Self Evaluation: The Mantra For Achieving Great Heights

Have you realised that every second Indian you meet, is an expert in advising others how they should do their jobs. They are not bothered about the quality of their own job but about the quality of the job of others. They are not concerned about the slow speed of their own execution and their own poor results. But they still give their expert advice and comments for every other person they come across. They behave as if they are “Know All” about everything.

I am sure you must have noticed when a group of highly enthusiastic cricket fans are watching a match on TV and suddenly Kohli misreads a ball and is stumped out, there is a sudden gloom among the spectators and a few start giving their expert comments as to how Kohli should have faced that ball and this analysis goes on and on by those who are not even part of the mohalla cricket team. The worst is some of them go to the extent of blaming his poor game on that particular day to his marriage and even start advocating his retirement.

It also happens that when a team wins, everybody is ready to take the credit. But when a team fails, nobody comes forward to take the responsibility and generally everybody is searching for the scapegoats. It is said that “Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.” So whenever, anything goes wrong, the general tendency is to put blame on someone instead of looking for the root cause.

I have seen some parents have a habit of blaming the teachers of their kids when they do poorly in their exams without realising that there are children in the same class who have scored marks even more than 90%. Some parents even become judgemental to the extent that they start blaming the full community of teachers. I don’t deny the fact that there are some irresponsible teachers who have converted this highly noble profession into another ordinary profession of livelihood. Teachers are considered to be role models for their children and are the builders of future of a nation. So a highly responsible and dedicated behaviour is expected from teachers. But fact is that majority of teachers may not measure upto the expectations.

Now let me ask such parents from diverse professions who point fingers at the teachers of their wards, if they do their duties diligently. Let us ask a police person if he/she does his/her duty with full devotion and dedication without expecting any favours in return. Let us ask a government employee in an office whether at a junior or a senior level, if he/she reaches in time at the office and then does his/her job with total honesty, integrity and sincerity. What is the seriousness and involvement of a doctor in a government hospital while treating poor patients? What level of ethical practices are followed by your brother or sister who is involved in business of grocery goods? What is the level of ethical and moral behaviour of an engineer involved in building a bridge or a building?

Unfortunately, 80% of us point fingers at others about how they should do their jobs without bothering about our own job. We are expert in finding faults with others. We even pretend as if we know a lot about the jobs others are doing. Obviously, we also keep getting advice about our job also from others who have hardly any idea about what we do. So this chain reaction of blaming others keeps going on resulting into mistrust, misunderstanding and even mud-slinging on each other. All this leads to an unhealthy environment all around us.

Wouldn’t it be better if we focus all our time, energy and efforts to improve our own skill sets and our own performance in the areas that we are supposed to do. We should evaluate our own performance. We should even go to the extent of seeking sincere feedback from all those who use our products or services. We should even take feedback from our seniors, colleagues and even juniors about our day to day dealings in the office. We should also seek feedback from our customers who use our products and services and then try to improve them so that our customers are fully satisfied, nay delighted.

We should focus on achieving excellence in our own areas of operations instead of finding faults with others. Imagine what will happen, if all of us start evaluating ourselves instead of pointing fingers at others. If all of us strive hard to deliver the best possible services and products to our customers, the society where we live shall become a better place to live. If all of us become alive to our duties rather than rights, the world will become a much more wonderful place to live. But what we normally do is that we forget our own duties and keep reminding others about their duties.

This type of behaviour is frequently seen within our family and social circles also. The husband has a list of all the things that his wife should be doing. But he doesn’t have the time and the intent to look at the list that he himself should be doing for his wife, children and parents. The same holds true for the wife also. She knows all the pitfalls and the problems her husband has. She is fully aware about his duties towards her parents and her other family members but is negligent towards her duties to her own in-laws.

Let us start looking inwards instead of pointing fingers at others. Let us start doing self evaluation instead of evaluating every other person that we come across. By accusing others of non-performance or poor performance all the time, we shall not gain anything. But if we look at our own performance very minutely and analyse the ways and means of improving it, we shall become better performers. We can keep raising the bar for own performance. Let us become a bit selfish in the sense that we concentrate more on improving ourselves than on improving others. Let us stress on Self Evaluation and that is the Mantra for Achieving Great Heights. This message however, doesn’t apply to teachers, coaches, mentors and parents whose job itself demands pointing out short comings of those whom they are teaching or coaching.