I'm spending my Friday night writing performance reviews for work. Joy!
On the other hand, this is surprisingly useful practice. Our reviews are transparent, which means that the recipients can read them and know who wrote them. It's incentive for tactful wording, particularly in the "areas for development" section.
Sound familiar? Yup, it's rather like giving critiques to a writer.
Also, while no character of mine is going to be lauded as attentive to end users' needs (I work at a dot-com), it's still a familiar place to be, thinking about what people's strengths and weaknesses are, and how they play off each other. And how every person has some of each.
We're also supposed to provide specific examples for every trait we point out. The company calls this a data-driven approach. I rather think of it as showing instead of telling.
The parallels probably end there, except that I've often stayed up late, bleary-eyed and desperately paging through old pages/emails for inspiration, for both. Back to writing...performance reviews.
Leave a comment