Week 3 Stand-up: Who speaks for you

Calibration is advocacy, and the people who argue for you are fixed by the org chart and by whom you nominate. This week you work out who speaks for you and who never will.

11 March 2027

This week's trickChoose your reviewers, then have coffee with your skip-level.

Who paysThe new hire with nobody to ask.

Week 1 told you the rating is decided in a room. This week is about who sits in it. The answer is on the org chart, and the org chart is a seating plan for the argument about you.

Bring#

An org chart for a team you have been on: a real one, or the closest you can draw from memory. Three levels is enough. Also the names of three people you have worked beside on it.

The trick#

Curate your peer feedback panel. Nominate reviewers with first-hand visibility of your highest-impact deliverables and a track record of constructive framing. In parallel, build a relationship with your skip-level that is independent of your reporting line. A recurring, informal, low-stakes touchpoint, a coffee, gives your skip-level a first-hand model of your contribution, so that when your name comes up they are validating a narrative rather than hearing one.

What happens#

You mark on your org chart who would be in the calibration room, who chairs it, and who among them would recognise your name. For most people the honest answer is one name, and it is their manager. Then you draft the first message to the second name. The rule is that it cannot mention your work.

Then the three peers. You mark which of them would write a paragraph for you without being asked. For most people that is one, and it is the person they last helped, not the person they last impressed. The person with no name to mark is the new hire, and the room will not notice their absence.

How you know it worked#

You can say, for a given team, who argues for you, who arbitrates, and who is absent; and you have noticed that none of those three positions is yours.