The Annual Review

I cannot think of a single person I know who likes work-related annual reviews.

I used to kind of enjoy doing them when I had a staff that I was reviewing. I would sit down with the forms and think about the past year and try to coach - where possible - and to point out issues - where necessary. I spent a lot of time on those, and I usually felt like they were appreciated.

When I was teaching, I even kind of liked reading the students' evaluations of me. Some of them were fun/funny, some were just snarky, but a lot of them were fairly interesting and thought-out. Not all good, mind you, but if the students actually took the time to write things out, I was impressed.

What I really dislike, however, is when you have to do a review of yourself. Granted, I know people who have to do this multiple times throughout the year, so I'm lucky to only have to do it once. But sitting down to answer questions that really have nothing to do with me is just painful.

 - Do your peers encourage your development? Really? In what company have you ever worked where development was a peer-based event?

 - How well are your personal/professional goals satisfied? Professional goals? Sure. That would be nice. Personal ones? Maybe it's just me, but I'm not really sure I'm looking for my job to help me satisfy my innermost goals and desires. Although... a huge raise would certainly help with planning for some goals like a really good vacation.

Possibly my favorite this year is:

- How do you most like to be shown appreciation? "MONEY! MONEY! MONEY!" is probably not the answer they want to hear, but I did put a softer version of that on this year's form.

We'll see how that goes over later this week.