360-degree feedback programs have received a lot of negative (and justified) attention over the last few years. Even Dilbert has parodied the process.
Recently, a client said, “I can’t wait to do another 360 degree review that tells me what I already knew and provides me with very little meaningful insights.”
However, 360-degree feedback done right can be a very valuable process that significantly influences teams and organizations. It provides an outside perspective into an individual’s (often unconscious) habits and behaviors that sabotage their success.
These are areas such as an inability to compromise, conflict avoidance, micromanaging, poor communication or collaboration, etc.
Why Should You Do a 360-Degree Review?
According to Dr. Tasha Eurich, while most people believe they are self-aware, only 10% to 15% are. Self-awareness is very rare quality for a person to have. So most people walk around not understanding the true impact they are having in their organization.
There are three main reasons for this:
While it’s easy to see what’s wrong with everyone else around us, it’s hard to see similar things in ourselves. The way our brain is wired makes it extremely difficult to self-examine ourselves to see our unconscious thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
The human mind is not rational, but driven by emotions. We make up stories in the absence of hard data (i.e. 1+1=2). Our mind is also wired to reward us for making quick meaning of situations through chemical releases such as oxytocin.
The more experienced and senior a person’s role is in an organization, the more likely they are to overestimate their skills, abilities, and competencies. One study of 3600 senior leaders found that they overvalued their capabilities in 19 out of 20 areas.
Therefore, receiving external feedback is extremely important in helping people understand what they are doing, thinking and feeling and the effect it has on those around them. Armed with this information, individuals have a much higher chance of creating critical behavioral changes.
Unfortunately, the 360-degree process is broken today and needs to be changed.
Led a fantastic and courageous global team at Google through team building workshop that builds deep and trusted connections to increase performance and innovation.
It fantastic and I showed them the business ROI along with it (not some woo-woo thing). We broke off into groups after the presentation and played by game, Cards Against Mundanity.
It was amazing to see people open and share their breakdowns, values, deeply held beliefs and life lessons.
I can already see they have huge opportunities to increase performance and innovation (and they will achieve it together). I’ll be excited to see how things progress over the next 90 days.
Here is your #6 business relationship supercharger, empowering yourself, from my book, Social Wealth…
Supercharger #6: Empowering Yourself
Your success is directly correlated to your psychology because your thoughts turn into the actions you take and the results you generate. Your mind is extremely powerful, and it will either propel you forward or cripple you. You need clarity, focus, and compelling motivations to move toward the life you want. It’s critical to remove inner conflicts that may be holding you back as well. You also need to create your business plan, and understand why you want what you want in your career. Don’t live your life as a sailboat hoping to drift to the right destination without a map or GPS; your chance of getting where you want to go is very low.
We form our own reality from the BS stories we make up.
We’re conspiracy theorists and a huge ball of emotions.
Once you embrace that truth, it’s way easier to live your life.
Unless something is 1+1=2 it’s a story!
Let it go.
Example: Leader of a group asks a question. You answer it. The person across from you rolls their eyes. You think (one) that person doesn’t like me, (two) they don’t like what I’m saying and/or (three) something about me bothers them. Well, all you know is they rolled their eyes. That’s it. You filled in the rest of the information. They could have remembered something they didn’t do. Got a text from a sick kid. Had a client yell at them.
It’s all a story you created in your mind. That’s your reality now unless you address it with that person.
It’s only TRUE because you MADE IT TRUE!
Make sense?
Here is what you do to resolve the story and write a new ending:
You address that privately with them by saying, “The story in my head is that….” That’s it. That disarms them immediately because of how you led into the conversation.
That’s “Why Your Stories Are Holding Back From Career Success!”
Cheers!
PS: Want to clear out the BS stories that are holding you back? Contact me for coaching options (including a free 20 mins where I’ll help you solve your biggest challenge).
From time-to-time, I’ll share quotes with you in areas that really impact me and others I come in contact with. Fear has been a really big theme lately with clients and friends. I really like this quote on Fear by poet, Audre Lorde, in her bookA Burst of Light: and Other Essays (and from brain pickings).
