Need To Write A Self-Evaluation? Here’s Why They’re So Important

Evaluating your performance in your management position is crucial to your professional development. Two of the most common times to evaluate yourself the halfway point of the year and at the end of the year.

Jaime Pullin, the director of talent strategy at Evergreen, Insight Global’s managed services division, suggests that managers formally evaluate themselves at least four “formal” times a year—once per quarter—giving time to reflect on your achievements, struggles, skills, and goals for the year.

These conversations and self-evaluations may be part of a review process with your company, but if those reviews happen less frequent than once per quarter, your self-evaluations will help when it comes time for the formal evaluation.

Reviewing these aspects regularly can help you stay grounded and motivated to grow. “I think we move a million miles an hour, and if we don’t take a moment to pause, reflect and learn, we miss a really great opportunity to level ourselves up,” Pullin said.

So let’s dig into what self-evaluations are and how they’re beneficial to you. Then, we’ll offer up some tips for writing a self-evaluation and how to keep track of priorities across the year.

What Is a Self-Evaluation?

A self-evaluation, which may also be referred to as a self-performance review, is a performance review tool you can use to assess your performance, achievements, and contributions to the company in your managerial role. You can evaluate both qualitative and quantitative goals, like hitting certain metrics or how you’ve lived out your organization’s purpose, Pullin said.

Many organizations utilize self-evaluations as a component of an over-arching formal performance review, but they can—and should—be done even without prompting from senior leadership.

A self-evaluation presents you with a unique opportunity to reflect on how you’re currently succeeding in your position and career, and they help identify areas where you need to improve.

What Are the Benefits of Writing a Self-Evaluation?

A self-evaluation can be an incredibly powerful tool for you as a manager, regardless of your overall career trajectory.

Pullin believes that “self-awareness is crucial to effective leadership.” That self-awareness reveals itself in self-evaluations. Self-awareness shows “you’re better able to put yourself in other people’s shoes and see things from different perspectives,” she said. “That makes you a more well-rounded and effective leader.” These looks inward help you better understand the needs of your team members, too.

Let’s look into some other benefits of self-evaluations:

Prepares Your for Formal Performance Reviews

If self-evaluations aren’t part of the formal review process throughout the year, they’ll help you get prepared for them. Self-evaluations allow you head into this meeting with your successes and areas of growth already known.

Helps Your Check In On Performance, KPIs, & OKRs

Digging into more specifics, self-evaluations help keep you aligned with where you’re at with your key performance indicators (KPIs), objectives and key results (OKRs), and overall performance. Pullin suggests, at the very least, picking three performance metrics to keep track of over each quarter.

Allows You to Evaluate Where You Fit In An Organization

Knowing where you stand within an organization is crucial. Self-evaluation helps “align people with what they’re passionate about and what skill sets they have.” They also help identify what you don’t like. Once you recognize these, Pullin says you and your organization should work together to lean into what energizes you at work. “If you like doing something and you saw a lot of success, how can we keep giving you stuff like that to work on?”

Identifies How You Can Be a Better Team Manager

When you’re a people manager, it’s easy to get lost in focusing on how your direct reports are doing. Reflecting regularly on your performance can help you realize how you can better support your team. Part of this include asking your team members themselves for feedback, but we’ll dig into that in just a second.

Doing this self-evaluation sets a great example for your team members, too. Everyone struggles at some point. A growth mindset doesn’t see a mistake as a failure but as a learning opportunity. Your team members need to know and see that.

How to Write a Self-Evaluation

If you’ve never written a self-evaluation before, getting started may seem like a daunting task. Even if you’ve done this type of self-reflection before, the thought of sitting and writing down your accomplishments and weaknesses can be uncomfortable. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is often necessary for you to move forward, though. We can help!

Every quarter, Pullin says you can ask yourself:

• How were the last three months?
• What did I accomplish, and was it what I wanted to accomplish?
• How did I define success and was that realistic?
• Where did I fall short and what did I learn from that?
• What mistakes did I make that I can learn from and be better the next quarter?

These questions will help get the gears turning on a self-evaluation.

Whether this self-evaluation is written and submitted to HR or is just for your personal use, here are some additional tips to make your self-evaluation the best it can be:

Ask Peers for Feedback

Doing this evaluation yourself won’t reveal everything you need to know. “Ask for feedback from your people and don’t think you have all the answers,” Pullin said.

These peers can include:

• Direct reports (both above and below)
• Leaders within the organization
• External and internal stakeholders

All of these people can help you identify areas as a leader where you’re doing great or where you can get better. “In a perfect world, people would be doing that consistently in all of their interactions—just living with candor,” Pullin said.

Track Progress Over Time

One of the reasons Pullin suggests leaders conduct evaluations for themselves (and for the team) every three months so the successes don’t get lost across an entire year. You also don’t want to wait a full year to address a problem area when it could’ve been addressed six months ago.

If you don’t have a formal process of tracking progress, a simple spreadsheet can go a long way. “Keep it really simple and clear,” she said.

“Pick your top three things that you want to accomplish” in a quarter and measure success against those. Those same three things can be the same each quarter, or specific measurements may change. But as you get comfortable consistently reflecting on performance, you can add more goals—both personal and professional—to your tracking system.

List Both Accomplishments and Struggles

Give both your accomplishments and struggles an equal amount of time. Pullin says that if you’re too hard on yourself or don’t look at your struggles enough, try to keep a balance with what you reflect on. Highlight one accomplishment for every struggle you’ve identified.

As far as accomplishments and successes, you can detail the following:

• Facts, figures, and metrics of success backed up by data
• Personal and professional wins
• Positive attributes that have help team members or the team as a whole grow and succeed
• Relationships you’ve built within and outside of the company

Part of being a good manager is setting an example for your employees that it’s okay to make mistakes, so long as you take accountability and detail ways to overcome them. Be as open and honest about where you struggled. Some examples of this are:

• You fell short of a certain KPI
• Productivity was down on the team
• You didn’t work on developing your employees professionally as much as you wanted to

Within all of this, don’t forget the why. Part of self-evaluating is know why goals were achieved or why you struggled in a certain area. Without the why, it will be tough to learn or maintain success.

Overall, “focus on being vulnerable and sharing all of this with your people,” Pullin said. “You can say, ‘Hey, I failed here last quarter. Here’s where I want to be better.’ It just creates a human element that gets missed sometimes with the employee-to-leader relationship.”

Identify Next Steps In Your Career and Future Goals

In addition to reviewing your successes and struggles, it’s important to highlight any career or professional development aspirations.

Be specific about what you want to accomplish in the future and tie it back to how it will help the company grow. Goals can change a bit quarter to quarter, often because of performance the previous quarter. A self-evaluation is a great time to make those small (or big) adjustments.

It’s Never Too Late to Start Self-Evaluations

Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned manager, it’s never too early or too late to incorporate self-evaluations into your routine. Self-evaluations can be a valuable tool for tracking your career progression and development if done honestly and openly.