60303wk7 Improving Credibility
This week was a challenge to say the least! I have written many gap analyses and risk analyses in my life for work, but I have never done one introspectively. It was difficult to not focus on a "thing", such as a facility or a project. I found myself starting over several times so that I could re-focus on just my credibility and not other aspects that might be found in my consulting business (and even now I think I still overlapped a bit).
My complete gap analysis can be found here: Full Gap Analysis
I am going to focus this writing on the areas that I found I would have the most work to be done to improve my credibility.
The first area that I will focus on is that of passion. I segmented passion into three categories:
passion for the organization
passion for tasks
passion to drive toward betterment
As Jim Whitehurst reminds us, "people are drawn and generally want to follow passionate people." (2015) I pride myself in the amount of passion that I have toward task and driving efficiencies, but too much passion can be a bad thing. It is important to know your audience and what amount of passion will excite people to work toward a common goal and what will derail and un-focus a project. I can tend to do this to myself as well and get passionate about finding and creating efficiencies and end up finding myself on a project that will never end because I keep finding things to change. The use of a "parking lot" has been useful and something that I need to put to use more. A "parking lot" is a side notebook or piece of paper or anything that is disconnected from your current project but will hold all the ideas that you come up with along the way so they can be revisited later.
My real problem I feel comes from the chip I have sitting on my shoulder from being sabotaged by so many in corporate america. I tend to be guarded and a bit cynical about corporate goals which hinders me from being passionate about driving the organization forward.
Help is one of the most challenging categories in this gap analysis. It is said that "you reinforce the behaviors that you reward." (Patel, 2017) I find this particularly eye opening in the category of help as I have always thought of myself as a good "helper" and someone who is not afraid to ask for help when needed. The struggle comes from accepting help when it is offered. This almost seems like it would be a sign of weakness. If someone asks how they can help and you haven't solicited help from them it might seem that they are being nosy or think that you are incapable of the job. This is always something that I have struggled with and have tried to be much more aware. When I look at it from the view point of reinforcing the behaviors I would like to see in myself and my team, it makes more sense. I would not be setting a good example if I truly needed help and refused an offer. I would like people to know that they can come to me with any question or for any help, so I should think of the offer of help in the same way and use it as a chance to instruct and share knowledge needed and expectations.
The last major area that I found in my gap analysis was receptiveness. Overall, I feel that I am receptive to comments, suggestions and criticism - perhaps overly so. I am eager to receive feedback, I have always believed that this will make us stronger in the long run. The problem comes from reacting perhaps too quickly to the feedback. I need to let it marinate a bit and be more thoughtful about what action I take to course correct. Here, the eagerness for the feedback carries over to the action which may not be the best solution. I need to learn that being thoughtful will make for a better contribution and build my credibility (Whitehurst, 2015).
References:
Patel, D. (2017, September 18). 10 ways to gain respect as a young leader. Retrieved
from https://www.forbes.com/sites/deeppatel/2017/09/18/10-ways-to-gain-respect-as-a-young-
leader/#32c73d8d17d3
Whitehurst, J. (2015, May 20). How to earn respect as a leader. Retrieved from
https://hbr.org/2015/05/how-to-earn-respect-as-a-leader
My complete gap analysis can be found here: Full Gap Analysis
I am going to focus this writing on the areas that I found I would have the most work to be done to improve my credibility.
The first area that I will focus on is that of passion. I segmented passion into three categories:
passion for the organization
passion for tasks
passion to drive toward betterment
As Jim Whitehurst reminds us, "people are drawn and generally want to follow passionate people." (2015) I pride myself in the amount of passion that I have toward task and driving efficiencies, but too much passion can be a bad thing. It is important to know your audience and what amount of passion will excite people to work toward a common goal and what will derail and un-focus a project. I can tend to do this to myself as well and get passionate about finding and creating efficiencies and end up finding myself on a project that will never end because I keep finding things to change. The use of a "parking lot" has been useful and something that I need to put to use more. A "parking lot" is a side notebook or piece of paper or anything that is disconnected from your current project but will hold all the ideas that you come up with along the way so they can be revisited later.
My real problem I feel comes from the chip I have sitting on my shoulder from being sabotaged by so many in corporate america. I tend to be guarded and a bit cynical about corporate goals which hinders me from being passionate about driving the organization forward.
Help is one of the most challenging categories in this gap analysis. It is said that "you reinforce the behaviors that you reward." (Patel, 2017) I find this particularly eye opening in the category of help as I have always thought of myself as a good "helper" and someone who is not afraid to ask for help when needed. The struggle comes from accepting help when it is offered. This almost seems like it would be a sign of weakness. If someone asks how they can help and you haven't solicited help from them it might seem that they are being nosy or think that you are incapable of the job. This is always something that I have struggled with and have tried to be much more aware. When I look at it from the view point of reinforcing the behaviors I would like to see in myself and my team, it makes more sense. I would not be setting a good example if I truly needed help and refused an offer. I would like people to know that they can come to me with any question or for any help, so I should think of the offer of help in the same way and use it as a chance to instruct and share knowledge needed and expectations.
The last major area that I found in my gap analysis was receptiveness. Overall, I feel that I am receptive to comments, suggestions and criticism - perhaps overly so. I am eager to receive feedback, I have always believed that this will make us stronger in the long run. The problem comes from reacting perhaps too quickly to the feedback. I need to let it marinate a bit and be more thoughtful about what action I take to course correct. Here, the eagerness for the feedback carries over to the action which may not be the best solution. I need to learn that being thoughtful will make for a better contribution and build my credibility (Whitehurst, 2015).
References:
Patel, D. (2017, September 18). 10 ways to gain respect as a young leader. Retrieved
from https://www.forbes.com/sites/deeppatel/2017/09/18/10-ways-to-gain-respect-as-a-young-
leader/#32c73d8d17d3
Whitehurst, J. (2015, May 20). How to earn respect as a leader. Retrieved from
https://hbr.org/2015/05/how-to-earn-respect-as-a-leader
Great post, truly excellent reflection happening here, Apryl. I might suggest/comment further on two items:
ReplyDelete1. The part about accepting help being a sign of weakness struck a note. Understandable. It is indeed a challenge to get clients to move from a relatively assertive thing like, "we presently lack xyz skill or thing, you have it, you're hired," to the much more real but vulnerable, "we think we have a variety of things to work on, but we're overwhelmed. Can you help us?"
I think here is where you "qualify" (sales term) the "right" clients. Ideal Schein-like clients will not create this tension, or if they do, it will be occassional and not dominate the interaction. We need to look very carefully for clients who are naturally predisposed to lower levels of egocentric expression and behavior. In short, you're looking for people who take pride in finding help; their core strength being a heightened and genuine sense of self. Note: take care to avoid sociopathic tendencies of "leaders" who invert this weirdly (ie, they think they need to express "weakness" in order to appear strong. "My greatest weakness is how much I love this organization" type language versus, "I admit I don't have all the answer and I absolutely want your help here.")
2. I was a bit surprised to not see comfort/discomfort with ambiguity here. It's jumping out as a key thing to work on (which is very reasonable).