… Because he had never worked in fresco as a mature artist, but only as an apprentice in the studio of his master Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo hired assistants, many from his old master’s studio, who had more experience with the medium. They helped him figure out how to apply the technique to the massive dimensions of the ceiling, and how to work on a painting surface that was arched above them…
CHAPTER 5
Neutral Self-Awareness: The American Idol Syndrome
The Challenge of Seeing Ourselves Clearly
Michelangelo seems to have had remarkably little resistance to acknowledging his weaknesses, including his lack of current capability as a painter, and particularly as a frescoist. As I noted earlier, he was even heard to tell assistants when he had little knowledge or experience in a given area, and to ask for their help. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t as unflinching about our strengths and weaknesses—and that self-deception makes it much harder for us to learn.
In fact, David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell who writes about the challenge of self-deception, has gathered a lot of compelling data about how “off” we tend to be, when assessing our own current capabilities. Here are some of the high points:
High school seniors: 70 percent report having “above average” leadership skills, compared with 2 percent who report their skills as “below average.” When rating their abilities to get along with others, 25 percent believe they are in the top 1 percent and 60 percent put themselves in the top 10 percent.
College professors: 94 percent think they do above-average work.
Engineers: in two different companies, more than 30 percent believe their performance is in the top 5 percent in their companies.
Doctors, and nurses: for treating thyroid disorders, handling basic life-support tasks, and performing surgery, this study of Dunning’s found, there is no correlation between what health-care professionals say they know and what they actually know.1
It sounds like the real-life version of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” So—why are we so often wrong when it comes to assessing ourselves, and why is that a problem when it comes to learning?
We Say We Are Who We’d Like to Be
The main reason we don’t want to acknowledge our deficits, it turns out, is that we secretly think we can’t to do anything about them. Carol Dweck, a leading researcher in the field of motivation and author of Mindset, has talked and written extensively about what she calls “fixed mindset vs. growth mindset.”2 In her research, she’s found that many people believe they are who they are: that their current capabilities and strengths are pretty fixed. With this underlying belief, it makes sense that we wouldn’t want to acknowledge our lacks or deficits: if we believe that who we are right now is who we’re destined to be, then, of course, we would also want to believe that who we are right now is wonderful. In other words, our unrealistically positive self-perceptions cover over our belief that we’re not great now… and we’re never going to be great.
My favorite example (though also very poignant) of this lack of neutral self-awareness, and the insecurities that reinforce it, is what I’ve come to call “the American Idol Syndrome.” We’ve all seen it: those contestants on the program who cannot sing by any objective measure, and yet who tell everyone (loudly and with conviction) that they expect to win the contest and go on to become the next great American pop sensation. Because they want so much to win, and they (I suspect) believe that they’re as good as they’re going to get, they’ve convinced themselves that they are—right now—completely awesome. And so these contestants will tell the show’s hosts and the American viewing public at every opportunity that they’re exceptionally talented and accomplished vocalists.
I’ve also noticed that these folks are always astonished and resistant when the judges say, accurately, “You have a terrible singing voice—I hope you haven’t quit your day job, and you are definitely not going on to the next round.” In fact, when interviewed after their unsuccessful auditions, these contestants generally cling to their belief in their own capability, ascribing their failure to the judges’ bias, to their own nerves, or to no one appreciating their “unique talent.” In other words, they immediately re-erect their psychological defenses against acknowledging the possibility that they may simply not be good singers.
Why It Matters
It’s unlikely that self-deceiving American Idol contestants go home the next day and call a singing teacher, saying, “I’d really love to be a great singer, but I’ve realized I’m not very good right now, and that I need a lot of help if I want to improve.” And that’s why neutral self-awareness is so important. If you want to be good at something, and yet you’re not willing or able to be accurate about your current level of capability, you won’t be open to doing what you need to do in order to improve.
