The toughest yet most effective way to boost employee productivity and work efficiency is to improve self-knowledge. Forbes contributor Michele Corey said as much when she named "knowing yourself" as the single most important skill for success.
Self-knowledge enables people to power out their best work possible without fear. It enables them to ask colleagues or supervisors for help or clarification. During performance reviews, self-knowledge enables employees to distill development points without taking them personally.
Try this on your next performance review: File away positives and use them to shake yourself out of a bad day, but focus on your areas of opportunity. These points aren't negatives -- they're ideas on how to push your effectiveness even further from an outside, unbiased perspective.
Forcing yourself to acknowledge -- and even embrace -- "negative" feedback will help you create an implementation temptation that ultimately trains your brain to improve your weaknesses.
