We need accurate feedback to understand our strengths. This means being open to what others tell us and not being so defensive that we can't learn from our mistakes.
As I said in my Suite 101 article on playing to your strengths, we all have a tendency to overlook our strengths. This is because the things we are good at we find easy to do. But, for this reason, we discount them by saying it’s just our job or surely anyone can do that! Perversely, we are much more aware of our weaknesses. We have a bad habit of comparing ourselves to people who can do thing we can’t do rather than to those who aren’t as good at things as us. This is a recipe for low self esteem and poor confidence.
We really need ongoing, regular feedback on both our strengths and weaknesses. Like a business, we should periodically survey our key internal customers to see how we are doing. The problem is that, because our distorted self perception undermines our confidence we tend to be very defensive about our weaknesses. As a result, whenever we get negative feedback, instead of learning from it we make excuses. We blame circumstances or other people for our own failings.
There are lots of situations where it is very easy to say that we didn’t get our work done on time because someone else didn’t give us the input we needed from them in time. Regardless of how true this explanation may be, we can always ask ourselves the challenging question: “What could I have done differently to move this along faster?”
If we never ask ourselves what we could do differently, then we are disempowering ourselves and stifling our own development. If we really want to learn how to surmount the endless obstacles thrown in our path, then we have to ask ourselves this difficult question repeatedly.
