Well it’s been another stressful week; I had to give input for a review that was very difficult. When I am normally asked for this type of thing I start with something positive and then give improvement points. This time I could not do that, I had no positives. It’s a position that made me extremely uncomfortable and so I spent the week in total stress about it.
On Friday I just went to the person’s manager and had a chat with him, going through my thoughts. It was actually a very good chat, and there were points that he wants to come back on when he has more time. He has also asked me to speak to him directly whenever I have any issues to stop me getting as stressed as I was this week. We’ll see what happens there…
I also have to start actually doing reviews this year. I have the first two coming up - in fact this afternoon is going to be taken with reading up on the review procedure so that I can start preparing tomorrow afternoon... Not looking forward to it, The first two are going to be easy (in fact I have a great team so it should all be great), it's just that there is something very nerve racking about giving a review to someone else. Almost worse than worrying about my own review...
I also did something stupid this week. My boss told me of a documentary on Dutch TV about a 16 year old girl, who has been living as a girl since she was 6. She has been one of the subjects of a long term photo documentary that Mrs Stace’s newspaper has covered for the last 10 years, so I was aware of the background story. It was online so I had a look. Bad idea, whilst it was a very good documentary, not sensationalist, it also left me in quite an emotional state. Maybe I should have saved that for after work…
The car has also managed to annoy me this week. After spending a small fortune on it for its service a couple of weeks ago it decided to break on me the very next day… So a trip to the dealers to get the error code read, and had to order a new part – which has to be fitted tomorrow. Grrr…
It was therapy week again – after the heavy session last time this week it was really great. But that’s a story on its own…
And finally – Friday I had the second round of having my face zapped. Less painful that the first in most places, but where there are clumps of hair it still hurt like hell, and my eyes still streamed from the upper lip!
The bright side? The effect is amazing – I have swathes of face that is hairless now; the effect has been *very* good - the woman doing the zapping commented on how little regrowth there was (excpt for the upper lip). And this time, as there is much less hair, I’m not red raw from it. I could even wet shave the very next day. Here’s hoping it’s even better next time…
I know all about reviews, Stace. Mine are due in a couple of weeks. Difficult reviews can always be stressful. I try to do them first to get them out of the way.
ReplyDeleteCalie xxx
Reviews ***shudder***. Don't have any desire to get involved again if I can help it.
ReplyDeleteAs for the zapping - despite the pain it gets addictive. For me it's four weeks of such smoothness its like a drug. I can certainly see me going for electrolysis soon.
It's not the part of my job I am most looking forward to - but it is something I have to do if I want to move forward in my career (and I do appriciate that life can't be all B&J Cookie Dough Ice Cream).
ReplyDeleteThe reviews for my team are going to be fine I'm sure - I have a great team and there is nothing bad to say about any of them outside of the required points for thought.
The review of the person outside of my team was a problem though. I really don't want it to turn into something political, and hate being negative about someone...
Stace
I've never had to do a performance review, but I hated getting them, because I usually knew more about my work and all that was involved in doing it, than my managers did. The organization that I worked in was very political, so incompetents who sucked up, would often get better reviews, than those who did a better job, but were more independent minded. Consequently, I never put much faith in performance reviews as a true measure of my value to the organization. I measured my value, in the amount of responsibility that was assigned to me. When things need to be done and you're the one they always come to to get it done, then you know your true value to the organization.
ReplyDeleteMelissa XX
Thankfully in our department we don't really have the clique issue when it comes to reviews. If you are good, and work well then that normally comes back in your review. If you don't then it doesn't. Or maybe I think that because I have always had a good review in the past.
ReplyDeleteIn previous companies I have had similar experiences. I remember in one company (where I worked to get through Uni) I had an argument with my manager when I asked for a transfer to the IT team. She said in a very condecending way that computers were complex and maybe I should ignore them for now.
I was studying IT at the time and came back with a list of things that I may not understand from micro architecture to network topology and asked if that's what she meant. She gave me quite a dark stare and stormed off.
Stace