We often run into this phenomenon as executive coaches. When someone we’re coaching has an area of weakness but believes it’s a strength, any suggestion we might offer to support improvement is liable to simply bounce off the person. Let’s say, for instance, that a coachee thinks he’s great at building strong teams, but the input you’ve gotten as his coach is that he’s actually very bad at this. You can give him the feedback, you can explain to him the characteristics of high-performing teams, and you can offer him skills for building those characteristics on his own team… but if he’s convinced he’s already good at it, he’s unlikely to absorb much of what you’ve shared. This is why, as coaches, we always put a good deal of effort at the beginning of the engagement into raising the level of neutral self-awareness of the coachee: otherwise, anything that follows is likely to be a waste of everyone’s time.
Getting Clearer About Yourself
Fortunately, there’s a surprisingly simple way to become aware of how you see yourself, and to shift your self-perception if it’s not accurate. In other words, you can become more neutrally self-aware.
To increase your neutral self-awareness:
Manage your self-talk
Become your own fair witness
Invite good “sources”
Neutral self-awareness starts when you gain more awareness and control over how you talk to yourself about yourself. Most people don’t know that you can do this, but it’s true: you can actually change your internal monologue. Once you’ve begun to learn the skill of managing that inner voice, you can build on that skill to become a more objective and accurate observer of your own life and capabilities—a “fair witness,” if you will. And when your assessment of your current capabilities is more accurate and less defended, you can then be open to feedback coming from those around you. Then you can take the final step in building neutral self-awareness: finding people who are good sources of information about you and inviting them to share their insights with you.
How Neutral Self-Awareness Looks
The first time I spoke with Adam Stotsky, I was impressed by his level of neutral self-awareness. He had just been hired as the president of a cable TV network at NBCU that was about to undergo a major rebranding and repositioning. Adam’s new boss, Bonnie Hammer, chairman of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group, who had worked with Adam earlier in his career and knew him well, had asked me to engage with Adam as his coach. Although Adam had led increasingly larger and more complex marketing functions during his career, he had never run a whole business, and although Bonnie had a lot of faith in his ability to do so, she wanted to give him all the support she could, to help assure his success.
I had never met Adam, although I knew many people who knew him well, and so had a pretty good sense of how he was seen by others. If their perceptions were accurate, Adam was extremely smart, quick, and creative. His biggest weakness, according to those who knew and had worked with him, was a tendency toward what they described as “arrogance.” When I asked for specifics, they noted that he had a tendency not to listen to others at times, and to assume he was right, even in situations where others had more experience or knowledge.
During our initial conversation, I wanted to make sure that he was interested in working with a coach. His response was refreshingly honest. “I’m glad Bonnie suggested it,” he said. “Running a network—even a small one—will be different in lots of ways than running a marketing department. I know you’ve worked with CEOs and GMs, and I hope you’ll be able to help me avoid some of the major pitfalls.”
Since I’ve become so sensitive to self-awareness, or the lack thereof, in those I coach, I was pleased to hear that he recognized that his new job might require capabilities he hadn’t yet developed. So I decided to push into potentially more difficult territory for him, to test the extent of his neutral self-awareness and see what might be required in our work together.
“I think you’re right,” I said. “This is going to be different in a bunch of ways. So what strengths do you have now, as a manager, leader, and businessperson, that you think will support your success in this job? And what weaknesses or deficits do you have that you think might get in your way?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “I think I’m a reasonably good manager,” he said slowly. “I give clear direction, and if people do a good job, I let them operate pretty independently—I don’t think I’m a micromanager. I have good creative sensibilities, and I think I can recognize that in others. And I think I’m good at executing on a brand—three-dimensionalizing the essence of a brand.” He thought for a minute. “I’m going to have to learn a lot more about programming. I’ll need a great head of programming. And I’ve managed a marketing P&L, but I’ll need to do a deeper dive to get a more complete view of how the financials work for a whole network.”
