Some ideas on self-assessments at work
My latest thoughts as I go through my first round of (informal) reviews
It has been almost four (!!!) months since I started my new job. In certain moments, I feel like I’ve been there for longer already, while at other times, it all still feels new and shiny. I’m trying to savour both of those feelings while they last.
On the topic of reviews and self-assessments: I missed the formal cutoff for year-end reviews because my start date was too recent, so I am doing a round of informal feedback with my manager. As I put together a lightweight self-assessment this past week, I thought a lot about the right format. There is a prescribed format that relates back to the company values, which I did fill out. However, after doing that, I felt like I had more that I wanted to review with my manager to really get tactical feedback that I can put into action right away. (You may remember I wrote about how to follow up to feedback a while back.)
Here is the format I started with
Section 1 – things I feel confident doing
I wanted to use this to highlight what I’ve learned and achieved so far. I felt that framing it as areas where I’m confident made it easier for me to brag a bit and celebrate my wins. I listed four skills/activities in this section and for each one, gave an example of a specific project where I applied the skill or executed on the activity.
Section 2 – things I find trickier
I created a three-column table here:
What daunts me (i.e. something I’m struggling with)
How to work on mastering that (i.e. my action plan)
Open questions (i.e. areas to get tactical feedback from my manager)
One example was:
I wanted to show that I’ve thought about how to address these development areas proactively, but also to highlight the areas where I truly feel stumped. Additionally, by laying out what I already know I should do, I can focus my chat with my manager on incremental wisdom and advice. We won’t waste our time having a conversation where my manager tells me things I already know.
After this, I wanted to craft a conversation around shaping my role
The Strategy & Operations role is very open-ended, which is a double-edged sword (as evidenced above, with my struggles with ambiguity). I really appreciate that the type of work I do changes a lot from week to week and I build a wide toolkit of skills. As part of this flexibility, I think there’s a much larger responsibility that falls on me to shape my own career. If I’m not thoughtful and deliberate about which types of work I want to focus on or which skills I’d like to sharpen, I can end up going for months (and years) working on all these areas that aren’t aligned with my interests or future career goals.
It still feels too early to know what that direction is for me, at least within this new role, but I started to lay the groundwork for this conversation by creating a 2x2 adapted from the “Identify your zone of genius” exercise. On the 2x2 I plotted “types of work I’ve done (in broad categories)” along two dimensions:
How good I am at it
How much I enjoy it
This was meant to be less about talking through my strengths versus my weaknesses, but rather to start a conversation with my manager about where I should consider doubling down.
The last piece, as always, is peer feedback
Separately, I reached out to a few of my cross-functional collaborators and stakeholders to get their feedback. Instead of following a formal process like the one I’d previously outlined, I did 15-30 minute chats with each person. I sent a few prompts in advance, and then took notes as they shared their thoughts with me. These are the prompts:
What have I done that has been particularly helpful for you in your role? (What should I keep doing?)
When you’ve worked with others in a role similar to mine, was there anything they did that you found particularly effective? (I’d love to hear specific examples that I can learn from as well!)
Have I had any blindspots in my work? (What should I learn more about?)
And…when you put it all together
Hopefully it turns into an ideal blend of confidence-booster and actionable feedback.
My biggest learning from going through this process in so many different settings is that (in an ideal situation) it doesn’t need to be packaged up fancily and formally to count. Sure, that is important when you’re up for promotion and need an official package to argue your case. But outside of that, the most important part of self-assessments, feedback, and any sort of review is to make sure you’re meeting expectations and to identify areas where you can keep growing.
Often, feedback and review processes are met with eyerolls and frustration, and I think it’s often because the content being generated is repetitive and stuff that we all already know. So, whatever format – written, verbal, otherwise – works best and lowers the barrier to entry the most should be the one that you use.
Readers – are there other tools or processes you’ve used to gather feedback that have worked well? Dive into the comments if you have any!