How to Gain Self-Awareness in the Workplace
My process from clueless about my strengths to becoming supercharged
You know those job interview questions about your strengths and weaknesses? I had zero idea what mine were, so I made something up. I always felt like an imposter when anything involving self-reflection came up.
In the workforce, the biggest time of self-reflection is the annual performance review. In my first job, we were always told to evaluate ourselves and then our boss would use that in their evaluation of us.
It started in an online assessment where I was faced with a wall of text and bubbles.
Questions that asked me to rate myself on a scale of 1–5 challenged me. I always drew a blank. Then, I clicked on the middle bubbles meaning “meets expectations.”
Suddenly, the research about women underrating themselves bubbled to the top of my mind. I had gotten no feedback on how I was doing so I had zero clue how to rate myself.
I felt I was doing a good job, but I didn’t want to seem arrogant by overrating myself. However, I didn’t want to seem not confident in my abilities by underrating myself.
