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Japanese Non-Self Work Evaluation
Just recently at my current job I was asked to evaluate myself. I took my time and truthfully answered the questions that asked about how I was doing at my current job but to my surprise my general manager told me to change my answers and reduce my points to the average.
The survey asked a variety of questions from how well you work with other departments, how clean your office or desk is, your willing to learn multiple skills, knowledge of the whole company, and skill level for your current job.
In the end my total evaluation point was about a B but for some reason at the bottom of the evaluation sheet, it said that the average points was 60 which is about a D. In America, you would answer truthfully and your boss would tell you truthfully how well you’ve done but in Japan you must always be average. Japan has a famous saying which is the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. In this case, they purposely put the average points on the bottom of the sheet to let you know that you must have a total amount of points around this number.
A normal evaluation would never add that at the bottom because it would influence your points. My general manager told me to reduce the points on my own evaluation. Essentially it defeats the purpose of even making us evaluating ourselves. I realized this and just changed all my answers to 3 out of 5 making my total points…
