By Steven Prater
“You just did your job.”
Those words still resonate with me. The moment my Senior Rater hit me in my own self-worth during one of my previous evaluations.
If you are in the military long enough, you will eventually hear words that force an uncomfortable internal reckoning. Sometimes these words are voiced during an evaluation or counseling session. Regardless of where they happen, those moments linger and eat away at you long after the conversation ends.
Like many leaders, my first instinct after this last evaluation was to replay every mistake I had made. Although I received little feedback, I reflected on missed opportunities and moments when I could have led better. The easiest response would have been to become defensive or reject the feedback entirely. The other easy response would have been to let the criticism become the whole story.
Neither response would have been honest, and neither would have helped me grow.
The Army teaches us to conduct After Action Reviews for nearly everything we do. We identify what to sustain and what to improve. The purpose is not punishment. The purpose is growth through honest assessment.
But many of us fail to apply that same discipline inward.
We take one difficult conversation and turn it into a complete indictment of who we are. Or we receive a strong evaluation and allow it to hide the areas where we still need to improve.
An internal AAR is the discipline of reviewing yourself with the same honesty you would expect from a professional organization. It is a holistic look at the successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses, context and consequences.
What part of this feedback is true?
Where did I fall short?
What can I improve?
What did I do well?
Where did my strengths shine?
What context matters?
What contributions should I not erase?
What story am I telling myself that may not be accurate?
That is the hard part. We cannot reject feedback simply because it hurts. We also cannot accept praise so completely that it blinds us to where we still need to grow. Professional maturity requires holding both truths at once: I have areas where I need to improve, and I still have value. I have made meaningful contributions, and I still have more to learn. I can be encouraged without becoming complacent.
Not every supervisor will see the full picture. Not every evaluation will capture the whole leader. Not every comment will arrive with the care or context it deserves. But that does not relieve me of the responsibility to assess myself honestly.
The internal AAR matters because there will always be moments when external feedback conflicts with what I know about my own effort, growth, and performance. When that happens, I owe myself the truth. Not the version that protects my ego. Not the version that confirms my worst fears. The truth that allows me to learn, adjust, and keep leading without letting one moment become the whole story.
CPT Steven Prater is a prior service Field Artillery Officer and has served in the Army for over 11 years. He has worked in a variety of positions on assignments with 3/4 ID and 1/101st Airborne Division (AASLT) and most recently serves in the 2d Cavalry Regiment as the Forward Support Battery Commander and currently as the Bulldog Battery Commander of Field Artillery Squadron. In his free time, he enjoys traveling the world with his wife and daughter, as well as playing paintball with friends.
