Can You Be Objective When You Are Involved?

The ability to objectively evaluate one's own performance is often the most challenging and difficult. We are often blind to our own shortcomings, either because we purposely or accidentally delude ourselves, vanity, insecurity, inability to accept criticism (even if it's self - criticism), or because we just don't fully understand the situation or circumstances sufficiently to perform a meaningful self - critique. One common trait of most great achievers is that they always expect and demand more from themselves, always seeking way to improve and do better. Critiques are important because only through introspection can we possibly improve and achieve.

1. Many people claim to be objective about themselves, yet few ever truly are. Many have fragile self - confidence, poor self images, or falsely build themselves up because it either makes them feel better about themselves, or because they don't sufficiently understand the situation. Just like the error in assuming that most course or seminar evaluations are extremely valuable, assuming that people know themselves is also an error. For example, if attendees at a seminar are not well versed in a subject area ( which obviously is often the case, because otherwise they probably would not attend that particular training program), how and why would we anticipate that they were knowledgeable enough to meaningfully evaluate the seminar. For this reason, the present day fixation by many organizations, event planners, and seminars, to rely heavily on evaluations, probably accounts for the popularity of entertaining presenters, even if they don't sufficiently cover the subject matter. Do you understand why it is so difficult for most of us to be objective when it comes to ourselves?

2. Most people find it challenging to objective when they are not personally involved, so why is it surprising that they could be not be personally objective? Objectivity is difficult when it comes to others because we generally are significantly and somewhat unduly influenced by our first impressions of someone, and whether we like that person, feel he is honest and has personal integrity, as well as being related to if we can respect someone. Not surprisingly, this situation is also true when it comes to how we feel about ourselves. The majority of people, I have observed, would probably not like someone else who was much like them. While many attempt to fool others into believing certain things about them, it is often more difficult to lie to ourselves. Until we get to the stage where we behave with the personal ethics and integrity that would make us both proud and self - confident, objectivity is often challenging.

Each of us should challenge ourselves to continuously be the best that we can be. That will only happen when we permit ourselves to be objectively introspective.