blog-header-new.jpg

Would You Get 3 Out Of 5 Stars?

What if everyone who interacted with you had the opportunity to rate your performance?

Guess what? They already do.

Peruse LinkedIn, Glassdoor and Yelp, and you’ll see personal comments on everyone from CEOs to a specific waitress at a coffee shop. RateMyProf.com changed the game on professors by giving students the opportunity to give the professor a grade. If the instructor shows up disorganized or rambles off on self-absorbed lectures, the world will know it by the end of the semester.

It’s not just buyers, employees and students who have gone rating-happy. Uber drivers rate their customers. If you get too many 2-star ratings, and you can forget getting picked up in the rain, the driver will choose someone else.

In a hilarious South Park episode, every Joe and Jane in the city claimed to be a food critic. Upon entering an Applebee’s equivalent, they smugly announced, “I’m a Yelper” with all the gravitas one would say, “I’m the New York Times Food Editor.” They demanded special treatment by lording over the owner the threat of a bad Yelp review.

There are even sites to rate your ex-boyfriend or spouse. “Bill was nice, but kind of boring, I give him 3 out of 5 stars.”

We’ve become a star-happy, rate-everything culture. It’s only a matter of time before your Facebook or Google page includes an option for family and friends to provide assessments. “Lisa is fun, but she talks too much, and falls asleep after three glasses of wine. Two stars.”

What if you didn’t wait for a Yelp review, what if you asked the important people in your life to rate you now? Let’s be honest. People are already rating you, and if you think they’re not sharing their assessments of you, you’re delusional.

Think about it, don’t you consciously or unconsciously assess the people in your life? Whether it’s a boss or spouse, they way you experience that person makes an impression on you.

Companies do exit interviews to find out how their employees experienced their jobs. No one writes a resignation letter saying, the leadership was poor, the benefits were mediocre and my job was meaningless. The real resignation letter shows up on Glassdoor where they spill the beans. Smart companies try to prevent that problem by using the data from an exit interview to make changes.

What if you did an exit interview on every failed friendship or relationship?

What would you learn about yourself?

What if you didn’t wait for your kids to discuss you in therapy, after which they will inevitably confront you about your failings when you’re too old to change?

What if you asked the five most important people in your life – business or personal – to provide you with honest feedback about the way they experience you?

How might you change?

What if the top 20 people in your life were asked to rate you? Would you be like Graham “Skroo” Turner, CEO of our client Flight Centre who gets a 92% approval rating on Glassdoor? Or would you be like Sears, whose people rated their employer 2.6 stars out of five and gave the CEO a 10% approval rating?

You want the people close to you to care for you unconditionally on good days and bad. But this is real life. Even people who love you assess their experiences with you.

If you want to know what they really think, consider asking.