What others think is what most matters!
This is the late 1990s. I have only a few years of professional experience. During a conversation about promotions with friends, I remember having said with the arrogance of my 25 years, "in the end, when you think about it, the most important is not to be the best, but only that others think your are. »
The importance of perceptions.
20+ years later, the importance of internal alignment and the value of authenticity have found their ways. So I'm no longer comfortable with this peremptory statement, without totally denying it though.
Today I want to see it as an early consciousness of the importance of the perceptions we generate. Because the people in our business environment do not - with rare exceptions - have access to what we truly are, their decisions impacting us, such as promotions, are based on what they think of us, i.e., on their perceptions.
An history of successive distortions.
As individuals, if we wish to take control of our professional journey, accessing to the perceptions we generate becomes an imperative. Without it, we progress in a state of limbo.
This vagueness forces us to behave according to what we imagine others think of us. But there is a gap between who we are and what others perceive. A similar gap exists between what others think of us and what we think of their perceptions of us. As a result, the gap between who we are and what I think of others' perceptions of me is simply gigantic!
Daring to be open to feedback.
What can be done about it? Simply by having access to the perceptions we generate. Various methods are available to us. The most obvious is to ask for feedback. This means being open to being challenged. It means sending a message to others that "what I am doing is probably not perfect. Tell me what you think so that I can improve. »
This method is very effective to identify specific areas for improvement. The difficulty is that such feedback, provided it is well given, is confined to a relatively limited field: it is about a precise topic. For example, my ability to ease tensions during the last team meeting or my capacity to handle difficult questions from clients during a presentation.
Unless you ask specific questions about areas you want to further improve, it is likely that the feedback you receive will not cover the full range of leadership behaviors and skills that are expected of you in your role.
360° feedback: understanding expectations comprehensively.
Hence the importance of 360° feedback tools: they give you comprehensive access to the perceptions you generate through a structured questionnaire that covers the full spectrum of leadership skills and behaviors expected by your organization in your context.
