Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Wily Boss Outsmarts Hapless Worker

We recently did peer reviews at work, assigning numerical ratings to our peers in nearly 20 categories. One of my two lowest ratings was richly deserved, but the other really kind of horrified me, as it was in the area of leadership, described as consisting, in part, of integrity, communication skills, and mentoring.

I consider communication to be one of my strong points; ditto mentoring. But that wasn’t even the worst thing: My peers don’t think I have integrity???

Thus was I launched into the Nineteen or So Stages of Peer Review Acceptance. My boss sent a note to everyone telling us not to freak out about the lower ratings, but of course that had no effect whatsoever.

The first stage was to tell myself that everyone else’s was probably about the same. Direct questioning of at least one coworker shattered that illusion; his numbers were unquestionably better than mine.

Next, I reflected on the different methods people may have followed; I myself didn’t give anyone less than a three on a five-point scale. I would tell my boss this and she would understand that she has nice people (like me!) on her team as well as mean people (like everyone else), and that she certainly shouldn’t give much weight to what the mean people say about the nice person. Obviously, there was a mob mentality at work here (despite the fact that each person assigned his or her ratings in private, without discussion).

Indeed, it is probably true that everyone did have a slightly different idea about how to assign the ratings, which is why usually one person (the boss) rates everyone. Then, at least, the method is presumably consistent across the board. I would tell my boss this and she would understand that the whole peer review thing is fundamentally flawed.

But there was no getting around the fact that at least one of my coworkers had come out with a higher rating than I had—eliminating my input from his scores and his from mine wouldn’t explain the whole thing.

I considered what “leadership” might mean. I thought about my peer who is unquestionably in charge. Would I, like her, ever say, “I will take charge of this project, and if it takes all weekend, I will consider it time excellently spent”? Never would I say that, and if that is the definition of leadership, I must accept that I am squarely in the follower category.

In the end, I concluded that it was fruitless to worry about what other people think, especially since I couldn’t know in detail what that was; even if I happened to know for sure exactly what every person thought, the opinion that means most to me is my own. Measuring against my own criteria, I saw that I could certainly do better, and I vowed that I would. So far, it’s going well and it does feel good, as I finish some projects that had lingered for months and generally hew a bit closer to my own values.

I was remembering that when I was offered this job and was thinking it over—me, an artiste, working for the man? I couldn’t see it—my father said something like, “If you take the job and do your best, I think you will end up with a career that is financially and psychically satisfying.” From time to time, I had reflected that he was wrong, in that I still wouldn’t say the job was psychically satisfying, though it is generally interesting, affords frequent opportunities to stretch my brain and has many positive aspects.

On the other hand, as it has lately dawned on me, I didn’t exactly follow his advice, either: I took the job, but I didn’t do my best. Because, you know, I’m so extremely smart that my medium effort is probably better than everyone else’s best effort.

So it may still turn out that he was quite correct.

It now appears that people can tell when we extremely smart people aren’t doing our best, or perhaps that intelligence per se is overrated. Maybe coworkers care more about diligence, good humor and courteous communication than they do about IQ points.

There are areas where I do find it easy to take a leadership role, alas, not necessarily at work, but, for instance, in tasks that have to do with cycling or the environment. In fact, when it comes to those kinds of projects, I often hear myself say, “If this takes the rest of my life, this is going to happen.”

By the way, I did finally discuss my rating in the leadership category with my boss, and she said that she thinks I am strong in the areas of communication, mentorship and integrity (whew!) and that many people got one of their lower ratings in this category, which did depend on what the rater’s particular idea of leadership is.

But by then, it didn’t really matter, because I’d already concluded that I wanted to do better, had decided what that would mean and had started to do it—which, I suppose, was exactly what my boss had intended all along, that crafty devil.

1 comment:

Lisa Morin Carcia said...

I have always rationalized my corporate job by thinking that since I have to work full-time at something other than my artistic vocation, it might as well be something that pays well. But that doesn't take care of the psychic toll it takes. Your father's advice may point to the secret of how to keep your day job from draining you. Maybe it's true that we get back what we put in. Wasn't it the Buddha who said, "Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it"? In the case of a day job, I would amend that to, "to give yourself to it from nine to five only and then give yourself to the work you love the rest of the time," but anyway it does seem like one would be happier getting to the end of the day knowing that whatever you were able to get done by quitting time was the best you could do, rather than dividing your energy all day by wishing you were doing something else the whole time. (And by "you" here I mean "me.")