She Earned the Highest Performance Rating 4 Times in a Row. Here’s How You Can Too
Getting the highest performance rating once is tough. Getting it four times in a row is rare. Kourtney Hayes, a senior security leader at a top cloud company, did just that. In this article, we break down her exact strategies so you can boost your own performance reviews and career growth.
Why Women in STEM Face Unique Challenges
According to the World Bank, women make up only about 35% of U.S. STEM workers. Dr. Shara Cohen from the Women in STEM Network explains that the problem isn’t getting women into the field—it’s keeping them there. Women leave STEM jobs at much higher rates than men. This hurts both their careers and the companies they work for. When experienced women leave, they take valuable knowledge with them.
Know Your Target: What “Exceeds Expectations” Really Means
Kourtney Hayes says the biggest mistake people make is working hard on the wrong things. She got intentional about understanding what top performance looked like at her level. She didn’t just aim to meet expectations. She aimed to exceed them.
- Research what leadership values most.
- Ask direct questions about what success looks like.
- Map every project to those priorities.
“When you know the target, you can aim at it on purpose,” Hayes says.
Stop Waiting for Directions: Own Your Impact
At senior levels, no one tells you exactly what to do. Hayes learned to make high-judgment calls and own the results. Leaders are rated on impact, not effort. So she stopped waiting for instructions and started acting like she already had the job she wanted.
Her advice: Make decisions. Take responsibility. Show you can handle ambiguity.
Learn to Tell Your Story
Doing great work and getting rated well are two different things. Hayes learned to connect her work to business value. For example, instead of saying “I led a global security program,” she says: “I drove cross-organizational alignment that reduced risk at scale.” Same work. Different impact.
She also documents everything. She saves positive feedback right away. Every quarter, she writes down what she owned, the outcome, and who saw it. “I’m not leaving my rating up to anyone’s memory,” she says.
Visibility Is Key: Make Your Value Known
Hayes admits she used to think hard work would speak for itself. It doesn’t. She now practices framing her work around outcomes, not activities. The women who get promoted aren’t always the hardest workers. They’re the ones who make sure their work is visible and understood.
Thrive by Being Unmissable
As a woman in a competitive tech industry, Hayes stopped waiting to feel ready. She got strategic about visibility, intentional about relationships, and ruthless about knowing her value. Instead of shrinking because of a lack of representation, she used it as motivation to stand out.
Her final advice: “Understand the game well enough to play it brilliantly. Then rewrite the rules for the women coming behind you.”
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