I decided to push it even further. “What else?” I asked. “What would you say is your Achilles heel as a leader?” Another, even longer pause. “I know people think I’m arrogant,” he said. “And I can see why they think that. I know I can come on too strong, respond too quickly, and not give people a chance to say what they think. I tend to be the first one to talk in most situations. I don’t listen very well when I think I’m right about something. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.”
I was thrilled. Adam seemed to have a very clear view of his key growth area, and to be willing to acknowledge it without much prompting, and without evasion or self-justification. And, even rarer, he was able to be honest with himself about how he felt about it. From my point of view as a coach and teacher, this was the optimal beginning.
Over the past few years, as Adam and I have worked together, I’ve seen the value of his ability to be a “fair witness” of himself over and over. His accurate assessment of his tendency toward arrogance has allowed him to be open to feedback from me and others, and he’s worked hard to balance his self-confidence with more listening and greater consideration of others’ input. The folks who work for him have told me—and him—that they see him as both decisive and collaborative, a wonderful combination of his existing strengths and new capability in his area of growth.
I’ve also seen Adam apply his neutral self-awareness in a variety of other settings. When he’s tried things with the network that haven’t turned out well—programs that haven’t caught on with the viewers or people who haven’t been a good fit for the team—he’s quickly recognized and acknowledged his mistakes, and then moved to correct them. And when he or someone on his team does something well, he acknowledges that, too. It’s important to be accurate in assessing your strengths and successes, as well as your weaknesses and growth areas: true neutral self-awareness allows you to leverage your existing strengths as you work to improve in your areas of growth.
Seeing himself with clear eyes has allowed Adam to learn quickly and thrive in his job—in fact, after about eighteen months, he was invited to add the job of GM for the E! network to his portfolio as a result of his success at building the Esquire Network and team. And I’ve seen him digging into this new part of his job in the same way: recognizing the value of the knowledge and experience he’s gained running Esquire, and looking to see what he doesn’t yet know that he’ll need to learn in order to be successful at E!.
Managing Your Self-Talk
You may be wondering whether you’re accurate in your self-perception—and what to do about it if you’re not. Fortunately, it’s relatively straightforward both to find out whether you’re seeing yourself clearly and to increase the accuracy of your self-perception. It’s not always easy (as we explore this, you may encounter some internal resistance to seeing and acknowledging the less flattering aspects of yourself), but it is simple—that is, not complicated. And if you make consistent use of the tools I’m about to share with you, you’ll find yourself getting more and more comfortable with seeing yourself as you are.
People who see themselves clearly start by learning to manage how they talk to themselves about themselves. This may be a new idea for you—the idea of having control over how you talk to yourself—especially if you’ve never focused much on your own interior monologue. So, here’s a fact: you have a fairly continuous mental monologue running at the back of your mind, underneath your everyday conversation and actions. Here’s another—very important—fact: you can change the content of that mental monologue.
Because we’re going to be focusing a great deal on this idea of self-talk throughout the rest of the book, I’d like you to take a moment and simply listen to the chatter that’s going on inside your head right now. Stop reading, if you would; close your eyes, and notice what you’re saying to yourself. It might take a minute to tune into it, but just sit quietly until you can “hear” it.
Okay, we’re back. You may have noticed that some of what you were saying to yourself in this “inner voice” was fairly benign. (This book is pretty interesting so far. I wonder if it will rain tomorrow. My neck hurts.) But often, what we say to ourselves isn’t benign at all. And you may have “heard” some of that kind of self-talk as you were listening just now, too. Too often, our mental monologue consists of unhelpful and inaccurate statements about ourselves and others. (That guy’s an idiot. I’ll never be able to be a great learner. My boss hates me.)
Recognizing what you’re saying inside your head is the first step to being able to have more control over it. And having the ability to shift those inaccurate, unhelpful, unsupportive statements to be more accurate, neutral, and supportive is a powerful capability. Without that capability, we tend to be at the mercy of that internal voice and what it tells us about ourselves, our situation, and those around us.
