Performance Review

Y'day marked the first month of my employment at new company, this engineering consulting company in Southbank (just outside the city). And today I had my first performance review with my manager.

He brought the review sheet with him and sat me down and asked me to ranked my performance. The rank is between 1 and 5, with 1 being poor, 2 need improvement, 3 good, 4 very good, 5 excellent.

Before he even asked me to rank each criteria (10 of them) I told him straight away that I can rank myself as 2 (need improvement) for all the criterias. He was so shocked, and he replied, "Oh, hold on a second, I think you're wrong. I actually think you did pretty good considering this is only your first month. But look, let's do these (pointing at the criterias) one at a time."

Then we talked for almost an hour. We could've gone more than an hour if not for my appointment for project review with another PM (project manager).

My review with my manager was interesting because he believed I have met his expectation and even did more than he expected in some areas.

I know that I've done well (please don't misunderstand me as I'm not boasting at all), but I believe there's so much room for improvement, because I made mistake here and there. Yes it is understandable as it's my first month, but hey, honestly speaking, I could've done better than that. Why I didn't do much better? Some part of it is my laziness, another part is my lack of initiation and/or my drive to push myself harder.

The drive to push myself harder to be better at something, brings me to this point, that some people (I'm talking about people in general and christians specifically) don't want to push themselves harder to improve or to be better at something because of 1 thing, FEAR. When I think of it, I admit I have certain degree of fear as well from time to time within me.

Now, this can be any fear; fear of failures, fear of making mistakes (doesn't necessarily mean failures), fear of offending someone, or even fear of success. Yes, fear of success. You'd be surprised to know how many people are afraid of being successful.

If you're one of these people (mind you, at times I'm also one of those people) who have fear (whatever fear it is), let me say this to you right now, "FEAR NOT" or "DON'T BE AFRAID." If you think you can't do it, then ask God to help you to do it. If you think the success will be too big for you, well let me say this to you, God has called you to be the head and not the tail, to be the overcomer and not the overcomed.

So here's my advice, strive to be the best in whatever you're doing. You can't be the best in everything, because you're not superman, no one is superman. But in whatever you do, do it to the best of your ability. NEVER COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS. Remember, even if your best is not good enough to people, remember this, God is pleased with you when you've given your best shot in the things that you do. And that's all you have to do, to give your best and let God do the rest.