What’s the point?
Humans tend to place meaning every little event, interaction, experience, and change. Even if there is none, to begin with. “She has done very well in this performance review.” Reasons to support the event tend to flood thereafter. For those who are supportive of the person, you may hear “she has worked hard and completed a number of high-profile and successful projects in the last year”. And, for those who don’t, “well, she’s always been bosses’ favourite, why else would she received such high review?” or similar. Of course, depending on the reasons given, it provides us with the context and potential justification behind the “good performance review” received by that colleague. But, then again, what does it has got to do with us in the first place? No doubt, many performance reviews are based upon a “bell curve” or normal distribution, and tend to signal one’s performance as compared to others (on purpose for the benefit of the organisation or key personnels of the organisation). Considering the overall impact, does that really affect you as an individual? It depends on the meaning that you placed behind this “performance review” event.
Some people place high importance behind performance review as a measure of their career success for the past year. Usually, those high fliers and career-minded individuals. Placing such high importance would bring about a greater sense of achievement or disappointment depending on whether the grade that they received met their expectations. Depending on their sphere of influence, they are also handing over some level control over their emotions in the hands of others. Humans are social creatures to begin with. It’s impossible to avoid being influence by the actions of others in the first place. However, there should be a balance between our level of control versus external influences. Unless you’re working in sales, or similar, where performance review and meeting sales target can make a big difference in the pay check that you’ll be receiving, otherwise, the difference is not that much considering the period of review is over a year. Besides a sense of achievement which doesn’t bring food to the table, what else can we work towards to, apart from ensuring financial independence and having enough to survive?
