At the end of December, I was asked by fellow credit union team members how to write an effective self-evaluation. I could have spouted off a few tips and tricks I’ve learned throughout my career, but I decided I wanted to dig deeper to find a more meaningful lesson to share with our Young Professionals.
Why do we do self-evaluations anyway? Well for one, your manager, as well-intended as he/she may be, cannot remember everything you acomplished in a year. When I served my two branches as a manager, I did my best to document big and small accomplishments for each of them, but when you’re trying to manage a team of 8 or a team of 4, the perception of success is different for each person. I have always taught my team members to look at evaluation time as an opportunity to highlight your growth. It’s alright to toot your horn a little bit. There is no shame in delighting in the maturity and growth you’ve experienced. Another obvious reason that we write self-evaluations is for raises. Why are we constantly selling ourselves short because our manager can’t recall an entire years’ worth of our successes beyond what metrics he/she has in front of them? Leaders really need to teach people why it’s important to track their own progress and to celebrate wins.
When I began developing a lesson to share with our Young Professionals at my Credit Union, I was experiencing an incredible loss. The sting of miscarriage was fresh, but I felt it was so important to share with my team why doing this exercise on a regular basis can not only garner them higher scores on evaluations (more money $$), but it can help you grow as a human being and a credit union professional. So if you’re itching to learn this process, we’ll start with a basic definition and I’ll wrap it up with a parable for you to stick in your toolbelt for quick reference.
Reflection: An important human activity in which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull it over, and evaluate it. It is working with experience that is important in learning. (Bould, Keough, & Walker, 1985.) (Here’s a handy-dandy link so you can dig in more if you’re interested).
From this awesome definition, we see four steps and an application.
- Recapture Experience
- Think About It
- Mull It Over
- Evaluate It
Then we see what this process does- When we go through these steps when recalling an experience (doing the work of reflection), we learn. AKA we grow/mature/develop.
So what does it mean to RECAPTURE THE EXPERIENCE?
Think of your mind as a filing cabinet. Stored in that filing cabinet is every experience you’ve ever had. You’re going to open that drawer, sort through the file folders, and locate the experience you’re interested in reflecting on. Simply pull it out of your memory.
THINK ABOUT IT
This thinking is going to require some intention. Here you’ll begin to read that file as it happened (don’t be sticking in any hind-sight bias in there!). Allow yourself to relive the experience, feeling every emotion of each part.
Once you’ve gone through the recollection of the experience, it’s time to get to the nitty gritty. We’re going to MULL IT OVER. Do you know what the word ‘mull’ means? It’s a good word that means, “To grind or mix thoroughly, pulverize. To consider at length, ponder. To meditate.” PULVERIZE. OOOF. We are going to take the contents of that experience and we are going to get to work with it. This is where you begin to look at the experience from all perspectives. It’s rare that an experience only happens to one person… there’s greater impact you need to discover. Flip that thing inside out, upside down, turning it every way possible. Then repeat that again. And again. Until that experience is gritty, micro, and all stripped down.
Now that your experience has been put through the grinding mill, we are going to put that experience under a microscope and start asking ourselves some scientific questions and EVALUATE. “Now that I see this experience for what it is, what did I learn from it? Did I grow or mature because of this experience? Am I REFUSING to learn the life lesson from this?” You’re going to have to get real with yourself. Don’t skimp here. This is where the magic happens. Be transparent and honest with yourself. I promise it will do you some good.
I know this is a lot to unpack, but here’s a heuristic for you (a little short-cut or parable, if you will).
Gold. It’s something we all know and understand. We know that gold is valuable, useful, beautiful, and comes in various qualities. Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is jewelry- your wedding band. It’s symbolic here too. Gold is an excellent conductor and can be found on space craft and all other kinds of utilities. We think gold is something to behold and often make ornate fixtures from it. You can get gold in different colors and clarities.
When you see gold, you’re seeing a finished product though. That gold didn’t come out of the earth looking like that. No, it was incapsulated with sedement, elements, dirt, rock, and junk that we don’t have use for. Gold undergoes a pretty rigorous process to make it desirable and useful.
Did you know that when gold is mined, the process to refine it begins by putting it in a crucible? Once it’s in there, extreme temperature is applied. As the gold begins to melt and settle at the bottom of the crucible, all the unwanted, undesirable junk rises to the surface and is scraped off by the goldsmith. This process is repeated until the gold is in it’s desired quality. Now that the gold is purified and stripped of all the junk, it’s still not done. That gold has to be formed, hammered, and shaped into that final product.
I say all that to say this. You’re GOLD. You’re so freaking valuable, friend. But you, just like me, have certain undesirables that need some refinement. To get to that core and reveal the true beauty of your potential, you’ve got to go through the process of refinement that starts with reflection. When we allow the work of reflection to refine us, we become more valuable, useful, precious, and impactful.
No one said this process is easy. It’s painful at times. We fail. We suck at things. We are top-tier struggle bus loyalty cardholders. But if you wanna turn in that loyalty card and hop off that struggle bus, you’ve got to refine yourself. We can learn to see beauty in hardship. We can be transformed, surpassing potential and turning our experiences into successes. Life lessons.
This process can be applied personally, professionally, and even to process improvement, team building, leadership, and beyond. You’ve heard the comment, “There’s always room for improvement.” This is true. Don’t get stuck in a less-than version of yourself. Remember that you’re GOLD, baby. It’s time to refine and shine.