way is to have it summarising all feedback received by a report.
Try this ⬇️
✅ Ask the LLM to analyse feedback received by the report and break it down and categorise it.
✅ Ask the LLM to map it to the career framework expectations and identify particular gaps highlighted by the feedback.
✅ Use this to refine the performance review as well as career growth discussions and how to structure next steps.
This will help you enhance the performance review, making it clear, personal and with meaningful and actionable steps. It will set the stage for better 1-1s moving forward with clear goals to chase and work together on.
But remember. Your direct report deserves a thoughtful, personalised review, written by you. Use an LLM as a tool to guide you, to improve the quality, but do not use it to replace your judgment.
🔚 Conclusion
LLMs can be powerful tools when used correctly. But let’s be smart about how we use them during performance season and outside. The goal in these processes is individual and personal growth, not automation. The last thing you want is to remove authenticity from an exercise designed to reflect who people are and how they contribute.
It can be a stressful time with a lot of work involved. Answering feedback requests, writing performance reviews if you’re a manager, self-assessments, you name it. All while regular work continues. Haven’t seen a place where dedicated time is reserved for this which is a bit of a shame. But that would make for another post 🙂.
So try and stay ahead of the game. Keep your list of highlights up to date with the strategies above. And ultimately start early so you can give these exercises the time and care they, and your colleagues deserve.