On Painting and Performace Reviews...

I’m tired today… nearly falling asleep at my desk and I had coffee this morning. It’s post-Memorial Tuesday and I work to recover from a long weekend of house painting and a 1 year job performance review. Please tell me it’s 5:00…no? Sigh…

Painting was productive and fun, but we were probably too ambitious. Luckily our college student 30-something friend, Johnny, was able to help out… he’s a workhorse. Tonight, we’ll be doing some more work before the forecasted rain arrives… Summer in the NW doesn’t really start until after July 5th.

Performance review was OK…I’ve had them every 3 months for the year I’ve worked here. I love government.

Apparently most of my skills “exceed expectations,” none were “outstanding,” but I was given a “meets expectations” for my interpersonal skills. Gah! 1st of all, of all my skills, I’d sorta put “interpersonal skills” at the top… I mean, I have oodles of weaknesses but this had not traditionally been one of them. Yeah, I’m aware that it was not a bad rating… but for an overachiever like me? I know what “meets expectations” means.

Other than one incident where I took the initiative to suggest a tentative agenda for a bi-weekly team meeting and everyone couldn’t believe I did this without having a meeting with them first… I couldn’t think of any other reason why my interpersonal skills need work. Neither could my boss, ‘cause I actually argued about this and he ended up changing it to “exceeds…” I’ve never had to argue about my performance before.

I guess, in a cosmic sense, this is a good learning experience for me. I’m studying Organizational Development (The field of OD is concerned with the performance, development, and effectiveness of human organizations—Google definition) so this occurrence I’m having of not fitting with my current organizational culture lends some wisdom and empathy… yeah, that’s it.

Will my ego survive 2006? Tune in to find out…