It’s Annual Appraisal Time Again and Why Some Will be Disappointed….
Stuart Hamilton
I develop operational and strategic frameworks to manage large Cloud Infrastructure Platforms.
Hopefully throughout the year your boss has been providing encouragement and support, and that has made you feel valued, and your contribution recognized. That’s the measure of a good boss. However, during annual appraisal, there should be an honest assessment of your abilities, and more than likely, it will not match with our self-assessment.
I once talked with an Exec who had been part of 5 Execs delivering a successful program. After the program was winding up, each had been given their next assignment. The Exec judged his next assignment as the worst of the bunch. He was perplexed as he measured his contribution as the most critical of the program’s success. On reflection, he thought it probable that each of the other 4 execs involved would probably have a similar view that it was their contribution was most critical. His view of self was not aligned with others, and we are all about to have a similar discovery at appraisal time. Appraisal is the time when someone else gets to decide whether you are as useful as you think.
Robert Burns, a Scottish poet wrote in the 18th century:
“Would some gift god give us, to see ourselves as others see us,
It would from many a blunder free us, and foolish notion,
What airs in gait and grace would leave us, and even devotion.”
A gift indeed – “To see ourselves as others see us”. Appraisal might be as close as we come to this gift. At its best, it offers valuable insight in how we might do better. Even if you think the appraisal is not entirely fair, it would be unusual for there to be no lessons to take from it.
We should all have the New Year’s Resolution to be a better person. Enlist as many resources that you can muster to assist in this mission. Even if you are a seasoned professional, solicit help with mentoring, or coaching. When my golf game needed improvement, my wife suggested a coach. I told her I just need to work harder at it. She tried to reason with me – “Even Tiger Woods has a coach, and he is the best in the world.” I insisted I should just visit the driving range and putting green more. Then she bought me some golf lessons for my birthday. At the first session the coach videoed me as I hit some balls. I striped a few and expected him to even wonder why I was there. Instead he said, “We have a lot of work to do”. Once I saw the video I was forced to agree. The same seems true as the working professional – they feel they just need to redouble their efforts to aid transformation. And that will help, but a coach will help direct those efforts.
So use 2020 as the year to take the feedback as part of a program to do better. While it might be frustrating that there are still so many challenges to become the best person we would want to be, better we make progress in 2020 because nobody wants to be in the same place next year with no growth achieved.
Happy New Year to all.
Partner & COO | IT Professional, Software Development, Scrum Master
5 年Take heart and take that rating with more than a grain of salt because if a team leader is asked to rate how much of the qualities each person in their team has in relation to everyone else on the team, can you be confident that he or she weigh each person precisely enough to put a number to each person's relative abilities? The leader would have to keep the definition of influencing skills stable even while judging each unique person against that definition. Therefore can everybody use a scale fairly and arrive at a true rating?? And even if the rater is confident in his or her own ability to do this, what do you think about all the other team leaders around? What about some team leaders being less able to rate with the same objectivity and discernment? Is it possible to teach all team leaders how to do this in exactly the same way? Are the competency models true reflections of what performance looks like in the real world? In the real world none of this works. None of the mechanisms and meetings - not the models, not the consensus sessions, not the exhaustive competencies, not the carefully calibrated rating scales - none of them will ensure the real truth of the employee because all of them are based on the belief that people can reliably rate other people.? In trying to rate yourself, be aware of your own cognitive biases, social biases that you and others may have. Humans tend to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from making rational judgements. Particularly of note is the Self-Attribution Bias. For example, a person overly attributes his company's success to himself, rather than other factors (team, luck, industry trends). When things go bad, people blame these external factors or their team colleagues for derailing their progress. ?
Excellent advice!