When it comes to reviewing our own (or others') performance, it's important to understand the scale we're using. GetSpeedBack provides organizations with the opportunity to use different answer sets but for the most part a five or seven-point Likert Scale will be used.
Likert scale (text-based) answer choices can have a "scoring" equivalent:
<aside> 🚧 In general, we tend to favor the upper-end of the spectrum - we like to give a lot of 9s and 10s. Humans do this naturally in the form of social-desirability bias. We do this because we don't want to seem like we're overly critical of people we spend time with.
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It's important to recognize biases (such as social-desirability and central-tendency) so that we can be "realistic" when we're given an opportunity to review someone. We'd like to recognize others for their contributions but it's not possible for them to be exemplary all of the time. Rather, expectations of good performance should be around the middle (3 or 4) range, reserving "exceptional" choices (5s) for times when someone does something really special.
By taking this approach to reviews we're not being overly critical, rather, we're passing along a more accurate representation of their performance. This means that they'll have the information they need to be better.
<aside> 🚧 If you're "exceptional" all the time, there's no room to improve.
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Ultimately, it's important to be consistent with your scores. Review others based on your experiences with them and be as constructive as possible with your feedback. After all, the whole point of reviews is to give our teammates the best chance at growing, changing, and being better within the team.