I was reading through an article “The value of self evaluation” in the online newspaper “The Hindu“.  It triggered off some thoughts about appraisals and I wanted to share them here. Over 9 years of my experience in this industry, I have gone through a dozen of appraisal periods including mid years.  During appraisal period I have heard people crib “Oh my God its appraisal time”.  It is a usual scene people fill up their appraisal forms, think through all day to identify what they have done that year that is worth putting it.  Sadly some of them may not even know what their objectives are, leave out meeting them.  An appraisal is a project by itself, only thing here is that it is planning well in advance and executing it through out the year and closing it in the year end identifying what went right and what went wrong.  I have seen people struggle to complete the form in two ways.  One is to write down what they have accomplished and another to rate themselves on whatever they have written.  In terms of rating themselves I have also seen two categories of people, one set of people who overrate themselves and the other who underrate.

A primary question that dooms often is the difference between what is expected achievement vs. what exceeded the expectation.  It is very important that both the appraiser and the appraised understand what has been set, what has been achieved, and what was done beyond to rate it correct.  The easiest way to complete your appraisal without any fuss is to keep track of your doings through out the year.  It then becomes a copy paste during the appraisal time.  Moreover when you record your activities then and there, there is a high possibility that you will cover important points and incidents worth adding value to the work you have done.  You can keep track of your doings by maintaining a document or the best way would be to maintain a mind map.  Mind map would help you capture your emotional quotient of the work in terms of pictures and color information.  This will help you talk to the appraiser and bring out those emotional moments.  If you strictly follow discipline in maintaining your record you can change the “Oh my God” feeling to “Wow its appraisal time”.