Taking time to reflect, learn and grow

In any strategy process there comes a time for performance evaluation. The intention of this evaluation is to measure your individual activities, your overall progress towards objectives, and/or achievement of the objectives themselves. This process gives the organisation an overall sense for strategy achievement and provides deeper insight into what is working and what they could amplify to push their results further.

Personally, it is my favourite part of strategy implementation!

*Nerd alert* I seriously love an opportunity to reflect on results that will enable me to learn and adapt my approach. And while I love timely analytics, I find nothing more enjoyable than a full year review of an objective where I can zoom out and evaluate year 1 vs. year 2 results and even go as far as plotting multiple years on a chart to better understand trends.

Strategy evaluation techniques applied to the self

In 2020 I started to apply my love of evaluation to my personal development. Before this time, I had unwittingly let things happen to me. As a big ‘yes’ person I would say yes to every opportunity that came my way, quickly becoming inundated with activities and projects. I was getting advice from managers and colleagues with the best of intentions, who were pushing me into skills and parts of the organisation where the fit just didn’t ‘feel’ right. With the help of a career coach, I was able to reflect on the ‘decisions’ I’d been making and on review I started to see what my body already felt – a misalignment of the work I was doing when measured against my values.

It wasn’t until I started to proactively reflect and plan my own destiny that I was able to turn this around, and it has since become an annual ritual. I love the optimism and hope that comes with a new year and enjoy capitalising on this feeling by taking time out to reflect on achievements of the year prior and to dream up the potential of the new year.

Personal reflection and growth approach

Given it is the beginning of a new year, I thought I’d pull together my three-step approach to annual reflection and growth:

1. Consider what went well

Find a quiet place with a pen and notepad and think deeply about the moments, interactions, and activities from 2023. What contributions are you most proud of? What interactions broadened your perspective and/or grew your leadership? What decisions had a positive impact on your family? How did you positively contribute to another person’s development?

2. Dream big

What work related activities, projects, strengths, or skills would you love to accomplish or grow? Make a list and don’t hold back. It can be as big and seemingly impossible as you like – it’s all about quantity over quality. This list can be rolled over from previous years if you’ve done this before.

3. Create a vision statement

Write a vision statement for 2024 pulling out 1-3 aspirations from your ‘Dream big’ list that align with your values and grow your strengths (that showed up in ‘what went well’). This vision statement will become the basis for your priorities from which actions can flow. Once you are happy with your statement, create 3-5 actions that you can commence straight away to get things rolling.

For the month of January - we’ve got a downloadable PDF template to walk you through the process. To download, simply subscribe to our newsletter and we will email it to you.

 Evaluation can lead to thriving

Performance evaluation is critical to any strategy, to ensure the activities that are being invested in are yielding results. While humans are not quite the same as strategies, we do have an inbuilt set of values that we consciously or unconsciously live by. When our actions are not aligned to our values, we can feel out of sorts which can impact our quality of life and ability to thrive.

Practicing regular reflection and being proactive about the actions we are taking related to our career can greatly improve the way that we feel about work. The above steps are a guide aimed at inspiring regular reflection and personal growth.

If you are interested in learning more about thriving in the workplace, supporting your team to thrive, or executive coaching, please get in touch. We’d love to have a chat about how we could help.