BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

What To Say (And Not To Say) In Your Self-Appraisal

Forbes Coaches Council

Marcy Schwab is the President of Inspired Leadership, a strategy, organizational effectiveness and executive coaching firm.

You’ve hit that time of year — that time when you are required to write your self-appraisal. It's something we often dread, but you can use it to your advantage. You can remind your leadership team of all of your great accomplishments over the last year, how you’re thinking about the business, the amazing work your team has done and what you plan to accomplish in the near-term. It's an opportunity to:

• Highlight your contributions

• Prove your understanding of the organization's objectives

• Communicate how you deploy your strengths

• Demonstrate your coachability

Highlight Your Accomplishments And Connect Them To The Larger Team Goals

The "results" section is your opportunity to shine and demonstrate measurable results. Keep track of the work you have done over the year and ensure you have the details available to you so that you can provide as much proof as possible of the contribution you have made.

To make the points even more salient for your manager, ensure you are connecting your results to the larger team goals and corporate goals. Your leadership team will love the support you have provided in helping them achieve their goals. This context-building not only helps them see your value, but it also proves your understanding of how your work fits in with the whole.

Focus On How You Deployed Your Strengths

When you get to the "competencies/capabilities/skills" section, you more than likely pause. Why? Assessing oneself can be a complicated process. Even if you're extremely self-aware, deciding on what strengths and areas of opportunity to focus on has consequences.

Identifying strengths presents an opening to point out areas where you create impact that may not be immediately obvious to your manager. What are you really good at? Identify areas that make you really stand out from your peers that are also important to the organization. Consider your company's competency model, if you have one. 

In addition to being very clear in articulating your strengths, be sure to link the deployment of those strong personal attributes directly to the results you have achieved. Perhaps you will illuminate an area that can be better leveraged by your organization and provide you new opportunities for growth and development.

Do Not Ever Mention Weaknesses Not Already Observed By Others

The part of the self-appraisal that is often the most difficult is self-identifying areas of opportunity or development. This is the part of the self-appraisal that I call "the danger zone."  

My first suggestion is to ignore this section entirely. In fact, when I managed a large team through a corporate performance management process, I did not even allow my team members to fill out this section on their self-appraisals. 

Why? 

I didn't want to learn something about one of my team members that I wasn't observing for myself. You can't "unsee" something once you've seen it, right? If you point out an area of weakness that your manager has never noticed before, they may now see it every time it happens.  

For example, if you believe you aren't good with attention to detail, but your manager has never noticed before, they aren't likely to pick it up now. However, if you point it out to them, they may begin noticing details that you miss every time it happens. You have created a weakness or an area of opportunity that just wasn't a concern before. 

So, what do you do?

Demonstrate Your Coachability

Throughout the year, periodically ask for feedback from your leaders — both your manager and the broader leadership team. In those conversations, your management team will provide areas of opportunity in which you can build your skills. When you get to your self-appraisal, if you are forced to fill out this section, concentrate on the areas that have been discussed in your earlier meetings and ways in which you have been working on those areas. You will be demonstrating that you are listening to the feedback provided and that you are developing deeper self-awareness.

Use your self-appraisal as an opportunity to highlight your accomplishments, demonstrate your understanding and the context of the company's goals and demonstrate your ability to be coached.


Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?


Follow me on LinkedInCheck out my website