We took a minute just now to listen to that voice, but 99 percent of the time, we don’t hear it; it’s whispering to us beneath our conscious awareness without us recognizing that it’s there. And because it’s inside our head, murmuring along like subliminal advertising, we tend to believe what it says, even if it’s not true. For example, if that voice in your head tells you, My people love working for me, you’re probably going to believe it. And that means you won’t take the necessary steps to find out how your employees actually feel… and you won’t then be motivated to do something about it, if it should turn out that there’s a problem. Unless you first recognize your self-talk, and then question it, it’s difficult to become neutrally self-aware.
Here are the steps involved in managing your self-talk:
Recognize
Record
Rethink
Repeat
Recognize
The first step in managing your self-talk is to “hear” it. Most of the time, as I noted earlier, our little interior commentator runs and runs, and we’re not even consciously aware that we’re talking to ourselves, much less what exactly it is we’re “saying.” Until you’re aware of this internal monologue, it’s impossible to change it. So, first you need to simply recognize what you’re saying to yourself. For instance, let’s say you’re thinking about something you don’t want to learn (but have a sneaking suspicion you may really need to learn). You might hear your mental voice saying, I don’t have time to learn how to delegate—I’ll just keep doing things myself. I’ll do them better anyway. Or you might find yourself saying surprisingly negative, unhopeful things about your ability to learn: I’m just bad with numbers that’s all there is to it, or What’s the use I’ll never be able to manage people. Once you start attending to the voice in your head, you may be very surprised at what you’re saying to yourself.
Record
Writing down your self-talk, once you recognize what you’re saying to yourself, is an important part of being able to change it, particularly if it’s something you’ve said to yourself repeatedly over a long period of time (most of us have a few of these unhelpful “mental tape loops”). Recording your self-talk creates a useful separation between you and your self-talk. When you see it written down, that internal monologue tends to feel less like an intrinsic part of you and more like something you can alter. Let’s say you write down that first self-talk statement, above: I don’t have time to learn how to delegate—I’ll just keep doing this myself. I’ll do it better anyway. Having written it down, you may see it more objectively, rather than automatically accepting its validity. It’s easier to see the inaccuracy and illogic of the things you’re saying to yourself once you see them in writing.
The first piece of my own negative self-talk I wrote down, over thirty years ago as a new parent, was, I’ll never be able to juggle work and parenting (an unfortunately common piece of self-talk for women). My immediate reaction, once I saw it written down, was: THAT’S what I’ve been thinking? Yikes. I don’t want to say that to myself—I bet it’s not even true! The minute I wrote it down and looked at it, I was able to separate myself from it enough to start questioning its validity.
Once you recognize and record your self-talk, you’ll also be better able to look objectively at how this negative interior monologue affects you: perhaps it makes you more likely to abandon goals that are important to you, or to feel cynical or hopeless about the possibility of learning something new.
Rethink
After you’ve written down a piece of inaccurate, unsupportive self-talk, you can decide how to revise it to be more accurate and helpful. This step is the core of the process. You want to create alternative self-talk that you’ll believe and that will lead to a more appropriate response. For instance, if you try to substitute self-talk that’s falsely positive, like, Delegating will be a piece of cake, you simply won’t believe it, and therefore it will have no impact on you: you’ll just revert to your original unhelpful self-talk. Think about what you could say to yourself instead that’s believable and that would create a more useful response. How about something like: I know it might take a while to learn to delegate well. But if I can transfer some of my responsibilities to my team, I’ll be freed up to focus on the most important work and they’ll grow and feel more challenged.
