Remember the annual “performance evaluation” from more traditional jobs? Some of you may still hold down more “traditional” jobs–at least part time–while operating a home business as well. The goal of a performance evaluation is to look over the past year’s work performance and figure out what went well, what still needs improvement, and set goals for the coming year. Just because we are operating our own businesses doesn’t mean we can benefit from doing a little “checkup” with ourselves and giving ourselves a performance evaluation.
I’m not suggesting you have a literal conversation with yourself (unless you find that helpful!)–but at least creating a written document where you set down your goals for your business and your own professional development can be a great tool. Perhaps you’d like to set a goal for networking, contacts, work produced, income goals, expansion and growth, training and education, or other areas where you determine you’d like to put your energy. By getting things out of your mind and down on paper, you can then evaluate how you’re doing as you strive to build your business.
For a performance evaluation to be affective, it needs to have measurable objectives and identified goals that are personal and important. It doesn’t do any good to just jot things down because you think you should, you need to be committed to working on real aspects of your business and your own professional development. Some goals can be more general, but some should probably be specific: attend one networking event a month, get to work by 10:00 am, take two weekends off each month to be with family, attend 2 conferences a month, etc. This way, when you look back at your achievements, you can get a truly accurate picture of where you did well and where you still see room for improvement.
Be sure to give yourself positive strokes as well as the more critical evaluation. Many of us seem to be much better at beating ourselves up over what we think we should have done or where we think we should be with our business and professional development than we are able to give ourselves self-appreciation for what we do accomplish. A performance evaluation isn’t about kicking ourselves to the curb, but about organizing our work selves productively and taking steps to grow our businesses and develop personally.