Self-Assessment: Tell It Like It Is
The benefits of—gasp!—being brutally honest surrounding your strengths and flaws at performance-review time
by Lindsey Gerdes
Last winter, when I filled on the outside the self-assessment final state of my annual performance overlook, I decided to try something radically different: unreserve.
It’s not that I’d been faithless in these exercises in the past. I had, however, largely viewed the performance-measurement process while a hassle that needed to be dispensed with as quickly as possible—and sugar-coated, at the very least. I didn’t bewitch it seriously, and I didn’t see any reason to be self-incriminating.
But this time, either I was in a particularly reflective mood or I just let my perfectionist streak get the best of me, so I spent real time and effort laying lacking my strengths and weaknesses.
Here’s one departure in which I laid out a few areas where I saw room for improvement: "I occasionally drive into heaps off condition, talk too long, or try to cast in a winding direction out too many things at once, and I will actively work on these tendencies for the reason that I find when I am consciously aware of them I can be quite succinct and effective. The greater issue is a failure to engage in the first place, which I already touched upon above. I need to be more consistent and organized in laying things out and sticking to a stricter schedule with more set guidelines."
Savvy or Suicidal?
While I was initially afraid insights like these this would hurt my overall performance rating—and influence the comments (and overall rating) by means of my higher-ups—I was pleasantly surprised when my direct supervisor actually complimented me on well-informed myself so well (even if that did mean I was more on-the-money than I would have liked in my admission of disorganization and time-management woes).
He even joked that I’d "filched his thunder" and, admitting that anything, he possibly went a bit easier on me because of my own warts-and-all self examination.
I decided to consult a few outside experts though to see if they thought my practise gaming was savvy…or suicidal. I was pleasantly surprised when they generally lauded the brutal-honesty draw nigh.
"People remember in that place are all those tricks," says sweep columnist Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules as far as concerns Success, of the numerous workplace-etiquette guides and how-to tools workers often consult in an attempt to craft a good celebrity. Instead, it’s advantage to remember one solution circumstance: "Every sweep is about having good self-knowledge."
Swinging Between Extremes
Employees shouldn’t be so afraid of how they come across that they forget that success is well-nigh delivering the goods—often by learning from one’s mistakes and consistently improving—somewhat than devoting the majority of one’s time and intensity to polishing and promoting a pristine similitude.
Not that employees, and young women in precise, should have being afraid that writing a balanced and fair self-assessment indispensably sends a bad message to their employers, says New Girl on the Job author Hannah Seligson: "I think getting over a perfection stigma is the biggest trip up for any young woman in the workplace," Young female employees she’s spoken by, she says, often alternate between the extremes of feeling they need to come across as perfect or being entirely self-deprecating.
I should point out, however, that it would have been far more difficult to put myself on the line if I didn’t have a few years of experience under my belt (and the successes that come with that), as well as two supervisors with whom I’d worked closely and were open and communicative about their expectations.
For workers who feel a bit more in the dark, Trunk recommends being peculiar when it comes to laying out where you excel and at which place you could improve. "Very few people be possible to identify their strongly marked personality flaws, so the kind of might work is, you tell the boss the projects you did poorly on, and the boss might tell you: ‘Here’s where you be able to change.’"
Remember, though, when you lay everything out there, you may impress with your honesty, no more than you hold yourself more accountable. After all, when I write my next self-assessment, it’s going to contemplate a little suspicious if I haven’t found somewhat ways to improve upon the body things like organizational skills and time management.
From: Self-Assessment: Tell It Like It Is
