Time to take stock of your performance

Time to take stock of your performance

Words by Francis Kahihu (the author is an Organisational Development Practitioner)

kahihucareers@gmail.com

Twelve months ago, we were helping ourselves reflect on our performance through that year. We shared reasons why we should consider the value of reflections as we progress in our jobs and careers. It is said that a person who has no bench mark will never know when they progress. You can only identify progress when you are able to tell where you were against your current position.

The year 2010 is coming to a close. As we evaluate our performance this year, I would suggest using 4 parameters to gauge how we fared as we work on next year’s plans and resolutions.

Actually delivery: The easiest tool to use when facilitating self evaluations is the job description. Look through the expectations of your job description and check on how many of the expected tasks you have accomplished. You may want to go beyond the accomplishments by considering the degree of the achievement. Might there be issues you had struggled with the previous year that you have managed to conquer this year. Are there quantifiable results to can write home about? Have you exceeded the expectations or did you play safely within the requirements of your supervisors?

Work-life balance: You are expected to spend an average 8 hours at work, 8 hours of socialization and leisure and 8 hours of sleep. Thinking through the year, did you spend more or less time working? How was your time for socialization on weekdays or was most of it swallowed up by both your job and the incessant traffic jams in the cities? Considering your lunch hours, did you find time to take the necessary one hour lunch breaks to energise and break the monotony of the working days?

Career progression: You started off with certain career related inadequacies or targets for career growth. How far have you moved towards the realization of these goals? Are you closer to what you wanted to be or might you be where you were a year ago if not worse? Are there tasks at your workplace that you could not handle at the start of the year but you are now more than competent to manage? Might you have registered for further training or continuous professional development? This could be an indicator of career progression. This is regardless of whether you got a promotion or not. Promotions are not necessarily indicators of growth.

Social relations: We work with people either as workmates or clients. The way we relate with them speaks volumes about who we really are. How have we acted and reacted towards the people who came our way this year? If other people were to be asked about your relations with them, what percentage of the respondents will praise your professional engagements? Are you a people person or would you be said to have been more interested in the products other than the people? Were results more important to you than the people?

Against these benchmarks, give yourself a score on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest. Wishing you honest results.