Saturday, August 15, 2009

Translations from Personal Reviews

Once or Twice a Year we have these in most places of work. Unlike school reports (where if you are lucky your teacher remembers who you are when writing it), work ones often decided bonus and promotion. You can be damned by faint praise or ambiguous words. What do the words actually mean? Some key phrases and the possible meaning behind them

TENACITY - a polite term for bloody mindedness or stubborn attitude that has worked in your favour rather than against you

EVEN HANDED - they mean that this person tries to offend no-one so does very little

PASSIONATE - over enthusiastic to border line obsessed with certain areas of work

COMMITTED - over enthusiastic to border line obsessed with certain areas of work

DEDICATED - over enthusiastic to border line obsessed with certain areas of work

KEEN - over enthusiastic to border line obsessed with certain areas of work

DRIVEN - over enthusiastic to border line obsessed with certain areas of work

FOCUSED - over enthusiastic to border line obsessed with certain areas of work

ENTHUSIASTIC - over enthusiastic to border line obsessed with certain areas of work

TEAM PLAYER - cannot complete a task of his/her own so involves everyone to help with it, making decisions and announcing to office what is going on. Also first to stop doing their job if something more interesting is being done by someone else and they can assist/take over doing it

IN TOUCH WITH THE BROADER PICTURE - Complains all day about how badly company/organisation etc is run, usually with jaundiced but sadly accurate facts rather than doing anything about how badly place is run

SELF MOTIVATING - have not actually spoken to him/her for months and they have not sent any reports in or attended any meetings, but still claiming expenses and saw them in the corridor last week, striding past whilst talking on a mobile phone.

SELF ASSURED - arrogant self opinionated and rude. Possible senior management material

NOT A TEAM PLAYER - failed to bring in cakes on birthday, make anyone tea/coffee, go to pub after work or go to Christmas party and seems to have an OK home life and no personal problems. Smugly happy so not popular.

QUICK THINKING - someone who thinks about what they are doing; not to be trusted and got rid of when redundancies happen. If they stay that long.

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