Most of the feedback that I received from others regarding how they saw me in a leadership role was not surprising. The delta between my score and how others rated me were pretty close in most cases. I think that can be explained by the fact that most of the people who rated me in the assessment are people that I work with regularly. One thing that surprised me is that I rated high on inspirational. This surprised me because most of the people who rated me were peers who were more senior than me.
I receive authentic feedback constantly in my everyday life. I work in an environment where people are not shy about providing direct feedback. I've worked with the same group of people for over six years. People are very comfortable with giving me direct feedback. A couple of weeks ago, I was having a really bad day and everyone around me noticed. At the end of the day, one of my colleagues pulled me aside and said that when I have bad days, it really shows. I really took that to heart because we had just read about displaying our emotions. When I have a bad day, I shouldn't take it out on the people around me.
At my company, we receive formal 360 feedback once a year and we use the feedback received to develop in the following year. The benefit of our 360 feedback system is that it doesn't really affect your appraisal so employees who select tougher reviewers will actually benefit if they are looking for areas of improvement. We are currently undergoing our 360 feedback review process and this year I made a point of selecting different reviewers to get new perspective.
I think I am harder on myself than others are. I've been approached by different hiring managers for Senior Manager positions at my company. I have been hesitant to go for these positions because I am not confident that people who have more years of experience would want to report to a Manager who is much younger than them. In comparison to many of the available talent at my company, I don't feel I have as much experience to offer. Recently, I was considering an internal position at my company. I talked to my manager and told him I didn't really think I looked good on paper. After talking to him, he reminded me about all the projects I've led and told me to focus on my successful track record at the company. At the end of the day, I guess it is hard to see what I do well because the measuring stick for doing well in my mind is different from others.
I like the idea of feedback that is separate from appraisal. I think this would be good for all companies, and I know that I would like it. There are some people at my company that I know would give me real feedback, good or bad. If this was separate from my appraisal I would definitely want to go to them for this because I know they would tell me the truth.
ReplyDeleteI don't feel like that many people that I work with give me real feedback, but this could be because I have only worked with them for a short time. Did people you work with always give you good feedback? Or did they wait until they got to know you better first?