In this post we focus on strategies to build greater self-awareness through the collection of feedback from yourself, your team, and your personal board. The goal is to establish a baseline of how you operate today, allowing you to identify areas for improvement, and more effectively build teams and systems in the future that play into your personality, temperament, strengths, weaknesses, and preferences.
First off, as a reminder of what we mean when we talk about self-awareness, we mean the following:
- How you feel in response to various types of work interactions and situations;
- What you’re good at;
- What you’re bad at;
- What you value;
- How you influence others; and
- How others experience you.
Build a point-in-time snapshot of yourself along each of the above six criteria by collecting feedback from yourself, your team, and your personal board:
- Feedback from yourself - Start by spending fifteen minutes, one hour, or one day sitting quietly at your desk, going for a walk around town, or hiking a local trail. Ask yourself what you’re like “in the office” across the above six dimensions. Here are a few more thought starters (not an exhaustive list):
- What are are some recent big wins you’re proud of? What contributed to your successes?
- What are some recent challenges? What could you have done differently?
- How do I feel right now? Is this a hard exercise for me? Why?
- Feedback from your team - Solicit feedback from individuals you work with often: direct reports, co-founders, investors and board directors. Consider who you actually think you’ll be able to accept real feedback from (particularly negative feedback) and who you trust. As the CEO, you’re used to being fed BS all day; the goal of this exercise though is to receive something wholly different than that. Two tactics to try and solicit “real” feedback, particularly from employees are: (1) anonymize feedback ; and (2) share recent and real examples with your team in advance of negative feedback you’ve personally received, praising the individuals publicly who provided the feedback.
Write down your thoughts. Journaling is incredibly useful, but if you haven’t built that habit yet, taking even just a few minutes to intentionally focus on these questions is a great start. After that, start scheduling time on your calendar to do it regularly. And then start writing down your thoughts. You’ll be able to look back at your notes over time, leading to even more pattern recognition and understanding.
If you don’t learn anything new about yourself through this process, it means something went wrong and you need to go back and rethink the setup.
- Feedback from your Personal Board - Get feedback from the individuals you go to before all of the big decisions you make about your business.
You’re already very comfortable having candid conversations with your personal board members and vice versa. While they may not be able to speak to all of the six areas listed above, they’ll have very strong viewpoints on at least a couple of them. E.g., your sister may not know how others experience you in the office, but she may know a lot about what you value.
Don’t assume you already know what they think because you’re so close and talk to them all the time. Chances are you don’t routinely ask them for direct feedback on your performance, strengths, weaknesses, etc from their vantage point. And chances are they’re also coloring their messaging to you based on what they think you should hear at any given point in time.
So when you set this up, approach it the same way you would for an employee or other teammate. Provide clear context in advance that you’re looking for their direct and honest feedback across XYZ areas to help you better understand how you work.
References
The importance of self-awareness
Sign up here to apply for a coaching engagement with Hilltop.