4 questions to help you tackle your blind spots
How are your New Year’s Resolutions going?
We are approaching that slippery week, at the end of January, when your will power is being tested and your good intentions are feeling like extremely challenging work.
The good news is, that it is to be expected, and you are just like the rest of us – a normal human being.
One of the other things that can happen when you set yourself a strict set of goals and outcomes, is that they change as you set off on the path to achieve them. That is also normal. Things can all feel a bit confusing and what started out as your goal, might be something completely different when you start to work through the issues that are holding you back. This is common in coaching conversations.
I wrote about how to find your one BIG thing in my last post. Achieving your one BIG thing, will involve personal growth and making an adaptive change. The good news is that you do not need to have a personality transplant to get there, but you will need a change in mindset. As soon as you realise that something needs to change then, that is accompanied by the thought “I need to change.”
It can be hard to work out what it is that you need to change. This can be due to not knowing something about yourself. In other words, it is due to having a blind spot.
I used to dread questions at interviews when I was asked to list my strengths and weaknesses. I am not particularly good at blowing my own trumpet and saying what I am good at. I am far better at pointing out what I am not good at and where I may have fallen short. Many women follow this pattern and there are studies that bear this out.
A good starting point for working out what you know (or don’t know) about yourself is to ask yourself the following 4 questions:
What does everyone know about me? (Known)
What do other people know about me? The things that I don’t know. (Blind spot)
What might others want to know about me? The things that I keep hidden. (Hidden)
What am I finding out about myself that nobody knew? (Unknown)
These questions form the basis of a coaching tool called the Johari window. They can be useful questions to come back to as you work towards your one BIG thing.
What does everyone know about me?
These are the things that you are known for and are willing to admit about yourself. The sorts of things that you would share in an interview.
What might others want to know about me?
These are the things that only you know about. You decide how much you want to reveal, and this involves a degree of vulnerability. Do you keep work and personal life separate? I write more about this in this post and recommend watching the video of Carla Harris who speaks about the importance of bringing all the Carla’s to work.
What am I finding out about myself that nobody knew?
This my favourite part about coaching. When you realise something about yourself that enables you to take a giant leap forward. It might be recognising a strength that you did not realise you had or it might be shedding an unhelpful belief or behaviour that is holding you back.
This brings me to the question about blind spots.
What do people know about me? The things that I don’t know.
Mining for this information means one thing, you are going to have to ask for feedback. Feedback is a curious thing that creates a polarising love/hate response for many people. That can be due to poor skills in those giving the feedback and how we prepare ourselves for receiving it.
No one wants to hear that they did a bad job, fell short, or let someone down. It makes you feel defensive, miserable, and lowers your self-esteem and confidence. If that has been your experience of receiving feedback, then you will not want to invite it back into your life.
However, if you are given feedback in a non-judgmental way that offers a way for you to grow, then that is a positive experience for all concerned. Your personality will impact how you prepare for or receive feedback.
When I worked in the NHS as a Consultant Anaesthetist, I loved to teach and took on the role of “college tutor” where I worked. That meant that I was responsible for the oversight of training for the post-graduate anaesthetists (doctors) in training at my hospital. They had training portfolios to complete and regular appraisals. This required the collection of feedback from all the trainers (my consultant colleagues).
One day it occurred to me that I was always collecting feedback about how they performed, but we did not get much feedback on how we performed as trainers. I shared the idea with my colleagues, and we agreed that it would be useful feedback for us too. I would collate the feedback and send it out privately.
My own feedback revealed something that I was not aware of. “Dr Homer is very nice, but she has a tendency to take over all the time.” I was horrified. I thought that I was good at what I did, but I only viewed my performance from my perspective.
Patient safety always comes first when supervising a post-graduate trainee doctor. I made it clear at the start of every operating list, that if I thought that safety could be compromised, then my pointy elbows would move them aside and I would take over. But I was also doing it at times when I didn’t need to.
I spent some time reflecting on what I did, why I behaved in that way, and what I could do to change how I acted as a trainer.
As a perfectionist, I always wanted the best feedback possible, and anything less could result in cycles of negative self-talk and a focus on what I perceived was bad. Not what went well and how I could make it even better. This exercise in getting feedback was not mandated and I had to work on my mindset to welcome it into my life!
Asking for feedback revealed an important blind spot. It allowed me to become a better trainer and it allowed me to recognise the value of asking for feedback even in a senior role. It allowed me to get closer to an outcome that was important to me.
If you are providing written feedback, then my one tip is not to write anything down that you are not prepared to say to the person face to face. That does not mean do not tell the truth. It means you need to think carefully about how to make the feedback non-judgmental, constructive, and a tool for personal growth. Giving feedback verbally is a valuable skill and worth learning to do well. It has an enormous impact on a person’s self-esteem and confidence.
If you are still overwhelmed or reticent about asking for feedback, start small and with a trusted friend or colleague. It can be harder for people to give generalised feedback, so think about a specific situation and ask them for feedback.
Good questions to start with could be:
What did you think I did well?
What do you think I could do better?
They are also great questions to ask yourself before you request feedback from others. See if the answers match.
Finding out more about yourself helps you to find strategies that work well for you. Your strategies towards affecting change will be different from the person next to you. Gaining clarity is a crucial step towards getting to where you want to be.
Have you had any surprising insights from feedback? Let me know in the comments.
If you would like to work with me, please book a call. You can do this through my website, just click on my Linktree.