Financial Management in a 360-degree Assessment: Why Underestimating your Abilities is Not Beneficial
When one has underestimated their financial management score, it is typically due to a lack of transparency
Garrett Mintz
, Tue 26 January 2021
The goal of a 360-degree assessment is to identify blind spots and vulnerabilities in your professional skillset. By getting feedback from your colleagues and comparing their perspectives to your self-assessment, you can get a deeper understanding of your work performance.
There are generally 3 outcomes from a 360-degree assessment: 1) somebody has underestimated their abilities, 2) somebody has overestimated their abilities, or 3) somebody is self-aware about their abilities. There are ten other articles addressing the two other possible outcomes of a 360-Degree Assessment available here:
Self-Aware - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management
Overestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management
Understanding Underestimating your Abilities for 360-Degree Assessments
When somebody has underestimated their abilities, they are essentially giving themselves a lower score for whatever category is being measured compared to their colleagues’ score of them. At first glance, this may seem like a positive thing: “If my colleagues believe that I’m better than my self-assessed performance, then I must be doing pretty well!” This is partially true, but this article will shed light and provide examples of how underestimating your abilities can be an opportunity for improvement.
When my team and I at Ambition In Motion facilitate mentorship programs, we also include our 360-Degree Assessment (and its report) to each participant. We’ve found that our members use these insights to reveal the areas most in need of improvement. This has helped members identify the best course for professional growth and helps provide a major launching pad for helping them open up and be vulnerable in their mentor relationships.
The 5 core areas we measure in our 360-degree assessment are People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management.
This article is one in a series of articles focused on why underestimating one's score on a 360-degree assessment report based on the 5 core areas listed in the paragraph above is not necessarily advantageous for one’s career.
Financial Management
Financial management is a skill that is often overlooked but can have a large impact on the company. Financial management is based on one’s ability to manage the resources they oversee (including their time and the way they are spending their time at work), a company budget, and others’ perception of a person being fiscally responsible.
If you gave yourself a lower score than your colleagues did on your financial management, that could indicate that your team is unaware of the way you are spending resources or that you don’t trust yourself as much as your team trusts you with financial management.
Your team is unaware of the way you are spending resources
If you are in charge of a budget and the only thing your team sees is whether or not you are able to pay for things (e.g. their pay stubs and other amenities around work), it can be easy to understand why your team would think that you are managing the funds optimally. When teams are left in the dark, all they can formulate is their perception of what is going. If you put on a good face and they consistently get their check, they may feel like there is nothing to worry about. If you feel like you have made some poor financial choices, your team could be completely unaware of these choices (or their effects). If you aren’t directly in charge of a budget, you could be wasting time or resources at work. If everyone sees you at work and it seems like you are working hard, most people won’t question whether you are putting in an optimum effort. If you know that you could be more efficient or productive at work and others don’t know, that could be a reason for a gap between self-perception and colleague perception.
You don’t trust yourself as much as your team trusts you with finances
In school, many people get stuck in the rut of being “naturally just bad at math”, and they let this label hinder their ability to grow their math skills. In the professional world, a similar issue can arise with Financial Management skills. Many people have been conditioned to believe that they just aren’t great at managing finances because of things that have happened in their own or their family’s past.
Here are a few solutions to help close the gap in one’s financial management. Ask your colleagues why they believe you are so strong in financial management. Try to find out what specific tasks you do and actions you take that give them that impression. Share your expenses with your team and try to find out whether you could be better at managing them. Be sure to listen to their feedback and incorporate useful ideas into your own methods. And if you manage your team’s budget, create incentives that encourage cost-consciousness. If you don’t manage your team’s budget, ask the person who does which parts of your work are the most prone to waste and ask for feedback on how you can be more efficient.
Counter-argument
The eternal counter-argument to this is “I just set the bar really high and I feel like I am not where I would like to be in this area.” If that is the case, then you are not effectively communicating your standards to those you work with. If your colleagues don’t know your standards, then they can’t properly assess your abilities in relation to those standards.
Overall, the goal of a 360-degree assessment and report is to identify the gaps and blindspots one may have so then they can improve their performance. The goal is to be self-aware, thus enabling you to work towards excellence in each area. Underestimating your performance might feel good at first because it shows others think highly of you, but continually failing to meet your own expectations means that you risk burning out or losing engagement. So, try being honest with yourself and setting honest goals. Professional growth is a slow process that takes dedication, consistency, and honesty, but by following the path, we are all capable of becoming our best selves.
