I am getting good at leading! That’s what I thought until…

My first formal 360 feedback process opened my eyes to the importance of self-awareness and comparing my view of how I show up at work to that of the people around me.

In the late 1990s I attended a weeklong leadership development course. A formal feedback survey was part of that program. The result was a 15 page feedback survey that polled 12 people, including: direct reports, my leaders, several peers, as well as myself.

I remember reviewing the aggregate feedback for the first time – it prompted a strong reaction. This isn’t who I am!

The responses and comments were all over the place, both positive and negative. I had to digest a wide spectrum of feedback points.

From those points, I made my first strengths/weaknesses list. It had 8 strengths and 24 weaknesses on it. (That asymmetry might be personality tell).

For me, this exercise was a real eye opener. We don’t see ourselves the way other people see us! 

The 24 became my “fix” list. If I was going to become a good leader I needed to be effective at each of these items. I also set a timeline and promised to redo the feedback loop after 18 months.

Did I think about it every minute? No, but I tried. I wanted to become both a better leader and a better person.

Fast forward a year and half later. Now, I was anxious to poll my colleagues again to check on my progress.

After considerable effort on improving the list of 24, I was convinced I would see dramatic improvement…

But the second survey results were horrifying. My strength areas hadn’t really changed, but on the weakness side I had 10 out of 24 remain the same and somehow I had collected 15 new ones – different than the previous survey.

I felt worse after the second survey and really doubted my ability to grow into an effective leader. I mean if new improvement points are continually added, then I am never really going to make progress.

At this point I asked for help from the coach that ran the earlier leadership program I attended. He laughed when he heard my development list had 20+ items on it. And shared that the purpose of the exercise is to find the common core themes in how people see you and your work. His advice: throw out the outlier remarks and focus on the common themes.

Slowly learn who you are and how you show up. (No, it was not Yoda that taught the program.)

After another 2 years I polled my team and colleagues again. And the results of that survey finally gave me a break through…

When I cut away the noise of the one-off comments and concentrated on the themes, the core of how I show up started to emerge clearly.

The light went on. I am learning who I am and that I can’t fix everything…

Another 2 years went by and I was invited back to the Leadership Development program as the guest speaker. We talked about the feedback survey they were working through and I shared with the new leaders my own distilled feedback:

It felt liberating to talk with the group about my long process to get to these 6 words and most importantly about how the improvement areas aren’t a “fix” list anymore.

While I am still actively working to improve when and how often I ask for help, to deal with Process and Project Management challenges I bring other people to the table (because I recognize this is where I need an assist to get the best outcome).

You may have heard “Asking for help is a strength – not a weakness”.

When I returned to the office after this presentation, I posted a copy of my self-awareness template on my office door. I figured it would be helpful to my teammates to see where I may be most and least able to assist them.

Before lunch that day, one of my team members came to me at the start of a meeting to let me know that “some idiot had put something about your weaknesses up on your door – but don’t worry, I got your back, I ripped it down”.  I looked at him, surprised, and then laughed. Maybe we aren’t ready for this much transparency.

While openly declaring personal strengths and weaknesses can by foreign to many, I believe it is a powerful leadership tool. Such transparency opens doors to having more direct and constructive dialogue with your people about how and where they can improve and also, it clears space for them to grow if they know you are looking to their expertise to compliment your own blind spots.

Steps to becoming a more self-aware leader:

1. Seek formal feedback from your colleagues. This will help align your personal view of your performance with the perceptions of those around you.
2. Repeat with some frequency to monitor improvement and core themes.
3. Discard outlier feedback.
4. Don’t be surprised or dismayed by repetition (even over a prolonged period of time).
5. You don’t need to “fix” all your weaknesses. Sometimes awareness is powerful enough.
6. Share your findings / results broadly – especially when you are working with team members on their own development points.

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle

Written by Andrew Steen
Edited by Logathasan (Das) Tharmathurai