Repeat
Like any habit, managing your self-talk requires repetition. Substituting more hopeful and accurate self-talk for your negative self-talk will be helpful the very first time you do it. And you’ll need to consciously do it again the next time the voice in your head comes up with a similarly unhelpful statement. And again. This is a process for creating new habits of thought. Whenever you find yourself falling into a pattern of unhelpful self-talk—either overly negative or overly positive—consciously substitute your revised, more realistic and accurate self-talk.
Try saying your revised self-talk to yourself in place of the original self-talk. Do you believe it? If not, rethink it to make it more believable yet still supportive. You’ll know you’re successful at managing your self-talk when you begin to respond to the situation in a more positive way—when you begin to feel better and to behave differently.
Becoming Your Own Fair Witness
Now we’re going to apply your new tool of managing your self-talk in a very specific way, in order to increase your neutral self-awareness. You’re going to learn to be a fair witness of yourself. The term “fair witness” comes from a book by Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land. In it, Heinlein creates a profession called Fair Witness. At one point, a character in the book named Jubal is trying to explain the concept of fair witnessing to the book’s protagonist, a man named Michael. Michael is having a hard time understanding, so Jubal calls over a woman who is a Fair Witness, points to a distant house (they’re standing outside), and asks, “What color is that house?” She replies, “It appears to be painted white on this side.”
That’s what Fair Witnesses do, in Heinlein’s book: they are trained and then bound by law, when acting in their FW capacity, to speak only from their direct experience. They can’t indulge in speculation, cherry-pick the data, say what they hope is true, or avoid looking at what they don’t want to be true. In other words, they’re proscribed from doing all the things we generally do when thinking about ourselves.
Because fair witnessing means being as objective and accurate as possible, working on becoming a fair witness of yourself is the best way I know to increase your level of neutral self-awareness—and thereby expanding your ability to learn new things well and quickly.
Now, here’s the problem with this: the more emotionally attached you are to something, the more difficult it is to be fully objective about it. That means it can be challenging to “fair witness” your own strengths and weaknesses, as well as your feelings about them, since we’re generally more emotionally attached to ourselves than to anything else in our lives. I’m sure you’ve noticed, for example, how much easier it is to see other people’s problems clearly and to give them good advice than it is to see your own problems and the best solutions to them.
Remember when we talked about self-deception at the beginning of the chapter? I think of those poor college professors who are actually in the bottom 10 percent of expertise, worse at their job than 90 percent or more of their colleagues, who want so much to believe that they’re good at what they do (and perhaps are so afraid that they can’t be better than they are now), that they simply can’t be fair witnesses about themselves as teachers. That’s called emotional attachment.
Fortunately, this rather demanding and often uncomfortable task of becoming your own fair witness can happen in the privacy of your own mind, because it’s all about revising your self-talk in a specific way. Here’s how it works.
Becoming your own fair witness:
Recognize/record your self-talk about your own current strengths and weaknesses in an area where you want to learn
Then ask yourself, Is my self-talk accurate?
Where you’re not sure, ask, What facts do I have about myself in this area?
Rethink your self-talk to be more accurate, based on your answers
By asking yourself, Is my self-talk accurate?, you’re beginning to challenge your untested assumptions about yourself. In response to that question, you may find yourself thinking, for instance, Hmm, I don’t really know if that’s accurate—it may be just what I hope, or what I think someone in my position ought to be capable of doing.
If asking the first question causes you to question your initial assumptions, then by next asking, what facts do I have about myself in this area?, you’re encouraging yourself to be even more neutral and objective in your self-assessment. You’re beginning to make the effort—like fair witnesses do—to rely more on real data and observable results (and less on hope and fear) to come to conclusions about yourself.
Here’s a practical example. I recently began coaching a senior leader who had been told by someone that he was intimidating. “That’s ridiculous,” he said to me, clearly upset. “I’m really friendly and approachable!”
“You don’t think of yourself as intimidating,” I replied. He nodded. “I’d encourage you to look at that assumption for a minute, though,” I said. “Is it accurate?”
