I'm doing executive training because _________
I always thought that doing a 'self-evaluation' for my performance for the year was awkward….My bonus was on the line and I'm highly incentivized to score highly on my PE…but always felt pressure to give myself a 'fair score'
Turns out, this is just human behavior that companies and executives capitalize on to negotiate people down from their performance evals. For example (real example used in the training), if I were buying something on like…facebook marketplace or craiglist and someone was asking for $45, and I only wanted to pay $40ish for it.. I would offer 35 and offer to meet in the middle. This is the same logic I am told to apply to PE negotiations.
Of course, someone asked about 'What about when someone scores themselves high across the board?', it turns out, people rarely do this (HBS data), regardless of their performance (you could absolutely CRUSH it at work for example, but to give off a sense of humility, you might score yourself 'acceptable' in a category you know you crushed.) And if someone does do this, it's usually someone who performed POORLY (or that's what we were taught at least, basically, the greatest variation in review score and Self evals were people who scored themselves high across the board.)
It's a scam and should be illegal. This is thousands of dollars people are getting cheated out of annually. It's regarded as a corporate best practice to implement self-evals to your org as a cost cutting measure.
I don't really have any advice to give anyone, I'm sure people have had varying degrees of experience with PEs, but from an executive decision making standpoint, this is why self-evals were implemented. Not to give the employee a say for 'fairness' but to exploit and negotiate people off their bonuses they deserve.