Thoughts on my mid-year feedback (PE associate)

I joined a MM PE shop (Europe) about a year ago (I was a senior associate in M&A before joining). I like working here and find the work interesting. Culture here is great and hours are very good (typically finish at 6-7pm when its not peak deal closing, very rare weekend work other than half an hour here or there or some emails). I get on well overall with the whole team including seniors. I had my mid-year review this week and got a lot of positives but also a lot of discussion on areas to improve. What are your thoughts on the below (said from the perspective of the partner who does reviews of the team)?

What to keep doing:

• You have a fantastic attitude / keen to learn
• Very good work ethic
• Team player / want to help
• Pro-activity is great
• You are good at analysing companies and spotting good businesses to invest in, we sense it is part of the job you really enjoy and are good at. You understand investing fundamentally and have a good eye for value.
• On a personal level we appreciate working with you – we want to develop you and bring you along, if you focus on the below will be great for your development

He was then like "now lets discuss some improvement areas but dont worry – you’ll have heard months in advance if there was a problem with your performance levels"

Where to focus:

• Pick of the phone more vs. relying on email and develop relationships with people
• You still sometimes have M&A banker mindset – occasionally rushing to finish stuff
  • You need to understand everything, understand the context, what makes sense commercially
  • Quality > speed
  • Don’t feel bad to push back on timelines to get to quality output – vocalise if necessary
• He acknowledged that the seniors don't always include me on all strategic discussions, meetings and debriefs. But if I need the context I should ask for it and should try to think strategically
• Think and understand how businesses work / the business behind the spreadsheet - No alarm bells on this, it’s a learning journey and sense you already have learned a lot in your first year
• Drafting documents with sharper messaging – your work is often decent but still needs quite a bit of refining from MDs/Partners
  • Structuring – hit the key messaging – and then the specific detailed written sentences
• Models – overall good but structuring can be improved

• Sometimes on calls/discussions you develop a view – then you switch off and stop listening and pick up the wrong end of the discussion (for context I have moderate ADHD)

  • At end of discussion don’t feel bad to recap with the team and agree key points

  What are your thoughts. The partner is super lovely as a guy and incredibly smart, but he's very critical (I like that he's honest and direct but it can be a tiny bit demotivating at times, maybe I need a slightly thicker skin) and he sometimes expects me to intuitively know what he wants even if his instructions are vague. Its especially hard as I'm often not involved in many of the strategic / commercial discussions. If you send him something that wasnt quite what he wanted he visibly shows frustration. I think most of the constructive criticism is fair though. I want to do well as I really enjoy working here and really rate highly the people I work with and am super grateful to work here.