It’s That Time Of Year Again
By: Carlos Tasada
Tags: Company Culture, Company Values, Performance Management, Personal Growth

As the song says “It’s That Time Of Year Again”. It’s time to stop and take some time to look at where we are and how we arrived here. It’s time to review the last year or recent months, and think about what we did and how we did it.

And this doesn’t apply only to our New Year’s resolutions. It applies also to our Self-Assessment or Self-Reflection.

What’s a Self-Reflection

A Self-Assessment or Self-Reflection is an auto evaluation of how you feel about yourself and your work. They are mostly used as interchangeable terms, but I personally prefer the term Self-Reflection because it sounds more close to reality, so I will stick with it.

Self-Reflection is a mechanism used in a lot of companies to support the evaluation of an employee’s performance, but the real value is to support the personal and professional growth of this person.

It’s really important to remember that it’s a reflection, an assessment. It’s not a “Self-Marketing Campaign”, neither a “Self-Punishment Essay”.

As I mentioned before, some companies use this exercise for performance purposes and, to me, that’s an issue. To measure the performance of an individual we have other tools like the OKRs or the KPIs, which are intended to measure how well the person did towards some predefined and measurable goals.

Self-Reflection should be solely focused on personal and professional growth. And even when the information from the Self-Reflection can have value to assess the performance of an individual, it should never be the main goal of this exercise.

How to write a Self-Reflection

Writing a self-reflection is never easy. The first important point to take in consideration is what I mentioned in the previous paragraphs. I will repeat it:

A Self-Reflection is not a “Self-Marketing Campaign”, neither a “Self-Punishment Essay”.

Before writing your new self-reflection, take some time to read your previous one. It will help you to identify repeating patterns.

The next thing you need to do is organize your ideas. Before answering any of the questions, think about how you want to tell your story. Even when it’s a self-reflection, it’s intended to be read by someone else. You can use chronological order, or sort it by impact, or anything else. Just be consistent and avoid jumping around.

In one way or another, the Self-Reflection should answer the next questions:

What do you feel proud of?

What would you do differently?

How would you like to keep growing?

Let’s go one by one.

What do you feel proud of?

Here you don’t need to be shy. Think carefully about what you have done the past months. This includes projects, but also any other kind of activities that may or may not be part of your daily routine.

Here is where you need to make sure that any work you delivered or where you participated is listed and described. Be careful not to put unnecessary details or really small tasks (except if they had an important impact).

Do not assume either that your manager already knows and you don’t need to include it. Your manager may forget, or even you may forget if you read it again one year from now.

If your previous self-reflection was pointing to some improvement points that you believe are not an issue anymore, that’s material for your “What do you feel proud of” summary. If those improvement points are still present, add them again and indicate what you tried and what you’re going to do differently.

Finally, be thoughtful about the extent of your summary. Remember that someone else needs to read it (and probably needs to read a few dozen more).

What would you do differently?

Here is where you need to be fair and self-conscious. This is probably the most important part of self-reflection, because it’s the part that will really help you to grow and progress in your career.

Identifying the areas of improvement can be challenging.

It is easier to see the speck in our brother’s eyes than the log in our own.

One good way to obtain insights is to ask your colleagues. If your company is already doing “Peer Feedback”, also known as “360º Feedback” you can obtain a lot of information from there.

A simple mechanism would be to send an email or a “Google Form” asking something like:

Peer Feedback

I would like to ask you about our interactions in the last months. Those answers can help me to improve my team dynamics, impact and communication style. This feedback is optional, so feel free to ignore it. If you prefer to give me feedback in person that’s also ok. 1. In the last 3/6/12 months, what have you observed that I did well? What impact did that have?

2. In the last 3/6/12 months, what have you observed that I could do differently to have more impact?

Again, remember it’s not about self-punishment. It’s about identifying those areas where you can improve, and find ways to do it.

How would you like to keep growing?

You may see this question formulated as “Where do you see yourself in 1 year (or 5 years)?” or “What do you want to do next?”

This is an important question both for you and your manager. Again, it’s important to be honest and not be shy. This answer will help your manager to mentor you and provide the needed tools to keep your professional growth.

If you want to grow to a more senior level or you want to work on different tasks, this is the place to indicate it. Of course you can always talk about it with your manager, but here’s the place where you can make sure that your goals are properly reflected. If you don’t indicate here what you want to do, you cannot complain later that you got no support to do it.

If you already reached your goals from previous self-reflections, congratulations, it’s time to define new goals, otherwise, how far did you progress and what did you miss to achieve them? Remember that achieving those goals usually require the implication of multiple parties, so make sure that you highlight what went well, but also what was missing.

How to read a Self-Reflection

Yes, I know, probably you were not expecting this one, but the Self-Reflections are written down to be read later on. Either by yourself or by your manager.

If you’re the manager, you will have multiple self-reflections to read. Make sure you take the proper time to do it, and take individual notes for each one of your colleagues.

One of the most important points while reading a self-reflection is to be aware of cultural biases. If you read The Cultural Map you already know what I’m talking about, otherwise I strongly encourage you to read it.

Based on the culture, age or gender, different people may be more prone to be shy or discreet about achievements, or maybe they are more prone to oversell them. The same goes for the other points. So being aware of those biases will help you to properly read between the lines and calibrate much better your response.

Happy self-reflecting and success with achieving your goals!