The performance review arrives once or twice a year. By the time you sit down for it, the outcome is already determined. Your manager knows what rating you are getting. You do not.
Your job in the room is to receive whatever has been decided — by your manager, by the people above them, in conversations you were not part of — and to respond as though you are grateful for the feedback. The performance is not the review period. The performance is the conversation.
The rating reflects your manager's read of how the people above them perceive you, and how much political capital they chose to spend on your behalf this cycle. Complaining changes nothing. The decision was made before you walked in. The conversation exists to document it.
Making the next review go better does not require a stronger performance in the preceding six months. It requires making it easier for your manager to defend you next time. Those are different projects. The form implies they are the same project.
Doing excellent work in silence is a career strategy for people who believe organisations are meritocracies.
None of them are.
"We want to recognise your contributions and support your development."
"We need a documented record that justifies whatever we have already decided."
The performance review does not measure how well you performed. It measures how easy you made it for someone else to account for you.
The people who find this demoralising are the ones who thought it was about the work.
Rule 2: Whatever Interests Your Boss Absolutely Fascinates You.