One last look: Filled with accomplishments and disappointments, your 2020 is worthy of critique

By Marco Buscaglia, Tribune Content Agency
Published in the Chicago Tribune, January 3, 2021

While the methods and metrics of work performance reviews have evolved over the years, the basic premise has not: your boss gets to evaluate what you did well and what you didn’t do well over the last 12 months. And for most, the initial part of any review is the self-review, that formated survey where you’re tasked with telling your manager your strengths and weaknesses. OK, “weaknesses” is too harsh. Maybe “things you need to work on” is a better way to put it. 

While anyone with a job has accepted the reality of evaluations, it’s not something we want to replicate in our lives outside of the office. And that may be a mistake. 

“Why wouldn’t you do an annual review of your life,” says John Putzier, author of “Get Weird! 101 Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place To Work” (American Management Association, $17.95). “It’s a good way to truly look at what you’re doing well and what needs more work. It’s an honest assessment of who you are.” 

Putzier says it’s possible to use some of the same review tools when evaluating your day-to-day life as you might use in the office. Most important, he says, is to take an honest look at what you’ve done and what you’re doing. “You can’t judge your year on what planned on getting done and then shape your results to fit those plans,” he says. “You have to judge it on what you’ve actually accomplished and how you’ve done it.”  

Own it

Alyssa Hammond, Director of Career Education and Innovation at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., says no matter the subject of an evaluation, being personally responsible for your own actions is key. “Be accountable for what you do,” she says. “Be honest and forthcoming, even when you are in the wrong.” 

Doing that requires more than honesty, Hammond says, especially when it comes to one’s personal life. It also requires courage. “There’s a level of bravery that is part of every honest self-assessment,” she says. “We may not want to admit things about ourselves but that won’t undo our missteps or turn our negative results positive. Sometimes, you have to admit to falling short of a goal so you can eventually reach it.”

Rick Wong, author of “Winning Lifelong Customers with the Five Abilities” (Authority Publishing, $24.99), says “reliability, along with visibility, credibility, viability and capability,” is essential to the success of an individual at home and at work, especially when life takes the occasional left turn. “Be unreasonably accountable when the unexpected happens,” he says. “Looking back at what you’ve done means you have to look forward to what you’ll do next. If you’ve had challenges this past year, if you’ve fallen short on some of your long-term or short-term goals, or even some of your basic responsibilities, you have to anticipate similar challenges in the future and be honest about how you’ll address them. It’s important to be open and responsive to new solutions.”

What’s next

Once you’ve taken an honest look at your strengths and weaknesses, it’s easier to create a plan for moving forward. 

Nick Maroulis, owner of Windy City Appliance Repair in Chicago, says an honest past assessment of his own experiences led to a fairly drastic—and immediate—change. As an appliance repair specialist for a large suburban store, Maroulis says he enjoyed his work but always felt like he should and could be doing more. “You get yourself in a pattern sometimes and you get comfortable,” he says. “I took a good look at what I was going and decided I wanted to move in a different direction.” 

A few years ago, Maroulis formed his own company and became his own boss. “I don’t think you can jump into any decision or make any changes without taking a look at what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been doing it,” he says. “Even if it’s one thing that forces you to make a change, you have to go into it with the understanding of what you’re capable of doing based on what you’ve actually done.”

Joyce Stark says she came to similar conclusions after her own self-assessment. “It was something I read in Oprah’s magazine, about writing out the good and bad but I’m retired so for me, the good and the bad had nothing to do with work or even how I run my house,” Stark says. “I had to take honest look at where I was living, why I was living there and what I go out of it.”

As a result of her findings, the resident of Dayton, Ohio, is planning a move to Florida next year. “I found that I had a lot of idle time, especially in the winter, and that put me in a real funk,” she says. “I’m an active person by nature but until I actually wrote out how little I did during some days, I never really realized it. Seeing it in writing made a big difference.”