He started to respond right away, then stopped himself (we had already been working on self-awareness). I saw him start to self-reflect. “I’ve always told myself I’m an approachable kind of guy,” he said slowly, “Not the kind of leader who acts like he wants everybody to defer to him.” (The “told myself” was a dead giveaway that he was recognizing his self-talk.)
“So, what actual facts do you have about your behavior in this area?” I asked.
He put his chin in his hand and looked down at the floor—again, reflecting rather than reacting with his previous assumptions. “Well, I do joke around with people, and they seem to like that.” He thought for a few moments. “But, you know, I can be pretty blunt when I don’t like an idea, or when things aren’t going the way I think they should.”
“Blunt, meaning…” I said.
He had the grace to look a little abashed. “Well, I can be loud. And dismissive, too. Hmm. I could see that might even be intimidating, given I’m the boss.”
Voilà: increased neutral self-awareness.
You can have this same kind of dialogue with yourself—and, as I noted before, it’s significantly less embarrassing when there’s not another person in the room. Let’s give it a shot.
Your conclusions from the activity above may have been surprising to you. You might now see yourself differently than you did a few minutes ago: as having a strength you didn’t previously acknowledge or as being less skilled or capable in some area than you assumed.
Managing Your Reactions to What You See
You might also have noticed some “secondary self-talk,” interior commentary on your feelings about what you’ve discovered. For example, if you uncovered an unrecognized capability, you might be saying something to yourself like, Huh, I guess I have shown that I can make pretty good presentations—that’s a relief. However, if you’ve started to acknowledge that you’re worse at something than you assumed, you may notice some self-talk that reflects the core fear we discussed at the beginning of the chapter. That is, once you realize that you’re not very good at something, your self-talk may be asserting that you’ll never be able to do it, for instance: Well, that’s embarrassing—I’ve been acting like I was great at that, when I’ll probably never be any good at it.
You can manage that self-talk, too. Feeling embarrassed, frustrated, nervous, or disappointed is okay, and often inevitable, when we realize we’re not as skilled or capable as we thought. If our self-talk stopped at neutral reporting of those feelings (Well, that’s embarrassing), it would be okay—good even—because it’s as useful to be a fair witness about how you feel about your strengths and weaknesses as about the strengths and weaknesses themselves. However, our self-talk often then goes on to predict all kinds of negative outcomes, including the most dire prediction: that we’re “fixed” at our current level of capability and can’t improve (I’ll probably never be any good at it). Unfortunately, that voice in our head says all of these things as though they’re equally true, so we tend to believe the negative predictions as much as we do the neutral reporting.
You can use the skill you’ve just learned in this situation, too: you can rethink this secondary self-talk to be more “fair witness”—and therefore more supportive. For example, you could say to yourself, Hold on, I’ve gotten better at lots of things. There’s a good chance I can get better at this. Much more accurate, and much more helpful. (We’ll talk a lot more about the “self-talk of self-belief” in chapter 7—I just wanted to reassure you now that you don’t have to buy your “I’ll never improve” self-talk when it arises.)
These are such simple, powerful tools. Most people don’t even know they talk to themselves; now you’re aware of it and can start to manage that interior monologue to your own benefit.
The Power of a Mirror
Even people who are extremely self-aware can’t see themselves entirely clearly, however. For example, we may think we’re good at something simply because we’ve never met anyone who’s better at it than we are, or because we don’t really know what’s involved in being good. Or we might err in the opposite direction: set an unrealistically high bar for “goodness,” and therefore think we’re worse at something than we actually are. Because it’s difficult to be entirely objective about ourselves—especially in areas that are new to us—we also need some outside help in order to be truly accurate and neutral in our self-awareness.
A former business partner of mine used to say, “Feedback is the breakfast, lunch, and dinner of champions,” by which he meant that getting input on ourselves is key to success. I agree—as long as we’re open to hearing it, and as long as the feedback we’re getting is both accurate and well intentioned.
