Go Appraisal- 2

A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night
―Marilyn Monro

TechnoparkToday.com>>  March 19, 2014:  Raj is another Software Engineer, who himself is a very hard worker, working in a Corporate.  His self- appraisal was good and Second Level appraisal was also fair and he got incentives and he was promised of a promotion next time.  Raj was very proud, and curious to listen to his achievements, but he was not very happy.

Some of the people are not happy even after a good appraisal, at least according to them; award of incentives and even a promotion.Why is it so? Perhaps, many of them are not clear on exactly what they want. What they thought would make them happy is not helping them anymore. Is it because they are afraid of failure? Or is itbecause of lack of proper planning of career and life. Quite often it is the later. The question here is whether your new achievements are in alignment with your career plan. For that, have you got a career plan? What are your expectations? No idea at all. Then, people cannot be happy. That is what happened with Raj. Even after receiving the incentives and appraisal, he is unable to explore happiness.

It is really important to have a strategy for your career.

Sajan who is working with the ITES Company attended a training workshop on, “Discover Yourself” and started working on him.  Norman Vincent Peale, one of the America’s most popular motivator, speaker, and writer was born with a silver spoon, as the son of a minister. Except Norman, every member of his family was a performer in public as a speaker or stage presenter. As a boy, Norman was thin and painfully shy. Norman Vincent Peale recollects that before it was too late he could change his poor self image. Sajan was quite impressed upon Norman.

Incidentally, Sajan started enlisting his potentials every day. What is he good at? That was the list of his strengths. What are his shortcomings? Sajan started listing his weaknesses too.  Sajan felt good about him when he started to identify his strengths. He became more and more positive about himself.  He realized that he has lot of potential in him, which he was unaware of earlier. Slowly, Sajan began to concentrate on strengths and work on the weaknesses and worked to convert his weaknesses to strengths. How are the weaknesses covered? If weakness is rectifiable, rectify it. For example, if it is connected with skills, it can be developed through training, reading books, listening to audio books, watching motivational videos, undergoing counseling and practising the guidelines etc.Otherwise, accept it as part of you – positively.

When Sajan started to know more and more about his strengths and weaknesses, he started knowing about himself. This is ‘Self-knowledge’. Self–knowledge improved his Self-Image. It changed his imaginations, views, and opinions about himself. That has changed his life too. Then, his improved confidence started driving him. The glow of confidence appeared on Sajan’s face, eyes, postures, and gestures, started spreading to his entire outer personality too. Slowly, he started using the opportunities, knowing the threats around. He is successful and proves to be successful on every aspect he touches, professionally and personally.

Discover yourself. It is by concentrating on the Strengths, assessing the weaknesses, grabbing the opportunities around, understanding the Threats, one has to go ahead. (SWOT analysis)