The importance of establishing healthy standards

According to the Oxford Dictionary the meaning of a benchmark is:

“A standard point of reference against which things may be compared or assessed.”

This all sounds so simple, but who sets the standard?

We are all exposed to “benchmarking” at some point. My first experience with benchmarking is from my childhood, though at that time I was not aware what exactly was going on. I only had a strong feeling that something is very unfair here. 

My parents often asked me after receiving my school report card how other kids did in my class. They mentioned a few by names, and I shared their results. If my answer was that the particular kid got the same result or worse than myself, their response was: “I don’t care about other people’s kids. Mind you, you just asked 5 minutes ago. I want to know why you didn’t deliver to a higher standard”. The standard being my parents’ expectations, not what I wanted to achieve in a particular subject. If my answer was that another child had done better. My parents immediately gave me a lecture about how it is possible the other kid could learn the subject and I couldn’t. After all, they provided everything, and I only had to study. So how come my performance wasn’t exceptional every time? Well, I could have listed the facts that would have my case, but I learned soon enough that there was no point to that.

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