Once you’re managing your self-talk to increase your neutral self-awareness, you’re already working on the “open to hearing it” part. Taking care of the “accurate and well intentioned” part is what we’re going to focus on now.
When you’re considering who to ask for feedback about yourself, there are three important things to consider.
Good “sources”:
See you clearly
Want the best for you
Are willing to be honest
All three of these qualities are equally important. For example, you might have someone in your life who supports you and is willing to share his honest perceptions of you but doesn’t see you clearly. A C-level executive I know who has some significant flaws as a leader generally looks only to his wife and his longtime coach as sources—but unfortunately, neither of them sees him as others do; they don’t acknowledge his weaknesses. As a result, he gets a lot of feedback, but it doesn’t support him in being more neutrally self-aware.
Another possibility: folks who see you clearly and are willing to be honest, but don’t want the best for you. Sadly, such people exist. And while their feedback may be accurate, it’s likely to be delivered in a way or in a situation (at a big meeting in front of your boss and all your peers, for instance) that’s not geared toward helping you succeed.
Finally, you may know people who see you clearly and have your best interests at heart but aren’t willing to be honest with you. We’ve actually found this to be very common, and I’m sure you have, too. We all have friends and colleagues who know us well and want us to succeed, but when it comes to being honest about our shortcomings and areas of growth… well, they chicken out. Quite often, people will share with me insights they have about another person—a colleague or family member—that would really help that person to see herself more clearly. And when I ask, “Have you shared this with that person?” the most consistent response I get (usually accompanied by a sheepish look) is, “Well, no. I’m not sure she would want to hear it.”
People don’t share honest feedback with others, for the most part, because they don’t know how it’s going to be received. You can change this dynamic for yourself: you can become a person to whom it’s easy to give even the most difficult feedback. Before I share with you how to do that, I’d like you to pick a couple of possible “sources.”
Setting the Stage for Honesty
Think about the people in your life with whom you are most honest. What makes it possible to tell them difficult or unflattering things about themselves? If you’re similar to most people, you’re more likely to share tough truths with people who fully take in what you say, without reacting negatively. For instance, imagine that you say to a colleague, “When you didn’t get us that information you promised, it made it much harder for us to meet our deadline,” and he listens to you without interrupting and then says something like, “I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize my info would impact your deadline like that.” With an open and non-defensive response like that, you’d be infinitely more likely to continue to be honest with that person. Now imagine instead that his response was something like, “Hey, I was really busy. And besides, I’m not responsible for your deadlines!” I doubt you’d be as honest with that person going forward.
So, if you’d like your selected sources to be honest with you, it’s your job to make it as pleasant and rewarding as possible for them to do so. (To take a page from our chapter on aspiration—if people can see the benefits of being honest with you, they’re much more likely to want to do it!)
Here’s the best way I know to become the kind of person to whom it’s easy to give honest feedback—in other words, to take full advantage of your sources so you can have the chance to increase your neutral self-awareness.
When tapping into your sources:
Provide context
Invite and reassure
Listen fully
Say thank you
Provide Context
Let your sources know why you’re asking them to share their insights with you. This could be as simple as saying something like, “I’m trying to get much more knowledgeable and expert about social media marketing, and I feel as though you see my strengths and weaknesses very clearly in this area. I value your insights, and I know you want to help me improve.” Letting others know why you’re asking for feedback will generally lower their anxiety significantly. Imagine, by contrast, that you were to just walk up to your source and ask, “How do you think I am at social media marketing?” I can only imagine the resulting storm of self-talk in your source’s head (What’s this about? Did I say something I shouldn’t have? Should I really be honest? What if my colleague gets upset? etc., etc.) You can save your sources from all of this speculation by letting them know what you’re looking for and why you’re asking.
