Willie: Trying To Understand “Self-Evaluations”
In light of recent events, let me first disclaim that this post has nothing to do with anything at my current employer. This is about a general concept based on past experiences. Besides, the new Willie wouldn’t put his company on blast.
I’ve never fully understood the concept of “self evaluations”. (Honestly, never partially understood them either.) You know what these are? It’s when you have a review coming up soon and upper management asks you to give yourself a review before they give it to you. The alleged purpose is to allow you to compare your perception of your performance to management’s. The theory is – if you think that you’re a 4 out of 5 employee and management thinks you’re a 3 out of 5, then there’s a disconnect between what you feel is required to perform, and the company’s expectations. You probably see where i’m going with this, but i’ll get to that in a minute.
I’ve done these evaluations every year for every job that i’ve had, and i’m befuddled by their uselessness. I call them useless for a number of reasons; the main one being that nearly every employee of every company has a fairly good idea of how their performance measures up. Even the screw ups know that they’re screwing up. When someone is serious about their job, I tend to believe that they have a fairly accurate idea of how well they fit within the company.
But here’s the rub:
The self evaluation is mostly a psychological tool to make you believe that you’re not doing well enough, even if you’re doing well. I’ve had jobs where i’ve blown numbers out of the park and have had client satisfaction scores that were through the roof, but fail to get an appropriate score because management feels that I should “exhibit more leadership”, for example. The biggest secret of the self evaluation is that when management runs their version, there’s never a perfect score. Ever. Even if you show empirical proof that you’ve exceeded expectations in every category, they’re going to score you lower because want you to produce even more. Tell me if i’m lying.
With that being said, we’re having annual reviews at the end of the month, and i’m expecting my self review sometime next week. The new Willie accepts this as an opportunity to fairly assess his profitability to the company, and with the guidance of management, uncover some opportunities for improvement and development. I welcome any feedback that results in my becoming a more perfect employee. I’ll definitely fill you guys in once it’s done.
-Willie-