Do you view others through the lens of judgment or evaluation?
There is a significant difference.
Evaluation keeps us as a neutral party.
It allows us to find opportunities for improvement without making it personal.
It lets us be curious, and drops the need to force change.
Judgment makes us a victim… and interacting through a victim mentality will never improve any situation.
In the workplace, there is no room for judgement.
In this episode I share how interacting with others through a lens of judgement is creating the exact opposite of what we desire, and what we can do instead to facilitate change.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain typos. Judgment versus evaluation in VetMed in life. That's what we're talking about in episode 105. Hey there, I'm Cari Wise, after graduating from veterinary school over 20 years ago, struggling to create balance and failing to protect my mental health and emotional wellbeing, I finally ditched all the rules and forged my own path forward. I used my professional education in ways I didn't even know were possible. And through that journey, I developed a deep sense of who I am, a brand new set of skills, and a clear understanding of what I'm meant to contribute to the world. Each week here in the Intentional Joy Podcast, I'll share what I've learned along the way in order to help you develop your own deep sense of personal identity and connection with yourself so you can live an empowered life on your terms too. This is what I call aligned living and it begins with intentional joy. So if you're ready to claim this for yourself, let's go. Hello, my friends. Welcome to episode 105. Today we're gonna talk about judgment versus evaluation, and this is a topic that came up in our most recent live support call inside of Vet Life Academy. It was a really interesting conversation as we took a look at the difference between the two, and as we were looking at it, I realized this is something that we are messing up in all kinds of areas of our lives. So what exactly is it that I'm talking about? I'm talking about a really common thing that happens when we are at work, where we look at what other people are doing through the lens of judgment. We don't like the way that they perform specific tasks. We don't like the way that they carry themselves, the com, the type of language that they use. We don't like the way that they are spending their time when they are at work. We think they should be doing something different. And when we get caught in that cycle of looking at our coworkers or even our employees through that lens of judgment instead of the lens of evaluation, then it really changes the experience that we have in the moment. When it comes to the workplace, evaluation is always the lens through which we should look at things. And honestly, my friends, if we aren't in a position of leadership, it does us no good to evaluate or judge what other people are doing. If we don't have the power of changing it, then what's the benefit of critiquing the performance of others? Because when we're doing it as a peer-to-peer kind of situation, from a personal standpoint, it's not ever for the purpose of actually elevating the entire company. It tends to come through that lens of judgment and critique. And only because we believe they should be doing something other than what they are. Now, I'm not saying that as peers, that we don't identify opportunities for things to be improved. And when we do, there's a very specific way to go about taking that information up to the people who can actually make change, the ones who can actually take the information and do something with that. And that's through what I call a high value conversation. It's a very different scenario than the one where we talk to each other about how a different employee is behaving When we stand around and we gossip when that person's not even there, that's not useful. Not only is it not fair to the person who isn't there to defend themselves or give their side of the story, but it actually has a very significant negative consequence on the people participating in that gossip in the first place. And gossip is almost always through a lens of judgment. Judgment. What's so interesting about that emotion and that activity is that it's always anchored within something that we ourselves are experiencing. We judge others most harshly in the areas that we also judge ourselves. It's a bit of a mirror, and there's always an opportunity and judgment for us to ask the question, where do I see this same behavior in myself? Where am I holding myself in judgment about this thing? How am I beating myself up for the same thing? It's a really interesting situation when you start to notice that where you judge others harshly and where you critique them is the place that you feel you're not measuring up yourself. And when we think about the workplace, and we consider judgment versus evaluation, judgment does nothing to improve communication across an organization. It doesn't do anything to help with team building or to help us all feel like we're part of the same side of this crazy life of VetMed. Instead, it just creates divisions. It creates a scenario where people are right and people are wrong, and that just really doesn't have any place in the workplace at all. It certainly isn't a component of building strong teams, but it is human nature. This comparing ourselves to others, it's just what we do. We've been taught to do it from a very, very young age. Our academic se systems are set up to actually perpetuate this comparison habit. And as we take that then into places outside of academics and into the rest of the world, we're constantly evaluating ourselves against other people and to feel good, we need to come out on top. That's why we end up judging others harshly and often in those areas where we're feeling insecure in the workplace, though my friends, it doesn't have any place, judgment is never gonna help your organization. But evaluation on the other point part absolutely will. And this is an opportunity where we have the ability to actually up level the performance of our teams through better evaluation. Evaluation isn't personal evaluation is just simply measuring data points. And in order to do that effectively, we have have to first set the expectations clearly. This is where we tend to get in trouble in veterinary medicine. We just assume that everybody should know what it is they're supposed to be doing, especially if they're a credentialed staff member. But that's just not the case. Every organization runs differently. Every position is responsible for different things. And unless the organization has taken the time to write out the employee manuals with job descriptions and then to communicate those the to the entire team, it's very possible that the team is not working from the same set of rules. However, everybody is judging each other on the set of rules that they think apply. This is why putting those employee manuals and those job descriptions in place is so critical so that everybody understands the expectation. The truth is it's impossible to meet an expectation that we don't understand. And so if we aren't sharing expectations with those people who work with us, then it's difficult for them to meet those expectations and we will then evaluate them or look at them