Invite and Reassure
Once you’ve let your source know why you’re looking to her for feedback, ask for it explicitly—and reassure the person that you’ll take it well. This might sound like, “I’d really like to know how you see my strengths and weaknesses in this area, and I promise I won’t be offended, no matter what you say!” We’ve found that the main reason people feel uncomfortable sharing tough feedback is concern about negative outcomes: they’re worried the receiver will get angry, sad, or defensive, or that it will damage their relationship. Your explicit invitation and reassurance will help to address this key concern, making it much more likely your source will share what she really sees about you.
Listen Fully
After reassuring your source (and next comes the hard part), you have to actually deliver on those reassurances. Even if the other person says something you don’t think is true about you, or something that makes you feel really uncomfortable—something that sets off a barrage of justifying, defensive, or argumentative self-talk inside your head—just keep listening. Recognize your unhelpful self-talk, and manage it by saying to yourself, I really want this person to know I can take in this feedback, so he or she will keep being honest with me.
If writing down the key points helps you not to blurt out the explanatory or defensive rejoinders running around inside your head, start writing! Get curious about what your source is seeing and why (you’ll learn more about how to get curious in the next chapter). Ask questions for clarity; summarize to make sure you understand. Listen deeply, thoroughly, and fully. (If you think you may need more in-depth support for learning to listen well, feel free to refer to some of my other books, where I discuss listening in more depth: the first chapter in Growing Great Employees or the final “bonus” chapter in Leading So People Will Follow. I see listening as a foundational skill, in learning and in all other arenas, so I talk and write about it a lot.)
Say Thank You
When someone overcomes his own hesitation and is brave enough to tell you both what you’re great at and what you’re not, that person deserves your thanks. People who give you honest feedback have gone out on an emotional limb for you, and they’ve invested time and effort articulating their insights in ways that will be helpful to you. In addition to the fact that it’s well deserved, there’s another reason for thanking your sources: it’s really motivating for them. When you sincerely thank people for doing something, they’re much more likely to do that thing again. (Back to aspiration—being thanked is a benefit; it will make people want to continue to be honest with you.) By thanking your sources sincerely for their honesty, you’re laying the foundation for future honesty—and increasing the chances that you’ll be able to use what they tell you to become ever more neutrally self-aware.
Now you have some good, simple tools for building a more accurate perception of your own strengths and weaknesses—for increasing your neutral self-awareness.
Just in case you need another example of the power of neutral self-awareness as a factor in learning and success, consider this: Eric Harter, the CEO of Vesta Technology Solutions, a company based in Louisville, Kentucky, conducted a study of CEOs of health services companies, in order to explore the impact of executive self-awareness on company performance.3
Harter studied CEOs of health services companies that showed ten years of positive financial performance (measured by balance sheet results and return on equity) and compared them with their peers at companies with negative financial performance during the same period. He compared all of the CEOs’ self-assessments on ten leadership abilities with their subordinates’ assessments of them on those same abilities (including, for example, self-confidence and empathy). He found that self-awareness was highest among CEOs of the best-performing companies and lowest for CEOs of the worst-performing companies. The CEOs from the poorest-performing companies had little to no neutral self-awareness: they gave themselves the highest ratings of all the CEOs in the study on seven of the ten leadership abilities, while their employees gave them low ratings on the very same abilities. The high-performing CEOs, on the other hand, saw themselves very much as their employees saw them.
The study completely accords with our experiences over the past twenty-five years as coaches and consultants. When executives have high neutral self-awareness, they are better able to take advantage of their own strengths and to grow in the areas where they need to improve. They are able to approach new learning from a neutral, fact-based sense of their own place on the learning curve relative to that new learning.
Like these high-performing executives, like Michelangelo, and like my friend and client Adam, the clearer you are able to get about where you’re starting from as a learner, the easier it will be to learn, and the further you’ll be able to go.
Aspiration provides the core fuel that will move you forward into new learning; neutral self-awareness allows you to see where you are on the journey. And curiosity creates the impulse to dig deeply and understand more.