Conducting a Reality Check

An uncertainty about life goals, strengths and shortcomings, and defensive in responding to any negative feedback

Look in the mirror and describe what you see. Look at yourself with honesty and integrity to ask:

• am I being the kind of person I want to be and can be?
• am I living the kind of life that I want to live?
• am I living up to the standards I set myself or am I letting myself down”?

Recognise the constraints and pressures you operate within. But don’t rationalise away any personal shortcomings by blaming your life situation. Look at yourself through a different pair of eyes, from the perspective of your partner, friend, colleague, boss. What would they say?

“The only bad feedback is no feedback.” Don’t live life in a state of self-deception. Those who need feedback the most are also most likely to avoid it. Encourage feedback from those whose life experience has the credibility to provide an objective insight into your operating style and impact. Listen to their views no matter how uncomfortable they might be. Encourage frank feedback by asking: what is holding me back from being a better …(friend, partner, colleague, manager, etc?”) And listen to the feedback. And know how to take feedback. Positive feedback is affirming. It reinforces our self-esteem and tells us that we’re heading in the right direction. Negative feedback can feel awful. It diminishes our sense of self worth. But properly managed it is valuable learning to keep you on course, track progress and adapt your tactics. If you’re not getting feedback from your boss and work colleagues, take action to get some. And make it easy for others to give you full and frank feedback. Ask in the right way at the right time.

Give others feedback. Let others know what you think of their ideas and plans. Do it with tact and diplomacy, but be prepared to express your views, openly and honestly. Don’t pour out a barrage of criticism. Say what you like about the idea, and highlight what may not work so well, and check if others want to hear further how their ideas could be improved. Your willingness to provide feedback will encourage others to give you feedback.

“On a scale of 1-10, how am I doing? How are we doing?” “Ask the members of your team to rate you as team leader, and to rate the overall team, its effectiveness and impact. Collect in everyone’s ratings - anonymously - and review the overall evaluation. Then ask: “what do we need to do to make it a 10?” Don’t impose your agenda. Let your team identify the specific ways in which you can operate more effectively. Follow through to implement the changes which will make a difference. And also ask: “what do I need to help make this team a 10?”

Just say thank you”. If someone is offering you advice (advice you don’t really want, right now), proving feedabck that you think is completely wrong-headed and intolerable (feedback you profoundly disagree with), or criticising you (criticism that you’re finding objectionable), don’t react. Whatever your view of the motivation behind the advice, feedback or criticism, simply say thank you”. They may be wrong, and you may be right. But until you’ve reflected on the issues you don’t know.

Spot the patterns of success and failure. Look at what is and isn’t working in your life. Where are you succeeeding and making progress? Pinpoint the reasons. Where are you struggling; again, asky why? And look at the difference between the short and the long-term. Short-term may be working now; how is it helping advance your long-term goals. So be tough in asking:

• what am I doing which is working, and need to do more of?
• what am I doing that I need to stop?
• what am I not doing that I need to start?
• what are others doing that is working or not working, and I can learn from?

“Truth is truth whoever says it.” It may be that the most valuable feedback comes not from friends, who praise your strengths, admire your achievements and reinforce your self esteem, but from your opponents and adversaries, who are looking for ways to undermine you. No doubt, their criticisms will be exaggerated. Tough though it may be, their attacks may also contain a kernel of truth. Don’t dismiss and deny that “angry flash of honesty” from your enemies.

Success doesn’t make immune to the “laws of life”. You have talents, motivation and you’ve enjoyed some good breaks in life and achieved a certain level of success in life. Don’t allow your success to lull you into an artificial world, a world in which you believe your own press and see yourself as infallible. “Don’t tempt fate.” Presidential candidate Gary Hart offered a challenge to reporters asking questions about his track record of philandering. “Follow me around…If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored.” One reporter did take up the offer and wasn’t bored. Gary was soon discovered with a lovely young woman, and it wasn’t his wife. His presidential campaign faltered. Sometimes we can do the most idiotic of things because we don’t read the realities of life.

Only look back if you want to move forward. Review your past to make sense of your life circumstances, your upbringing and the dynamics of your family and early education. These are important factors in shaping the kind of person you are right now. But don’t look back if you are motivated by the feelings of anger, resentment and injustice. Look forward to get on with the business of making life happen rather than dwell on what might have been.

Don’t confuse what you do with you are. When others ask you “what do you do?” how do you answer? You are not your job, however enjoyable and interesting it may be. You are you. Think hard about your future answers to that conversational question, “What do you do?”

Fishing for compliments backfires. Don’t run yourself down, sharing your failings and shortcomings with others, waiting for them to “correct” you and provide positive feedback and praise. It is a dishonest life tactic. Whilst others may give you the immediate affirmation you’re looking for, over the long run, it will back fire. Others will either see you as manipulative or begin to believe you, picking up the message that you aren’t fully confident in yourself or your capabilities.

