Being asked to write my own performance objectives at work…

[Youngatheart00]

…and I feel like I can’t see the wood for the trees. Honestly, I’m stressing out.

I had a go, and it was thrown back at me for ‘not being what they had in mind’

Am I being unreasonable to just want my boss to set my objectives for me? Curating them myself and then being told they are not thorough or stretching enough is frustrating me so much and giving me a lot of stress. Any advice?

I'd just add a few bits in, re-send them and ask your boss to comment in tracked changes. Or is that too passive aggressive? You're not a mind reader, there is only so much you can do 🤷‍♀️

You need more feedback on what they mean by “not what they had in mind” and a bit more of a steer, but it’s not uncommon to have to do the drafting yourself.

You write up what they want from you. It turns out that's not what they want from you. You have to try again. This game is nuts. I'd have finding another job as my main objective.

Do you have colleagues who would share theirs? I always start my performance review with a nosy at other people's.

Ask them specifically what they had in mind. Put it right back in their court.

What you need to do is step back emotionally. Performance objectives and reviews are one of those things employers think are important but which make sod all difference to how well you do your job. You will have to do a lot of these mind-numbingly pointless tasks throughout your working life.

So, play along but don’t use up emotional energy. It doesn’t matter if they send them back to you for amendment 10 times. Throw something together, send it back to them. It wastes their time as much as yours and they’ll get bored with it and sign it off eventually.

The only thing to be wary of is not committing yourself to something impossible if you’re on performance related pay.

Ask to see your managers. Ours usually cascade down so you should be able to cobble together something from that.

This is a nonsense game and as said above is rarely reflective of what you do day to day. I had to do it and I’m return ask the team
I managed to do it. I usually rehashed what I said the last time.
Your company probably has a mission statement somewhere. Take the key points from that and expand. I hated it. It was bollox. It’s why I now work for myself :)

I always wrote my own performance goals but it stems from the department/company goals abs trickle down. Are there department or wider company objectives that you can reference to show how your goals will contribute to them? If not then I agree this is a particularly difficult task!

I ask all my team to do their own but do support them. Objectives should be SMART so specific, measurable, achievable, relevent and time bound. So if you have one goal as finishing a certain project then state how you will do it and when by.
I work on the rule of 6 objectives, 3 around performance, 2 development (courses, behaviours, self care) and 1 around career. Hope this helps

Writing our own objectives is standard in my workplace BUT there is always a 1:1 meeting with a manager first to discuss plans, goals and development needs for the year ahead which gives some clear context and a starting point to the objective setting. As a manager I would end this meeting by ensuring that we agree the objectives will focus on areas a, b, c, d but will not give exact wording as it is important for the employee to take full ownership of what they want to achieve.

Sometimes, what comes back to me can't really be considered an objective, more a list of expected outcomes e.g "increase income". In this case, I'll have another brief chat with the employee to interrogate their thinking along the lines of "why is it important to increase income? What will the benefit be to the company/you as an individual? What part do you have to play in this/how will you, specifically help us get to this point?" from there it usually becomes much easier to identify objectives on an individual level.

I suspect that your bosses are refering to the fact that your objectives do not read as such but they really need to give you guidance. If it is simply that they don;t like the objectives that you are setting for yourself and have other things in mind which they expect you to mind-read then they are, in fact, arseholes. Asking individuals to set their own objectives can be a really good and productive excercise but only if you are willing to listen and work with the employees to realise these goals.

There are lots of helpful sites out there about this if you google "difference between objectives, goals and outcomes" or "setting personal work objectives".

I've always been asked to write my own - I didn't think it was that uncommon?

Usually I would base them on the overall business objectives for the year and find a SMART objective which allows me to contribute to that objective.

I hate writing my own objectives.

I only played this game of "not quite what I had in mind" once. I bounced it straight back and confirmed that the objectives were in line with the information I'd been provided about our direction for the year and were measurable, stretching, contributing to the business in a positive way but ultimately achievable if I worked well. If this didn't align with their thought process then they needed to provide constructive options for alternatives and how my suggested ones didn't meet their "mind". Obviously worded slightly less aggressively.

It was the last time my manager gave vague feedback. Now my objectives are constructively criticised with suggestions for amendment, deletion or addition. It's a shit manager that just vaguely says "I don't like it" without saying why.

My boss got me to do this as he's relatively new and hates what he sees as admin. I was going to object, but I'm hoping to secure a new job in the next few weeks then resign, so couldn't be bothered rocking the boat.

Thanks all for the advice. What it really indicates tbh is a lack of engagement of my line manager in my work. She doesn’t know or care really what I do (or so it seems). I’ve now sent a second draft back so we will see. I’m genuinely too busy to have all these minute objectives to monitor, some of which we don’t even have the data to monitor. I’d much rather focus on the big picture. Very frustrated