It’s that time of year. The days are getting shorter, the weather colder, and it’s performance review season. The most wonderful time of the year. That must be what the song was about.
Last year I sort of dodged my end-of-year review, since it fell close to the assessment I’d already had after my first six months with the company. This year I don’t get that reprieve. It’s performance review time, baby.
Alright, maybe I’m making this a bigger deal than it is. In fairness, isn’t it a good thing to understand what you’re doing well, what you need to work on, and to have a real check-in about where you are and where you’re heading?
So why the sass?
Because I’m not great at writing self-assessments. Or feedback, for that matter. Meaningful feedback, I mean. I struggle with both for opposite reasons that are really two sides of the same coin. I’m far too hard on myself and see only the things I could do better, while with my colleagues I tend to see only the good. That does not make for a champion of the performance review, I can tell you.
But you know me a little by now. When something is challenging, the only thing I see is an opportunity.
It would be too easy to write this off as a corporate exercise I don’t see the point of. That would just be an excuse, and excuses are dead weight when it comes to growth.
So, first step: find the root cause. What’s my issue with this stuff? Why do I struggle so much? A lot of it comes down to the deeply rooted impostor syndrome I’m always trying to keep in check. I know it’s part of me, and I know I’m not alone in it. How does it affect this? I tend to see everyone around me as so much better than me that I can’t give positive feedback that isn’t glowing and starry-eyed, while simultaneously undervaluing my own achievements and where I actually stand.
You can see how that might be a problem for a task like this.
I genuinely want to get better at it. Not so I can tear my teammates down and become a self-centred prick, but so I can find a healthier balance and actually identify what’s missing from my toolkit and work on it. And it cuts both ways. I’d want to know if someone thinks I could improve at something. Overly positive feedback handed out for the sake of it wouldn’t make me happy either.
It’ll take effort, no question. I’ll need to really think about the trajectory, the journey, the places where we can do more and do better. But this is a genuinely good opportunity to take stock of how I’m doing and whether I’m on the right path, and I don’t want to waste it. I owe that to myself and to the team.
Writing the first draft will be miserable, that’s guaranteed. But I know that if I actually squeeze my brain, I can do a good job of this and make the most of it. It’ll be outside my comfort zone, maybe. But that’s what growing is.