I did not like hearing how your evaluator stated that the act of pursuing other mentors is a clutch.
I had to edit my responses to that unprofessional comment many times over. So, I have a lengthy response of advice for you.
Leadership is learning. Leadership is a chosen style and adoption of techniques. Try to see the human that is trying to do their job as a leader. It helps me calm down to see the human. Humans make mistakes and of course that poor performance doesn’t define you. Humans learn from their mistakes. As a human you will learn from your mistakes and that leader will to. They could have gotten it completely wrong, and that might fall out while you learn all the appropriate responses, policies, and solutions.
Try to stay clear of absolute assumptions of people. Meaning try to not ever assume that those in charge or others that come off like they know more, actually know everything there is about the job or leadership. They know stuff, they just don’t know everything. This helps me with flexibility in my mentality and the choice to stress. My goal becomes how do I improve my solution finding when these professional social conflicts appear.
The greatest advice I ever received was, if you don’t like what someone in charge is doing, don’t do it (behaviors such as snide comments, especially those who try to gaslight your ability to do a job, inattention to detail, poor leadership techniques, etc.) yourself now and when you are in charge. From experience, along the way, you might find out how hard it is to get into certain healthy professional behavioral habits. This helps your ability to mentor others. I recommend occasionally sharing the insights of that struggle when appropriate. It helps you to remain human which is a good and healthy leadership trait.
Remember how confused and scared you feel after this poor performance evaluation and write down how you think the situation could be handled better and prevented by active mentorship or training. Leadership is not all figured out and every work microculture has its own nuance and new challenge.
Manage that stress. Removing stress from your reactions to criticism is critical to ensuring that the behavior and response you want to display happens. I have a goal to do everything I can to avoid knee jerk reactions to criticism when I least expect the criticism. Therapists, if you can afford them, can often have great perspectives on human interactions and behavior. Most of therapists’ advice is already in books and online publications. So, if you can’t afford it, you are not out of luck.
On the comment about other mentors, look up other perspectives in books, online forums, and other professionals with gusto. Look at Harvard Business Review of how to handle certain behaviors of bosses and managers.
This is from my leadership experience and training: Mentorship is part of their responsibilities as a leader. It is not your requirement to look at them as your mentor. Leaders have to earn the respect of the people they are in charge of, it is not to be assumed that people have to respect them beyond professional courtesy, requirements to follow instructions, and policies. Leadership is a service.
I recommend looking into Stephen Covey’s books for managers and leaders and effective people. It is a good guide for professional behavioral expectations that work in most places and in high conflict situations.
I recommend starting a work journal of tasks you accomplished and your goals.
This is what I do:
As per many online professional recommendations, I started planning weekly goals and listing the tasks I wanted to complete by the end of the week. I also planned the tasks at the end of the day or in the morning. The bonus of this practice is that I have a record of what I have been doing. The performance goals and recommendations can be incorporated into your goals and tasks and then recorded in much the same way. The advantage here is that you have a record of your active engagement in your professional skill improvement and development. Which means you have supporting evidence in the event someone decides not to pay attention. It can also help with insight of what habits you might want to change to achieve expectations.
Always have in mind that you may have misinterpreted something and remain honest. This helps keep flexibility to spur self improvement.
Asking for feedback helps. In my experience, many do not respond well to the request for feedback nor give much insight. Giving feedback is a skill as well and not everyone has developed that ability to look at someone’s performance objectively and effectively communicate what skill could use improvement.
I started to cite SOP’s, policies, to be prepared for questions about why I was doing something. It also helped me reframe my expectations of how to perform in the specific micro culture that I worked in. Realize that even when you know these rules and policies like the back of your hand, the conflict can still be there and the conflict can still be high with inappropriate responses and claims of poor performance.
In order to be prepared for this:
I recommend looking into problem solving, solution finding, conflict resolution, professional communication, and high conflict. This will help give a format for how to deal professionally with the conflict of criticism that may not feel like it comes with much direction, nor an interest in your success. It is common that well-intended spoken vague expectations end up stoking fear. It’s a reasonable fear. The support and interest for your wellbeing is either not there or isn’t communicated well. Work culture asks people to follow the rules and instructions. You are lucky if someone pays attention enough to check before they assume you did it wrong and then someone starts pressing for an evaluation when a mistake or error occurs. I recommend learning how to look at problem solving to find the root cause of a situation. This helps me pay it forward, find the skillset to counter the habits of other leadership methods I did not like, and then look for those details that can be avoided with mentorship, checks, and training. This ultimately helps me achieve excellent results. I achieve excellent results simply because I looked for the real reason a mistake occurred. It is fun to find out that most of the time it is an objective communication nuance that is easy to improve and apply.
The perspective I take is that no matter what, I am growing my professional skills and learning how to problem solve these moments.
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