Try Giving Yourself a Performance Review

Formal performance evaluations are often a source of dread in the workplace. Even if you're sure your work performance has been stellar since your last review, it's hard to know what your boss sees. In order to ace your review, you should do a self performance review to map out your strengths and weaknesses. Not only is this helpful in regards to preparing for your formal review, it can also help you set goals and become more focused.

Before you do anything, set aside a block of time to do your performance review so that you won't be interrupted. This requires a lot of thought and reflection, so you need to remain undisturbed in order to do it properly. Gather past evaluations, any goal lists you may have written down, and a copy of the formal evaluation worksheet your company uses if applicable. You will have a chance to see how your boss reviews your work by using this form which is helpful when trying to evaluate your work performance from his or her perspective.

When doing this type of performance review, you should look at things from your perspective as well as that of your supervisor. In a sense, you are really performing two evaluations, which is why setting aside a block of time is important. When looking at things from your perspective, you should ask yourself how well you've performed over the past year. Did you attain your goals, or have you lagged on that front? Perhaps you need to reevaluate your goals to make them more realistic if you haven't achieved them. On the other hand, if you are repeatedly achieving your goals, perhaps you aren't challenging yourself enough and need to set higher goals for the next year. Go through your evaluation worksheet twice, once from each perspective, and then compare them to see where you come up short. These shortcomings are areas of opportunity to improve your performance and ensure a better formal evaluation.

It's important to try detaching yourself when doing this performance review so that you can be completely honest. Without honesty, you can't identify areas you need to work on to be a better employee and ace your formal performance review. Once you have been honest and see what you need to improve upon, come up with an action plan to make those changes. If you don't do this, you'll have wasted your time because no performance review is complete without a plan for improvement.

If you are worried about your upcoming performance review, consider doing a self evaluation. It can help you see your strengths as well as your weaknesses in order to help you become a better worker. Doing so can lead to better formal evaluations, peace of mind, and maybe even a raise or promotion down the line.

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