Dear Stanley,

Today I was given another reason to hate self-assessments. Every year the employees in my company are required to fill out a self-assessment and submit it to their manager before their annual performance review. I filled mine out honestly and assessed myself as being below expected performance, only to have it emailed back to me including the note: “The company takes this seriously and you’ve made a joke of the process.” I was told to do it again. I have never been able to even remotely judge my own performance with any accuracy. Do you have any suggestions on how I can accurately judge my own performance?

Too Honest for My Own Good

Dear Stupidly Honest Person,

The self-assessment in question was not designed to assess your performance. It was designed to see whether you were smart enough to state your own case regardless of the facts, like most intelligent people in the business world do. You failed. You showed yourself to be moronically honest and self-critical, attributes that are valuable in the clergy or in Socialist circles, but not in Business. Business people pump their skills and talents and sell what they bring to the table hard. The really successful ones have a genetic gap in their infrastructure: they are missing the gene for self-doubt.

The good news is that you’re in luck. Your senior management gives you enough credit to think that you were kidding when you gave yourself a “below expected performance” ranking. They think you have contempt for the process and were offering a facetious answer. Thank goodness for you. If they knew that you were really giving yourself a bad self-assessment based on your opinion of your job performance, they’d be very likely to think less of you, permanently.

My advice is to write a short note of apology to your supervisor, and then do what any smart business person would do under the circumstances: give yourself a solid, positive report with a few drippy critiques of yourself that could easily be remedied. A few self-criticisms that are useful:

I have a tendency to get so wrapped up in my work that I sometimes neglect to relax and have fun with my colleagues as much as I should; I take my job so seriously I sometimes have trouble sleeping; I am so excited about this company that I sometimes bore other people bragging about all that we do well around here; Although I come to work very early, I often get tired after a ten hour day. I should try to come in only 30 minutes early instead of a full hour, and try to knock it off by 7:30 so I can get a good night’s rest; I often find that after I do my own work, I feel like I could do other people’s as well. That’s not realistic, except sometimes.

Those are but a few. Think of more. And whatever you do, Sparky, stop being so literal! You’re a wonk! Get over it!

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