Self-awareness is a critical quality in effective leaders. When you’re the employer, the boss, and the big man in charge, it’s tougher to make space for self-evaluation. Our attention tends to be on everyone else’s performance rather than on our own.
Self-assessment isn’t just for your team. It’s for you, too. As the new year approaches, there’s never been a better time to step back and take a critical look at your performance. You and your business will thank you.
How to Conduct an Effective Self-Assessment
Step 1) Solicit Feedback
It is impossible to hold an objective view of yourself. As I’ve discussed before, we tend to judge others based on their actions and ourselves based on our intentions. The truth is, you’re just too close to the subject (you) to provide comprehensive and objective insights. This isn’t to say that introspection isn’t valuable. It is.
But you also need more than that. Remember that soliciting feedback is not as simple as having your team fill out a report card for you. Be willing to open yourself up to ongoing – and sometimes ego-bruising – conversations around your leadership style and decision-making. If you don’t know how your team feels about you, company policy, or other critical systems and decisions, then it’s time to open up that conversation and keep it open in the new year.
Step 2) Set and Seek Quantifiable Goals
Ultimately, a self-assessment is only effective if it offers avenues for tangible, quantifiable action. Your self-evaluations run the risk of being big timewasters if they’re not grounded in your real goals and ambitions. They easily become too theoretical and metaphysical to be of use.
From the get-go, you need to know what it is you’ve set out to accomplish, and establish clear benchmarks for success and indicators of improvement. Use numbers. See how your profits have increased or decreased, how much funding you’ve secured, contracts you’ve landed, and where in the pipeline your plans are.
Set SMART goals – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.
This will help you know what you’re measuring and how to see tangible progress.
Step 3) Champion Accomplishments
If you need permission to celebrate your accomplishments, here it is. A self-assessment should be a realistic look at your performance, and that certainly includes what you’re doing right. Celebrate your accomplishments and use those achievements not solely as a pat on the back, but to keep yourself on track with what works.
Ask yourself:
What made this project successful?
How can we replicate this success?
Which effective characteristics and principles can we carry over into other work?
Step 4) Identify Your Weaknesses
Of course, on the other side of the coin, we must be willing to acknowledge and explore our weak points. We’ve all got them. Where did you fall short this year? Recognize both measurable shortcomings and more personal, intangible ones.
You need to be able to see where your gaps in knowledge or experience hindered your ability to lead, where your leadership or conflict-resolution style alienated your team or clients, and how you can improve in the future.
Many times, this is where soliciting feedback is most necessary. We’ve all got blind spots. Identifying both where you excel and fall short can help you determine where your time is best spent, where there are gaps in your team, and where you should devote your time to self-improvement.
Step 5) Create an Action Plan
Lastly, make an action plan. Your year-end report card is worthless unless you use it as a launching pad to bigger and better things. Based on your self-assessment, develop a plan for the next year. It should outline SMART goals as well as:
Things to KEEP doing
Things to STOP doing
Things to START doing
You can split these lists into different categories, like communication, reliability, leadership, innovation, growth, and collaboration.
Remember, it can be difficult to create an effective self-assessment if you try to start at the end of the year. You’re not likely to remember all the details of your performance from ten months ago! A goal to make right now is to record and document your thoughts, feelings, and metrics surrounding projects as they progress through 2022.
That way, you’ll produce the clearest picture of your own performance when an evaluation is due.
How are you defining success in the new year? Share your greatest goals in the comments.