Evaluate yourself to elevate yourself

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One of my prized work possessions is a sticker from a former colleague who bequeathed it to me when they moved to a new company. The sticker this publications manager shared with me says “I’m silently correcting your grammar.” I love it most of all because it's true. I absolutely judge others based on their grammar choices. Forget an “ly” at the end of an adverb and you will get an internal side eye. Use “whoever” when it should be “whomever,” and I’m going to stop listening as intently to what you are saying to me, no matter how much you want me to teach others in the office how to use PowerPoint.

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I know this about myself. I also know that taking on the public role of grammar scold in the workplace is a one-way ticket to getting your car keyed. This behavior turns people cold, explicitly makes them feel like they are being assessed and makes it hard to get through to coworkers on matters more crucial to the organization’s success than whether someone says “less” when they should say “fewer.” (Full disclosure: my wife is still helping me get this one right. Yes, I am a grammar scold married to a grammar scold with better grammar.  Our kids LOVE this fact).

I’ve learned this about myself through a process of self-evaluation. To observe and consider my behavior as it may be viewed by others. To look within at the shadowy parts as well as the brightly lit parts of my personality. To acknowledge what I might want to ignore.  I did this self-reflection not as an exercise in masochism, but to improve my self-awareness. To be present in my presence.

All this year, HFM’s Power Skills series will explore aspects of the power skill of social/emotional intelligence. Improving your self-awareness is integral to improving your social/emotional intelligence. And improving your ability to self-evaluate is integral to improving your self-awareness.

What is self-evaluation?

Efforts to self-evaluate are as old as human thought, when Ogg first thought, “Was it a good idea to hit Ugg with that rock? They seem upset.”  Socrates notably said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Thousands of years later, another deep thinker with a name that starts with “S” voiced the fruits of their self-awareness efforts when they said, “All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine.”  While much less ancient than Socrates, almost 60 years ago, psychologist Shelley Duval and Professor Robert Wicklund published a seminal work on self-awareness entitled A Theory of Objective Self Awareness.   In their book, Duval and Wicklund theorize that self-evaluation is a powerful tool to increase self-awareness by leading individuals to compare their behavior against an internal standard, leading to better emotional regulation and empathy. They describe self-evaluation as “a state in which the individual compares the self to standards and evaluates the degree of discrepancy.”

While the language may be clinical, the experience they describe is quite familiar. We’ve all had that moment when we noticed that a colleague was troubled when we walked past their cubicle, and despite the deadline we were racing against, turned around and inquired about how they were doing. Our inner voice first said, “Gotta get back to my desk and focus on the project.” But then we evaluated that impulse against the standard our Grandma set when she told us, “When someone is hurting, do what you can to let them know you care.” That discrepancy is the mechanism that turned us around to offer a caring hand and sympathetic ear.

How do you self-evaluate?

You’ve decided to work to improve your ability to self-evaluate. I’m proud of you! This is not an easy choice to make. Self-evaluation is inherently a vulnerable act. But like a caterpillar in their chrysalis, you will emerge from this process with a newly found approach to the world. Now what? What methods are out there to help with this process?

Mindfulness

To examine the mind, one must first learn to observe it. One of the best tools for this is mindfulness or meditation. In an article with my new favorite headline ever, “Mindfulness: how to train your chattering monkey mind,” Peter Danby, in speaking to his co-author Anna Johnson, writes in their 2016 article, “If we were all mindful of the impact our actions have, what’s happening around us and why we think and do the things we do, then the world could be a better place. But it has to be linked to a set of values that guide the choices you make and the skills and behaviors that make them happen.” They describe mindfulness as a “meta-mindset that enables people to be fully present, pay attention and consciously digest what is happening internally and in the outside world.”

Your mindfulness journey starts simply, with your breath. In a Mayo Clinic explainer on mindfulness, they suggest you "sit down, take a deep breath and close your eyes. Focus on your breath as it moves in and out of your body.” Listening to your breath begins the inward journey and gives you space to then perform a body scan meditation. The article instructs to “focus your attention slowly and deliberately on each part of your body, in order, from toe to head or head to toe. Be aware of any sensations, emotions or thoughts associated with each part of your body.” Now your body and mind are primed to be able to more accurately self-evaluate.

