Win, Lose, or Draw

I’ve been busy working on my “Self Job Performance Review” this week.

My current company hasn’t done this before so it’s a little scary trying to figure out what they want here. We are supposed to complete page one with our proudest accomplishments and where we would like to be in 5 years and give this to our supervisors prior to our actual “Review”. Then we are supposed to complete page 2 our review of our supervisor and sent that to his boss. Page three involves completing our review of ourselves and bringing that to the actual meeting.

I take this process seriously in that whether I am promoted or given a raise depends upon this process but at the same time I can see that its not the truth about anything. I really have issues with the whole performance appraisal process.

1. First the company substitutes a parent in the form of a "boss" and this person is responsible for molding your behavior on the job, encouraging/coercing you to reach your goals, then standing in judgment of how well you have done so. And if you want to know why this doesn't work, just ask any parent of a teenager.

2. Then the “boss” wants to talk about all the ways you as a youngster is falling down in his or her performance as a dutiful kid.

3. Ask yourself this: Can you ever be absolutely, 100 percent objective when judging other human beings? Sure, you can "judge" how tall they are (with the help of a tape measure), or determine how many words off a list they can spell correctly (with the help of a dictionary). But is it possible to objectively evaluate the point-by-point performance of a subordinate who may carry out a set of enormously complex and ever changing tasks, some (or many) of which you may have only partial knowledge of yourself? What if you, don't actually, er, like this person as a person? Maybe they laugh too much or too little, are self-absorbed or have a stupid hairstyle?

So I’m doing the best I can. I bought a couple of books to help me write in the language of performance appraisals. But do I think highly enough of myself or do I think not enough of my contribution to this fine company. Its almost a game and I’m strategizing how to win.