There are at least three types of people when it comes to self-assessing capabilities: (1) those who are either arrogant or defensive, always bragging about their ‘accomplishments’ and covering up their weaknesses, (2) those who focus on their weaknesses, often failing to notice their strengths, or downplaying them, and (3) those who are self-aware and accurately assess both their strengths and their weaknesses. I often represent the second group, selling myself short.
I recently had my performance review with my manager. During the review, we discussed my performance this past year with respect to employee development. When I wrote up my self-assessment, I had in my mind a very narrow view of what ‘developing my employees’ meant, hyper-focusing on a single dimension of this role. I had failed to recognize not only that the scope was much broader, but that I had actually performed significantly better in both the overall role that I had failed to consider, but also in the specific facet that I thought I’d neglected.
It wasn’t until my manager starting asking me some questions about it that I realized I’d had blinders on! This brings up a good point though: if you relate to Type #2 above, you might discover that other people rate your proficiency much higher than you rate yourself. It’s interesting, because I’ve noticed this tendency in the past, but apparently I forgot. While I certainly don’t consider myself to be ‘Mr. Perfect’, I do think that I often sell myself short for probably a number of reasons, including failure to frame the context and criteria properly. This is why it’s so important to have frank discussions with people whom you trust – people who will give you honest feedback regarding both your strengths, achievements, weaknesses, mistakes, failures, blind spots, personality quirks, ‘super powers’, whatever. If you notice that you’re a #2, get a second opinion!