I used to dread that time of year. You know the one, annual performance review time. Of course, it’s nice to think you might get a raise or a promotion you’ve been eyeing, but even with those potential silver linings, you still have to sit through about an hour of listening to someone point out your shortcomings and provide you with a list of things to improve. (And if you’re a manager, in addition to looking forward to your own review, you have one or several reviews to put together yourself!) We all know we have shortcomings, but it’s more painful to have someone else point them out to you then realizing it yourself, isn’t it?
Oh sure, they call them things like “opportunities for growth.” Positive sounding stuff, but you know it’s really “What You Don’t Do Well.”
And we always focus more on the bad stuff than the good stuff, don’t we? There can be 12 things you excel at and you’ll focus on the one that receives an Unsatisfactory score. (Or as Julia Robert’s character in Pretty Woman said, “The bad stuff is easier to believe.”)
Our culture is geared toward improving weaknesses to improve performance. Watching out for the negative is a natural human tendency, created out of a survival habit where looking out for danger kept us alive. But constantly looking for what’s wrong takes the focus off of What’s Right. And What’s Right is what makes you special. What can you do that no one else does as well? Or what combination of skills makes you unique?
Marcus Buckingham has written several fantastic books on focusing on your strengths. He defines strengths as things that you do well that also give you energy. We all have things we can do well that drain us – that’s not what we should focus on. Instead, ask yourself, When am I doing great work that energizes me?
Focusing on and enhancing your strengths not only leads to more personal satisfaction in your job, it also positively impacts company performance. The Gallup Organization has conducted ongoing surveys of workers in companies around the world to explore what makes companies and teams great. One question showed the greatest correlation to the most business outcomes:
At work, do you have the chance to do what you do best every day?
Teams whose members strongly agree that they have the chance to play to their strengths every day are:
- 38% more likely to be high-productivity teams
- 44% more likely to earn high customer satisfaction scores
- 50% more likely to have high employee retention rates
Do you know your strengths? How can you spend more of your time (at work and outside of work) utilizing and focusing on those?
I believe that I left corporate America so that I would NEVER, EVER have to go through another annual performance review again. My ‘opportunities for growth’ are now exactly that! Great post, Emily.
🙂 Thanks, Amy.
Great post, Emily! Maybe the dreaded annual review was ONE of the reasons I never worked in corporate! 🙂 However, now that I have my own biz, I have to remind myself to not be even meaner to myself than a boss would have been!
Thanks, Sandi! Yes, we still have our inner critics to deal with, don’t we?
Great post Emily! I’m actually rethinking my decision to work in the field that you very well know. 🙂 I feel there’s something more meaningful for me out there and this post just clarified what I’ve been feeling for awhile.