How to keep your job Cover.indd - Richard Maun

The AVE Concept
This might be achieved by volunteering to take part in special
tasks, or taking on occasional extra responsibilities, or by
having a senior director as a personal mentor. High PR scores
are about being effective in getting known as an asset, not
about insincere friendliness or hard selling – these tend to
irritate people. High PR scores also tend to go hand in hand
with high productivity and high people skills, because it’s
pointless going out of your way to share major fl aws with the
senior management team – success brings success.
Now that you’ve read the descriptors, please go back and
circle one of the numbers in the AVE score table for each
category. Use your judgement and be honest with yourself.
Perhaps discuss them with your partner as a safe way to
check your thinking, or re-read your last annual appraisal.
Choose a number for each category and choose now.
NATURAL VARIATION
Choosing a precise number can feel a bit self-limiting. If this
applies to you, then we can recognise that although a best guess
is still valid, we can think of a range of +/– 1 place on the scale for
80% of the time, to get an idea of where our true score is likely
to be contained on most days. We can also think of a range of
+/– 2 places for 20% of the time when we’re either really fl agging,
or over-performing. (Note we’re talking places here not points,
because the scales are not all simple 1-2-3 progressions). So,
for example, if you’ve scored yourself a 14 for productivity, that
probably means some days you’ll be a 12 and at the top end of the
Medium category and on other days you might be a 16 and really
producing excellent work. It’s unlikely that you will dip into poor
39