After receiving feedback, remember to say "thank you" (and per an earlier article, shut up!). Be very careful about not becoming defensive, or trying to justify your behavior. Remember, you asked! Observe the way others act towards you If you could watch a video tape of all of your interactions with others for a week, and remove all of the filters of your own perception, you would learn a lot about your own bad habits. Marshall Goldsmith describes a technique where people write down every comment made to you or about you for a week. After a week, patterns emerge that show you things that you may not otherwise see.For example, I happened to notice in the workplace that every time I started a presentation, the audience sat back in their chairs and made jokes with me. I started to wonder whether this was something I was doing. For about a week, I kept track of this, and found out that I was constantly interjecting humor into all of my daily interactions. As usual with this series, I had always thought that making jokes was a strength, but it finally dawned on me that I needed to dial it back or I wouldn't be taken seriously.
Observing yourself can be eye-opening, but it's also very difficult to trust that you are not seeing what you want to see!Trusted Confidants Having people you trust who will tell you the difficult messages is very important, but they are very hard to find. Confidants can be co-workers, family members, friends, etc. who in contact with you regularly and have only your best interests in mind. They are people who you have mutual trust with, and you know that there are no hidden biases or motivations. They can give you feedback, and not let you off the hook when you try to defend or explain your actions.However, recognize that most of the people in your circle do have an agenda. Family members may want security, co-workers may have competing interests, etc. This is the reason that many successful people seek out external coaches for feedback and development, where the mutual goal is their success.Anonymous feedback I could write an entire book on the 360 degree feedback process. As of this writing, there are 465,000 Google hits for 360 degree feedback. There are companies who offer online tools to implement 360 degree feedback, questions benchmarked around good managers or good results, and books about how to use this in the workplace. I won't repeat that here, but I will give you my opinion on a few critical success factors.I am a believer in using 360 degree feedback for development purposes. However, I am not a believer in using it in the workplace as a performance metric (i.e. to decide compensation). I think that there are too many ways to try and manipulate the process to get good results. For example, I've bought new cars over the last 20 years, and have been amazed at the different ways I've been threatened, bribed, or manipulated by the dealer asking to give all 5's on the dealer survey. Clearly, they don't want the feedback, just the reward from positive answers.
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