Stop wishful thinking. Dream and plan for the future but don’t fantasise. Don’t embark on “if only” or “what if” thinking. Keep your plans grounded in the reality of your current situation to develop practical solutions to the problems you are facing. Think big. But also think strategically. Formulate a life strategy that draws on your strengths and minimises the impact of your shortcomings to create opportunities for you to advance your goals.

Think big, but act small. The converse, “thinking small but acting big” is a common factor in life failure. The achievement of a degree of success goes to the head and imagination about future success out runs current reality. “Think big” by seeing initial success for what it is, initial success and no more than that. Look ahead to see other possibilities to maintain and build on your success. And “act small” by keeping in touch with life’s realities, alert to feedback from your colleagues, your customers and competitors. This outlook keeps looking for ways to do things better. Acting big can only drive the kind of complacency that undermines future success.

Laughter as a wake up call. If you’re finding it difficult to laugh, then all is not well with your life. In particular, if any humour directed at you is making you irritable, annoyed and angry, the chances are you’re not quite comfortable with yourself and who you are. Humour can be aggressive, a way for others to “put you down”. But accept the rough-and-tumble of conversation. Be willing to laugh at your own expense.

Play to your strengths. Know your talents, those deep-seated attributes and qualities which form the skills you can deploy easily. You will gain greater leverage in your career and life generally by exploiting your natural strengths rather than attempting to “fix” your weaknesses. Know what your vulnerabilities are and know how to manage around them but concentrate your life effort on your genuine talents. Identify your talents by reviewing:

• what kind of things do I enjoy doing (vs. I dislike)?
• what do I find easy to learn (vs. seems to take for ever to sink in)?
• what feels part of me, an important part of my personal identity (vs. what doesn’t)?
• what tasks do I seem to accomplish almost effortlessly (vs. what takes considerable attention, time and effort to get right)?

“Don’t put your spoon into the pot that doesn’t boil for you.” Know what career pot will boil for you and which won’t. Don’t go against the grain of your skills and motivations to pursue an occupation that isn’t drawing on your deep-seated talents. Select your vocation wisely. And if your job in your current organisation isn’t working for you, find another “pot”. Ask:

• do you enjoy what you do?
• does it allow you to utilise your strengths?
• do you have the opportunity to make a difference?
• when you perform well can you see the impact?
• if the organisation performs well, do you personally gain?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you’re avoiding the reality of your career and life well being. And you need to find a role which allows you greater fulfilment and autonomy.

Be your own line manager. If you had line management responsibility for you, how would you approach the task? Step outside yourself to view yourself as an intelligent and sensitive manager might. What questions would you ask to know you:

• what do you value most and least?
• what expectations and beliefs about work and life do you hold?
• what are your prejudices, biases and fears?
• what makes you feel good? what will offend and upset you?
• what do you want to achieve with your life?
• what are your specific objectives and priorities?

Are you doing a good job as your manager? Are you giving yourself enough stretch and challenge? Or are you allowing yourself to under-perform?

We don’t have two lives. “If only we could have two lives: the first in which to make one’s mistakes…and the second in which to profit by them.” Live your life by learning from your mistakes quickly. Mistakes are fundamental to learning in life. If you’re not making mistakes, the chances are that you’re not learning and you’re not making progress in life. But know how to accelerate your learning. Don’t make the mistakes that keep you in the same classroom of life. Pay attention to experience. Don’t dismiss any failures “as one of these things that could happen to the best of us.” Ask why? What did you do? What didn’t you do? What would you do differently faced with a similar situation in future? Learn from your successes. What worked? Why? Don’t assume that the same approach will always work. What would you do differently to be even more successful?

“Only the Paranoid Survive.” Look out for the advance warnings in life. Read events around you to keep alert to the small problems that might escalate unless you take personal action. If you’re reluctant to discuss work issues with your boss and team, open the post in the morning, talk frankly to your partner about your worries, then accept that all is not well and you need to rethink your life priorities and approach.

Don’t get caught up in the rat race. Don’t let social pressures and expectations for you to “achieve” distort your view of yourself and what is important to you. No doubt we all could do “better” and are capable of more. But a mistaken or exaggerated view of your talents may also create unrealistic goals, goals that cannot be fulfilled and can only create disappointment and disillusionment.

Know when you’re running out of time. Organisations rarely give you direct and honest feedback on how you’re doing. You need to read the signs when all is not well. The signals:

• phone calls are now taking longer to be returned
• meetings are becoming difficult to set up
• friends and colleagues seem “different”; their body language is awkward
• your boss is even more busy than usual and can’t find the time to catch up
• a trusted associate begins asking, “how are things?” in a concerned manner

For whatever reason – a shift in corporate priorities, a new leadership team, under-performance on your part – you are losing out. Read the signs. Either fight back or get out before things get out of control.

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