As the year draws closer to an end, it’s important to evaluate ourselves on how best we’ve gone with it. At the beginning of the year, we set goals and had plans on how we wanted the year to go. A self‐evaluation is your thoughtful and considered written review of your performance during the evaluation cycle. It involves rating established goals, competencies, and overall performance. When you self‐assess, you become an active participant in your own evaluation. Your involvement enables you to honestly assess your strengths and also areas you need to improve. You then can participate more constructively in the evaluation meeting with your supervisor at work, life coach, mentor or someone you look up to. Self‐evaluation also serves to increase commitment to goal setting/achievement, competency development, and career planning. It’s best you go by this simple steps to do a perfect self evaluation on your lives to advance career:
1. Relax and Reflect
Try to relax and reflect upon your goals, experiences, and incidents. No one is perfect, and it is very likely that you will recall both good and bad experiences. The purpose of the evaluation process is to highlight strengths, correct performance weaknesses, and develop unused skills and abilities. Always be willing to recognize areas you need improvement and development.
2. Be Accurate
Learn to state your accomplishments objectively and accurately. Learn to have a constructive dialogue where questions like:
- What are my biggest priorities right now?
- Am I on track?
- Do I need to devote more energy and focus?
3. Be Objective
It’s awfully tempting to give yourself high marks across the board, but it’s a little unlikely that you’ve done everything right. Instead of evaluating yourself based on how you wished you’d performed, offer the results and quantify them as much as possible by using facts, figures, and specific dates.
4. Suggest Improvement Methods
self‐evaluation is a good opportunity to identify specific ways to improve your performance for the remaining months of the year. Don’t be afraid to mention ways that you can do your job more effectively and go about your career in a more envisioned way.
5. Take Action
Choose, complete, and apply knowledge you gain from development activities to support your performance goals, your competency development and your career direction. Take about an hour to complete the self evaluation and it’s best done in a quiet place so you can devote your full attention.