“Seventeen days before she turned fifty, and six years after she underwent a mastectomy for breast cancer, Lorde was told she had liver cancer. She declined surgery and even a biopsy, choosing instead to go on living her life and her purpose, exploring alternative treatments as she proceeded with her planned teaching trip to Europe. In a diary entry penned on her fiftieth birthday, Lorde reckons with the sudden call to confront the ultimate fear:
I want to write down everything I know about being afraid, but I’d probably never have enough time to write anything else. Afraid is a country where they issue us passports at birth and hope we never seek citizenship in any other country. The face of afraid keeps changing constantly, and I can count on that change. I need to travel light and fast, and there’s a lot of baggage I’m going to have to leave behind me. Jettison cargo.”
Here is another quote from her:
“Survival isn’t some theory operating in a vacuum. It’s a matter of my everyday living and making decisions. How do I hold faith with sun in a sunless place? It is so hard not to counter this despair with a refusal to see. But I have to stay open and filtering no matter what’s coming at me…”
It was an honor to be on this fantastic podcast, Short Story Long. Chris “Drama” Pfaff was a star on the hit MTV Show, Rob & Big, and now has a VERY successful apparel and clothing line. His podcast is downloaded more than 500,000 times per month, making it one of the most popular ones on Apple Podcasts. You can listen to it here, watch the video above, and read the transcript below.
In the podcast on Short Story Long we discuss the following:
Why understanding your patterns creates massive business breakthroughs
How to eliminate your own blind spots and patterns that sabotage your success and your team’s success, and why it is the #1 way to maximize your performance and leadership over every else you can do
Why leadership training and development is broken and doesn’t work
Why your level of self-awareness is always higher than your social awareness, and that only 5% or less of people are high functioning on the self-awareness scale
How to build an extraordinary team with no money, and outflank your competition (even companies 5x or 10X bigger than you).
Why Google’s Project Aristotle is the secret to build a great team, holding effective brainstorming and elevating strategic thinking on a team- and company-level
Why psychological safety is the foundation for all great teams even though no one really does it other than Google (and how you can do it for free.)
And much more…
Jason Treu: At the end of the day, if we don’t have some accountability, you screwed.
Speaker 1: The hardest part is figuring out what you want to master.
Chris Pfaff: Just focus on your product.
Speaker 2: Can you tell somebody that they suck?
Chris Pfaff: You got to just go for it.
Speaker 3: This is exactly I want to do for a living.
Speaker 4: You can’t even tell somebody that their breath stick.
Chris Pfaff: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Short Story Long. We have a very special guest today. His name is Jason Treu. Jason, thanks for coming in.
Jason Treu: Hey, thanks for having me in the show today.
Chris Pfaff: Of course.
Jason Treu: Fun to fly out here today and …
Chris Pfaff: Did you fly out here just for this?
Jason Treu: I had some other things but …
Chris Pfaff: Yeah, we’ll say just for this.
Jason Treu: Just for this. Just for you.
Chris Pfaff: I feel special. Yeah.
Jason Treu: You’re so special.
Chris Pfaff: Yes. I’m really excited because you are an executive coach and I mean we’ll get into all of it, but I’m really interested in what you do and I think that for me, I’m 31 years old, I’ve had a business for close to 10 years now. I had always obviously heard about coaching and life coaching and executive coaching, all this different stuff and I will say that for a long time, I mean born and raised in Ohio, didn’t go to college and maybe my brain was a little turned off to these things, but I always thought it was just, I don’t know, not for me or didn’t really understand what it even was and whatever. It wasn’t until I actually did an interview with somebody who now is a really good friend of mine named Cavion who does a lot of life coaching type stuff.
Chris Pfaff: After his podcast, he said, “Hey man, that was so cool and there was so many people that listened to that. Let me give you a couple sessions for free.” I said, “All right, I’ll do it. I’ll answer whatever questions you asked me, I’ll listen to your advice.” I mean even just his perspective and his outside knowledge on my life and what I’m doing right and wrong was really, really useful and that …