Journaling

“Dear Diary, I’d like to learn to be more self-aware. Do you have any advice?” XOXO Adam.

Many of us have experience in our personal lives with journaling, whether a diary, a gratitude journal, food journal, amongst many other types. We almost intuitively understand the value of journaling as a tool to examine the words in our head by placing those words on paper. Plus, who doesn’t like the smell of a new notebook?!  Journaling in a work setting can be just as valuable, albeit a bit less interesting for our sibling to read after they swipe it. (“Really proud of how I spoke up in that meeting”...um, okay, BOR-ING.)

Journaling in a work setting is better used as a tool to examine your assumptions than as a document of your experiences. In her 2018 article in Harvard Business Review “What Self‑Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It),” organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, Ph.D., suggests to “ask ‘What’ questions rather than ‘Why’ questions to gain insight without rumination.” What are the market factors that make me think now is the right time to bring out this new version of our product? What was the winning argument the chief information officer stated in the meeting that got their project approved that I could use to fund my deferred maintenance project?

Some business-focused journaling prompts include a 3G statement, in which you document goals, items for which you hold gratitude, and something that grounds you. For example, my 3G statement for this article would be: My goal with this article is to inform and entertain you; I am grateful for the opportunity to write it,; and I am grounded by the fact that you will be switching over to cat videos on TikTok as soon as you are done.

Another example would be  visioning or brainstorming. Good ideas in your head are just random electrical impulses. Putting those ideas down on paper is the first step to turning that synapse exercise into physical reality. Both examples give you an opportunity to evaluate your perspectives on the work that you do.

Asking for Feedback

A colleague once told me, “You’ve got great things to say, but you’re trying to think through what you are saying as you say it. It’s like your computer reboots in the middle of the sentence.”

They said this the day after my supervisor said something similar. This feedback led me to a Dale Carnegie class on public speaking that gave me practical tools to improve how I verbally communicate in a work setting.

In a 2017 interview with Eurich in Knowledge at Wharton, the doctor justifies the value of asking others for feedback in simple terms. “We should also know how other people see us.” In a 2022 article in the same journal, author Adam Grant describes this as “confident humility.” Grant states that confident humility “is being secure enough in your expertise and strengths to admit your ignorance and weaknesses.”

Feedback can be as informal as asking how you came across in a meeting to a work buddy who was in the same meeting, or it can be as formal as a 360-review. The method of feedback is less important than being in a mental state where you lower your protective psychological defenses enough to absorb the feedback and respond to it with corrective action if needed. It is helpful to think of yourself in the third-person or as a project or a product for which you have received customer feedback and which you are trying to improve. Stay in a state of permanent prototype, always refining.

What’s to gain from self-evaluation?

There are many ways in which our modern life wraps us up in bubbles: algorithms that want to feed us images and speech that reconfirm our biases; home prices that make it more likely that our neighbors live in the same socio-economic bracket as we do; and  parenting habits that want to shield us from any type of pain or inconvenience. It is easy to float along in that bubble, Glinda-ing your way through the world. There is a reason why it is so easy to fall asleep in a warm bath.  

Nothing grows in a womb of ignorance, though. Self-evaluation forces you to step out of your warm bath and into a cold plunge of knowledge. Both Islamic spiritual leader Ali ibn Abi Talib  and Christian theologian John Calvin teach us that “to know yourself is to know god.” We manifest the best in ourselves when we can examine our thoughts and actions in the pursuit of understanding. From self-evaluation comes greater self-awareness — self-awareness that we can bring to our interactions with others. The ability to observe your own emotional state makes it easier to empathize with others’ emotional state. In an age where empathy is rare, cultivating that skill is like mining diamonds. Improved self-awareness and better social/emotional intelligence increase your chances for more effective teamwork, opportunities for advancement and. most importantly, greater understanding of the lived experiences of those you interact with daily.

Self-evaluation offers “the truth, nothing more.” If you’re ready to know how deep your rabbit hole goes, it’s time to jump in.

Adam Bazer, MPD, senior director of thought product development, ASHE.