I've been having a busy time since mid-December. Because during this time I have to do annual evaluation of my employees and this has to be done based on their performance. Like many other multinational companies, my organisation is also doing both ways evaluation. First the employee will self-evaluate his performance then his N+1 will verify that. As the process is quite transparent, the person who is going through the evaluation will be informed about his yearly performance through a one to one session. This is the most tough situation for me because evaluating a person is really difficult where everyone believes that he has given his best throughout the year.
It is a human instinct that they do not see or want to see the murky part of their life. In the same way, most people are afraid to self-criticize or avoid that intentionally so that their performance does not deteriorate. It is not possible to say that this kind of mentality falls into the category of offense, but I can say with certainty that it is very difficult for people with this kind of mentality to rise above or achieve success in life. Because if he can't detect his own mistakes, he can't correct them and the way forward gets blocked. Such a situation can be imagined as life within a limited boundary where success seems far away.
If a successful person can self-criticize, then it is very important for ordinary people to learn from it. I am telling the story of his self-criticism about a successful man I know. I have spoken about Abdullah Abu Sayeed Sir in several of my writings because he is one of my favorite person. He is a man of many talents who is primarily admired as an education aficionado. He has tried to attract people with the slogan 'In search of enlightened people' all over Dhaka city. One day he went to a seminar and criticized himself, saying that he could have done more in life if he had used his time wisely. He also said that if we could get a little less sleep in life, maybe the time could be used properly for the welfare of the people and for the peace of our souls.
I don't know if he used the word ‘sleeping’ in any metaphorical sense. But in fact many of us are actually sleeping and that is not real sleep at night rather we are pretending to sleep. We all know a sleeping person can be awakened but a person who is awake and pretends to be asleep cannot be awakened. A society is made up of a group of people and a country is made up of a larger society, so in order to move the country forward, people have to deal with self-criticism and their own mistakes, only then their own prosperity and the prosperity of the country will be visible.
