A coaching truism: self-awareness is the starting point for development. Indeed, this applies to career and leadership development.
Unfortunately, most people are so busy cramming each day with work, family, leisure, and life-maintenance tasks that we rarely take the time to reflect on who we really are right now.
Many of us look back at ourselves in high school and college, or during our twenties or thirties and have a laugh or think of that gospel lyric ‘thank God I’m not like I used to be’.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know your current self so that in twenty years you don’t reflect on this time and cringe? The good news is, that with awareness, you can make changes to start living and working more as the person you hope to be. However, Daniel Goleman does warn us to not become obsessed with knowing ourselves.
But, how do you get to know you? Fortunately, feedback is all around.
A shift in perspective about daily encounters is one way to gather feedback. Think about your interactions and relationships with friends, family, co-workers, employees, customers, grocery store cashiers, your postman, etc. Monitor how they react to you as therein are clues. Defensive behavior, excuses, and more may also provide insight.
Another way to get information is to ask people what they think. Others may not be comfortable giving feedback about your perceived weaknesses but usually will share with you perceived strengths. Being clear on strengths is just as valuable as clarity around our weaknesses. A way to put a little structure into this is to do your own version of the Reflected Best Self exercise.
Traditional feedback includes the formal performance discussion at work and also data from personality inventories or 360 degree feedback instruments. Reliable and valid assessments provide another snapshot of you. If your employer does assessments, ask to participate. If not, consider finding a coach that provides these services.
Self-awareness is an ongoing process worthy of consideration every so often.
What techniques do you use to know yourself? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Growing College Kids
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ere is some new and interesting research on college students and career development:
1.A recent Gallup poll that examined the relationship between college experiences and life after graduation found that what mattered most to ending up engaged at work and having a sense of well-being was real support from faculty / mentors and experiential learning (i.e., projects, internships, extracurricular activities/organizations) while in school. Sadly, only 3% of those surveyed strongly agreed that all of these were part of their college experience.
2. Research by Katherine Milkman, Modupe Akinola, and Dolly Chugh found that when prospective grad students reached out to tenure-track faculty for a meeting, the requests of women and minorities were ignored by faculty at a higher rate than the requests coming from men. Interestingly, the bias against women and minorities was greater in higher paying disciplines and at private institutions. They found little discrimination in the humanities, more discrimination in the natural sciences, and much discrimination in business schools.
If we generalize the Gallup research mentioned above to grad students, this difficulty women and minorities experience establishing a mentoring relationship is even more troubling.
3. Speaking of business schools, gender, and careers, research by Laura Kray examines why women may opt out of high-paying business careers. In an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition, she shared her findings about b-school students saying “men tend to have more lenient ethical standards than women, and secondly, that negotiators are more likely to tell a blatant lie to a female counterpart than a male counterpart.”
This is a fascinating study and it would be interesting to know if the gender differences in ethical standards and behavior are true for business school faculty as well. I’ve written previously about ethical behavior while in college and believe it has many long-term implications.
Finally, (disclaimer: it’s my alma mater) what a fantastic way to develop college students – Earl Leonard, a UGA alum mentors students in UGA’s college of business.
Does this research reflect what you are seeing in the universities you care about and with the college kids in your life? Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Cultural Fluency #2
This post is the second in my series of resources for increasing your CQ* (cultural intelligence).
The phrase – ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do” – basically means to do as those around do and is good advice to heed. The idea fits well with the platinum rule of cultural competency “do unto others as they would like to have done unto them”.
Learning the norms and customs of other cultures can be quite interesting and practicing them when you interact with people from those cultures communicates your respect. Given the immense diversity on our planet and the increasing diversity of our nation, communities, and workplaces, being a student of other cultures is yet another piece of the continuous development puzzle.
I’ve written previously about how the greeting varies from culture to culture and am sharing this video as a resource. It includes information about how to greet people around the world (actually nine countries) and is a start for learning what’s appropriate.
For many of us, drinking coffee is important and almost a daily ritual. If that is true for you, check out this infographic on ordering coffee around the world. This particular resource goes out to my favorite coffee drinking friend and avid traveler – you know who you are! 🙂
Speaking of coffee, I’ve read that in certain Eastern European cultures, formal performance discussions between a manager and employee begin following coffee and pastries.
Finally, for insight on learning more about other cultures via food, here is a post by travel blogger Andy Andersen. It is certainly a bonus if you get to experience the food in its country of origin but if not, check out ethnic restaurants in your community.
*I use cultural fluency, cultural competence, and cultural intelligence interchangeably.
Becoming Culturally Fluent
Awhile back, I wrote about the need to cultivate cultural competence in our ever more diverse world. Several people asked me for specific how-to’s so this is the first in a series sharing some resources and information for increasing CQ* (cultural intelligence).
A good first step when embarking on self-development is to see if there is a way to gauge perceptions of our current selves. For example, when doing leadership and management development, 360 degree feedback assessment is used for that purpose.
In the case of cultural competence, information on how non-Americans perceive us can be helpful in the same way and a good starting point. Once, a well-traveled New Zealander said to me he thought it strange and insincere the way Americans tell everyone they meet to ‘have a nice day’. It had never occurred to me that anyone would take offense to that statement.
I found this post, which summarizes information shared via AskReddit rather enlightening as to how we Americans are perceived. (warning: some of the language is a bit strong.) A top 10 version of this same info was going around facebook recently but now I can’t seem to find it. If you know of it, please share the link in the comments below.
Do you find any of these observations surprising?
The perceptions of non-Americans are interesting but really just the beginning. Consider the many cultures within this country, your state, your community, your workplace. How do you think you are perceived within those various contexts?
*I use cultural fluency, cultural competence, and cultural intelligence interchangeably.
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