[Anonymous]

To preface this, all sides have two stories, so I don’t want to say it’s all one-sided, but I’ve been largely taken off guard recently in how to best manage this scenario. So I’m looking for advice…

I have an acting senior above me; the person is very competent and very pleasant to work with. Beginning with that, I sometimes find that the person doesn’t always take the most detailed notes on tasks passed downward. Their mind on how to approach certain tasks changes semi-frequently, and in combination with this, the time between preparation of work delivered and their subsequent review of said work is often a little long. This combination has brought about an odd issue, where in layman’s terms, I think my acting senior forgets to tell me when plans shift – then I believe gets agitated a when deliverable isn’t as desired. I take good notes, so I can see when these deliverables shifts underneath me.

To further complicate it, I say “I believe gets agitated,” since when I ask for feedback my acting senior is busy, asking to chat later, doesn’t reply, etc. I’ve been told by my acting senior in my latest evaluation that I’m very good about proactively asking for feedback.

So fast forward to now, my evaluation has feedback in it (rather intense feedback) I’ve not received prior, ever (as I write down all my live feedback).

We had a performance evaluation meeting – I need to do a better job responding to feedback (huh?), meeting deadlines (we aren’t behind?), focusing on the work at hand (but in there too I need to additionally better handle work life balance), etc.

To get even more odd, in our feedback meeting for this evaluation – what we did discuss regarding development was approximately half of what found its way into my evaluation, which further adds to my reservation on how I can get the an opportunity to react. To ice it all off, my levels/rankings came in differently in my evaluation than what we discussed our meeting (shifting underneath me, lower).

Advice?