Coming to terms with performance (eval) anxiety

If you work as a manager for a corporation or chain, one thing you dread more than the winter doldrums this time of year is that first email reminder about performance reviews. These administrative chores require a manager to divert focus from completing productivity-driven initiatives (which are waaay behind schedule already) to introspect on how to improve as a leader and a follower.

Admittedly, I haven’t taken these very seriously in the past. When asked what my goals for 2024 were, I put something like “reduce my number of heart attacks by 100% year over year.”

And in all places I’ve worked, they ask you to rank yourself on a scale of 1 to 5, with the tacit direction that no one is ever worthy of a 5, and only a rare few should put down 4. I’m sorry, but that is precisely in the middle of 1 and 5, the very definition of average. And as a leader, I need to think I’m better than mediocre; otherwise why the hell should anyone follow me?

And then HR has the gall to make you have your direct reports take time out of their day to think about the past wins and losses and their future, too. Good lord, don’t I spend enough time obliterating their self-esteem daily by critiquing every flaw in their work? I know, that’s what an editor does, but I sometimes worry how much more criticism they can take before they start jobhunting and find the big bucks that Buc-cee’s offers.

By the end of the review process, after giving myself C+ scores and seeing the minimal dent made in my ambitious plans, the only thing I’m thinking about is how I got into management and when I will be revealed as a fraud.

That’s how these evals feel to me. They’re nerve-wracking for all involved and don’t directly impact our never-ending to-do list, so what’s the point?

We get to that point in Alex Keenan’s feature on performance evals. After editing it, I realized I’m not alone in feeling, well, alone. Performance check-ins, be they weekly, quarterly, or yearly, are simply tools to loosen your internal pressure valve suppressing all your anxiety, stress, and doubt. If you take them as a challenge and not busy work—and they’re done more as a dialogue than a diatribe—they can lift you up to that 30,000-ft. view successful executives always talk about.

Seeing things from up there, the ground level, or the day-to-day stuff, becomes clearer and solutions more obvious. Like the answer to why I feel I don’t have enough time in the day. What if I spent less time on coming up with ambitious new projects to keep up with competitors, and instead made sure my staff can execute the fundamentals and manage their time well?

Good managers lead by example, and I certainly don’t want to lead them into the abyss. They deserve to know where they stand and how they can improve. The last thing I want is for them to inherit my bad behaviors. This means pausing my version of uptime, writing and editing, and planning on how to maintain their productivity, career trajectory, and overall job satisfaction.  

And it’s always good to practice what we preach, and one sermon we always try to give our readers is about the importance of root cause analysis.

If you think about it, performance evals are not unlike scheduling preventive maintenance, which we also know plenty about (thanks to our great sources). This month’s cover story is even on the importance of annual PMs and inspections, and how to take care of minor problems before they feed off neglect and grow into huge ones. It stands to reason that if we’re not taking self-improvement as seriously as PMs, what kinds of issues are festering and waiting to pop out like the baby xenomorph from John Hurt’s stomach in “Alien”?  

For me, that manifested as a myocardial infarction two years ago. While I exploited that medical trauma for a few writing awards, if I were to honestly reflect on the two years since, I haven’t improved enough to perform my job at a high level while maintaining a work-life balance and my own health. And as far as looking ahead five years, another question always asked in reviews, sometimes I think it’s six feet under the way I’m going.

But that’s anxiety talking. Wrenchway CEO Jay Goninen says these intrusive thoughts create a negative feedback loop. And reviewing your own performance, problems, hopes, dreams, etc., with your bosses can shut that unproductive voice up.

That satisfaction aspect is the most important, because if your people aren’t being fulfilled—like if you have that junior tech only doing lube jobs for the last two years—they will find a place that does care about them and their future. And who knows? If you help your employees mature and gain new skills, that won’t only relieve your workload and stress levels, but it’s something to brag about on your next eval, too.