This week, among the many projects and deadlines, we were asked to fill out anonymous peer reviews of select coworkers. Before I knew who I was assigned to review I was very resistant to the idea.

My position in the company is quite unique, in that there are several departments and teams of people and I (kind of) don’t fit in any of them. I am THE marketing department. Ya know… blogger, copy editor, layout person, ad designer, print work orderer, sales message generator… yep all me. So, why would I be reviewing anyone? I don’t directly work with anyone in particular, yet I interact with everyone. I don’t report to one executive (like the rest of the company) as much as I take assignments from each of them. Again my thought was “how can I evaluate anyone else’s job or performance if I don’t really know what it is like to ‘do what they do’ on a day to day basis?”. I could rationalize how one sales person could evaluate another in comparison to themselves. (Have you figured out I’m an extreme analyzer yet?)

I had these conversations with myself for the entire 12 hours in between the time I found out we would be doing this and when I received the list of 5 people I was to review. For some reason, as soon as I receive the list it all become crystal clear to me.

I’ve always had the gift of being able to see someone’s strengths (even when they didn’t always see them). So, this was just an assignment of pointing out what I saw to be an attribute in my peers (and supervisors *scary*) and where I thought they could use a little improvement. I completed the assignment in much less time than it took me to analyze why we were doing it in the first place.

Out of it… came a desire to (in my best 5 year old voice) to ‘do it again!’. AND so I did! Tonight I hopped on LinkedIn and wrote recommendations for 2 coworkers and 2 other people I’ve had the pleasure of working with outside of my “day job”. I had so much fun doing that I think I’ll make this a regular event in my down time. I am blessed to come in contact with many talented people through my job, and the social media club I belong to, and even this blog. It’s inspiring to look at these people through the eyes of “what is great about this person.” I challenge you to try it. Maybe you’re not ready to do it publicly but what would happen if you sent an email to a friend telling them what you appreciate about them? You never know, today might be the day they needed to hear that.