In order to become more effective and productive, self-awareness is a critical component. After all, how can you improve if you don’t have a baseline? Part of building self-awareness is understanding how others perceive you. I recently went through a 360 feedback exercise – a process where you receive confidential, anonymous feedback from people you surround yourself with and wanted to share some thoughts with y’all on how to source that type of feedback as part of self-improvement September.
- How to Source Feedback – I was just listening to a blink by Dan Meredith – how to be f***ing awesome. He sent out a 2-question survey to family and friends asking what his main strength & weakness were. It can be uncomfortable to solicit this type of feedback and I love the idea of a more formal exercise like this. Understanding these two components helps you keep doing what you’re doing well and work to build on your weaknesses.
- What to Do With Feedback – Once you have feedback from others, you can use a tool like Johari’s window to bucket the feedback to be able to action on it. Johari’s window is a model that is divided into 4 quadrants that represent your self-awareness and awareness from others.
- Arena – these are skills and capabilities that you are aware of and others are aligned to.
- Façade – there may be some things that you know about yourself but choose not to share them with others
- Blind Spot – this to me is really where the value of sourcing feedback lies for self-improvement. Blind spots are areas known to others but not to yourself. You may be unaware or perceive yourself differently – this can be positive or negative but gives you a starting point for development.
- Unknown – this includes information that is unknown to both self and others.
- Create a Plan for Action – once you have a clear idea of your areas for improvement, build an action plan for improvement. Your plan should define specific actions you will take to achieve your goals. This provides a way for you to measure your progress. For example, need to work on asking for help? Identify one project that you can delegate. Make it something achievable & small enough that it doesn’t feel daunting (check out our other post for suggestions on creating micro goals).
I find the people closest to me are my biggest supporters, so in asking for critical feedback, I know they have my best interest at heart. Understanding I am a constant work in progress allows me to really consider some of my blind spots and what I can do to improve. I hope y’all are having a great self-improvement September and I’d love to hear from you on how it’s going.
Take care and be well,
Emree