There are generally 3 outcomes from a 360-degree assessment: 1) somebody has underestimated their abilities, 2) somebody has overestimated their abilities, or 3) somebody is self-aware about their abilities. There are ten other articles addressing the two other possible outcomes of a 360-Degree Assessment available here:
Self-Aware - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management
Overestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management
Understanding Underestimating your Abilities for 360-Degree Assessments
When somebody has underestimated their abilities, they are essentially giving themselves a lower score for whatever category is being measured compared to their colleagues’ score of them. At first glance, this may seem like a positive thing: “If my colleagues believe that I’m better than my self-assessed performance, then I must be doing pretty well!” This is partially true, but this article will shed light and provide examples of how underestimating your abilities can be an opportunity for improvement.
When my team and I at Ambition In Motion facilitate mentorship programs, we also include our 360-Degree Assessment (and its report) to each participant. We’ve found that our members use these insights to reveal the areas most in need of improvement. This has helped members identify the best course for professional growth and helps provide a major launching pad for helping them open up and be vulnerable in their mentor relationships.
The 5 core areas we measure in our 360-degree assessment are People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management.
This article is one in a series of articles focused on why underestimating one's score on a 360-degree assessment report based on the 5 core areas listed in the paragraph above is not necessarily advantageous for one’s career.
Financial Management
Financial management is a skill that is often overlooked but can have a large impact on the company. Financial management is based on one’s ability to manage the resources they oversee (including their time and the way they are spending their time at work), a company budget, and others’ perception of a person being fiscally responsible.
If you gave yourself a lower score than your colleagues did on your financial management, that could indicate that your team is unaware of the way you are spending resources or that you don’t trust yourself as much as your team trusts you with financial management.
Your team is unaware of the way you are spending resources
If you are in charge of a budget and the only thing your team sees is whether or not you are able to pay for things (e.g. their pay stubs and other amenities around work), it can be easy to understand why your team would think that you are managing the funds optimally. When teams are left in the dark, all they can formulate is their perception of what is going. If you put on a good face and they consistently get their check, they may feel like there is nothing to worry about. If you feel like you have made some poor financial choices, your team could be completely unaware of these choices (or their effects). If you aren’t directly in charge of a budget, you could be wasting time or resources at work. If everyone sees you at work and it seems like you are working hard, most people won’t question whether you are putting in an optimum effort. If you know that you could be more efficient or productive at work and others don’t know, that could be a reason for a gap between self-perception and colleague perception.
You don’t trust yourself as much as your team trusts you with finances
In school, many people get stuck in the rut of being “naturally just bad at math”, and they let this label hinder their ability to grow their math skills. In the professional world, a similar issue can arise with Financial Management skills. Many people have been conditioned to believe that they just aren’t great at managing finances because of things that have happened in their own or their family’s past.
Here are a few solutions to help close the gap in one’s financial management. Ask your colleagues why they believe you are so strong in financial management. Try to find out what specific tasks you do and actions you take that give them that impression. Share your expenses with your team and try to find out whether you could be better at managing them. Be sure to listen to their feedback and incorporate useful ideas into your own methods. And if you manage your team’s budget, create incentives that encourage cost-consciousness. If you don’t manage your team’s budget, ask the person who does which parts of your work are the most prone to waste and ask for feedback on how you can be more efficient.
Counter-argument
The eternal counter-argument to this is “I just set the bar really high and I feel like I am not where I would like to be in this area.” If that is the case, then you are not effectively communicating your standards to those you work with. If your colleagues don’t know your standards, then they can’t properly assess your abilities in relation to those standards.
Overall, the goal of a 360-degree assessment and report is to identify the gaps and blindspots one may have so then they can improve their performance. The goal is to be self-aware, thus enabling you to work towards excellence in each area. Underestimating your performance might feel good at first because it shows others think highly of you, but continually failing to meet your own expectations means that you risk burning out or losing engagement. So, try being honest with yourself and setting honest goals. Professional growth is a slow process that takes dedication, consistency, and honesty, but by following the path, we are all capable of becoming our best selves.