through a lens of judgment instead of that lens of evaluation, which can be very, very neutral. When we have an evaluation process in place, we can then just evaluate their performance. We can look at what they're doing against criteria that have been decided in advance. And there's no need for any of that to be personal. This is very, very important for each and every one of us to consider whether we are in an official management role or whether we are in a bit of a kind of hierarchical management role, meaning perhaps your doctors in reference to your staff members, or if we're just in a peer-to-peer completely in the same job kind of relationship, evaluating the performance of other people. Looking at what your coworkers are doing from an evaluative standpoint can be very beneficial. And even if you're not the one that's the decision, the decision maker, as you look at your coworkers and watch them through curiosity from an evaluation perspective, the impact on you personally is much different than if you're looking at those same people through the lens of judgment. What we forget is that the emotion that we experience is never created by what's happening around us. So whatever it is that your coworkers may or may not be doing that you believe is driving you crazy, you've gotta take a step back and recognize the only reason you experience any emotion in regard to what they're doing is because of what you believe about them. And when you're judging them, that's bringing up negative emotion for you. And it's starting to compound to ruin your day. If instead you stop judging them and you just evaluate them, you just watch with curiosity for the things that actually matter and you just let go of the rest, then the days that you have are going to be much, much better. We don't need to try to control everybody in order to have a good day. We don't need everybody to be perfect in order to have a good day. Don't forget, my friends. We're in the business of the practice of veterinary medicine, and it is these personal interactions that have us feeling miserable a lot of the time. So much of our suffering is created by what we are believing about other people, whether it is our coworkers or our clients or our bosses or even our friends and family. So much of our suffering in this world is created through the lens of judgment rather than the lens of evaluation and acceptance. Because the truth is the humans are gonna do what the humans are gonna do. And unless we're in a workplace where there has been a clear set of a criteria output out there, an expectation that has been communicated, we don't actually have a lens through which to critique anybody. It's not up to us how other people live their lives. And so when we take this then into our personal lives and we judge the people around us for the choices they make and the way they behave, the only people that it hurts is us. So my tip for you today is to consider the way that you are evaluating or judging the people around you. Are you watching what they're doing with curiosity or are you watching what they're doing, anticipating that they're gonna screw up? Are you judging them before they've ever had a chance to even do anything at all? And ask yourself the question why? Because it's always gonna come back to some fear you have about yourself, something you're worried about, how their behaviors are going to impact you negatively. And most of the time that's just not gonna be the case inside the workplace. What I want us to consider and take it forward and start to practice is this idea of evaluation over judgment. Judgment has no place in your organization, whether it's among the people who work there themselves or with your clients. Judging them for their choices is not your job. It's not your job. It's not our job in our lives in any place to judge other people. And it does nothing but make us feel terrible. So instead of judging people and believing that you know what's best for other people to do, how about we just be curious? And when we're in situations where there's a true need to evaluate performance because there has been a clear expectation set, which is often the case in a workplace, then let's let those evaluations be the lens through which we look at other people and not add judgment on top of it. We have a very difficult time separating the two. And when we start to judge others, that's when we find it necessary to talk to other people about them. That's when we start to tell the stories of how it's ruining our day with their behavior and my friends, no matter how many ways you spend that story, it's never true. It always comes back to this, the emotion that any of us experience is always only created by our own individual thoughts, beliefs, opinions and conclusions. And if we want to look at the world through a lens of judgment, which keeps us then often on the side of the victim, then it's gonna be very difficult for us to thrive, whether we're talking about at work or in the rest of our lives. So as you head in to the next week, I would love for you to consider what are, is the lens through which you are evaluating the world? Are you looking at it through curiosity and true just evaluation, gathering data and information without making it mean anything? Or are you judging? Are you looking at everybody and what they're doing and believing they should be doing it different? And if that's the case, just be really compassionate with yourself because what you'll have to consider, what is always true is that where you judge people, you've already got that judgment being held against yourself in some way, shape, or form. So the way to start to release that judgment and that habit of judgment of others is first to work on your own self-acceptance. Because my friend, you don't need to be better than you are. You don't need to be different than you are. Sure when it comes to our jobs, we might have the opportunity to improve our performance against the evaluat or the expectation that has been set. There's opportunity for that. But as far as being a human being a good enough human, no, you're exactly fine exactly the way you are. You're perfect exactly the way that you are, and you don't need to be a better person. Consider the criteria that you're holding yourself against wonder and be curious about how you are judging yourself against this failure to meet this expectation and realize you probably never set that expectation for yourself. You've probably never even actually defined it. And so being able to meet it has been an impossibility. There's no need for self-judgment anymore than there is need for judging of other people at all. It's all just something that we do to try to understand and even try to change the way that we feel because we think that if we can be different or if they can be different, that we will feel better. But my friends, those better feelings, those emotions are never going to come from achievements or from actions, whether your own or somebody else's. So you can let everybody off the hook here. If we can shift into curiosity and compassion. If we can look at our coworkers through evaluation instead of judgment. If we can look at ourselves through acceptance and curiosity, our entire life experience gets better. All right, my friends, just something to ponder this week. I'll see you soon. Bye for now.