Performance = Values

I’ve found this guidance from a past manager to be durable to this day, and I often relay it to people who need to contextualize their own performance reviews:

Your performance review with increasing seniority is less a reflection of skill level, but more a reflection of whether your values align with the organization you are within. Take a bad performance review not as a measure of your aptitude, but as a decision point: whether to shift your values to align with the same organization or move to an organization that aligns better with your own.