Leadership Competency 6: Embraces feedback and owns self-development
The last two competencies are self-development related. The first one is about embracing feedback and owning your own self-development. Mark Twain said "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Take the initiative with your life and own your personal development. Do the things that will continually develop you more into the person you want to be so you can have the impact you dream of. One of my executive coaching clients is a great example of this. She’s in her early 30s and has been a client for six months (about 20 coaching sessions). The changes I’ve seen in her have been nothing short of amazing. She sought out coaching to help her have better life balance and greater impact at work. She sends me her agenda for the meetings a day or so in advance with well thought out business issues or life issues she’s facing and wanting greater clarity to address. She loves to network with leaders (mentors) in her company and gain their insights and receive feedback as a gift and acts on it. She knows she needs to develop lots of different competencies to grow as a leader and is receptive to rotational assignments which help develop them. She recently applied for a special MBA program offered by the company and was accepted into the program which will start right after she completes her CFP exam in a few months. During this period, at leadership’s recommendation, she has rotated into a new role in an area where she has little experience so that she can grow and develop a new skill set. Talk about owning your own development, she’s a role model.
Daniel Goleman, who has written extensively on emotional intelligence, says “self awareness is the first component of emotional intelligence. Self awareness means having a deep understanding of one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs and drives. People with strong self-awareness are neither overly critical nor unrealistically hopeful. Rather, they are honest with themselves and others.”
Some good strategies to increase your personal learning and self-awareness include:
Welcome feedback as a gift and seek it out. People are often reluctant to give corrective feedback so to get it you may need to ask for it.
Become an observer of others during meetings and presentations. If they look bored or start looking at their phone or other material, interact with them about what they are thinking or any concerns they may have. Use the time as a chance to get constructive feedback.
Show humility and teachability. Many of us who have had success over time become overconfident in our views and devalue the ideas and contributions of others. Work extra hard at observing others and asking their views on the issues so you get a wider range of views and to avoid overconfidence bias.
Avoid being defensive. When you’re defensive, the feedback and connection with others will likely stop. Practice in advance how you will react to feedback in a way that is not defensive. Get others’ opinions on the response and tweak as needed to reduce defensiveness.
But self-awareness is not enough in itself. You also need to be willing to develop yourself in the areas that need development. People who are not skilled in self-development don’t show effort to improve and grow, they don’t take action on feedback they receive, they often tend to be defensive and overconfident, and they may feel they’re “too busy for this soft stuff”. I would argue that developing yourself has never been more important. Business and our world are both changing so rapidly that those who are unwilling and/or unable to change will become obsolete in their workplaces.
Some strategies to employ to improve your self development include:
Ask for a 360 degree skills and behavioral assessment. Ask your manager, peers and your team what areas (skills and behaviors) you would benefit from further development. Take their feedback seriously, especially if you hear the same development areas mentioned from multiple members of the 360. Review your annual reviews and other feedback reporting for development areas.
Develop a prioritization list. Assess with input from your manager and peers what areas are most important and would have the most impact and start your development there.
Sign up for educational and other training programs being offered to assist your development as a specialist and/or manager.
Know your blind spots and get feedback. Ask people you trust to give you feedback if they see you operating in your blind spots. Study people who do well in those areas and learn from them how they compensate to overcome in that area.
Learn from failures. When you make mistakes, do a “lessons learned” review. Enlist your 360 team members to do a joint assessment and determine what to change to keep the failure from happening again. Develop controls/dashboards or process changes that will assist in preventing a repeat of the experience. Your deepest learnings will occur from considering lessons learned from failures, so don’t waste those opportunities to learn and grow.
So develop a deep self-awareness and invest in your self-development to keep current with the changes in our world and in your business so you will not only survive, but thrive.
