“I am not the man I want to be, but I am no longer the man I used to be.”
~ Morgan Snyder
We are all in the process of becoming. Sadly, that is sometimes becoming something worse. But most of the very intentional people I spend time with personally or professionally are aggressively becoming something better. And that isn’t just personally. There is an intentionality about their families and businesses as well.
We help individuals and organizations answer key questions for their life and their enterprise:
Who am I?
Why do I exist?
Where am I going?
How will I get there?
Clearly our vision for where we are going is aspirational and how we will get there is answered by our strategic plan, but ‘Who are you?’ is an area where you are becoming. Because core values (the answer to ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Who are we?’) serve as both a reality and a destination. They are both an anchor and a compass.
We often encounter employees who say the stated core values of their company are bull$&)@. What they are saying is that they aren’t perfectly lived out or fully realized. I am sort of surprised that they are so shocked by that reality. If cultivated correctly, they are both based on who you are and hold the promise of who you are more fully becoming.
And we have learned that the necessary fuel required to get you to where you want to go is the acknowledgment of the progress you’ve made.
Let’s celebrate the way we are fulfilling those values.
Let’s not be afraid to discuss how we are not.
Let’s earnestly address where we fall short.
The irony is that all of us avoid almost all forms of negative feedback. But we also know that overcoming a challenge with a customer makes for a better customer relationship, that problems we’ve overcome in our personal lives have strengthened our resolve, and that so much of the valuable evolution in our organizations came through difficult seasons. Increasingly enjoying the person we see in the mirror is the path to enjoying others better.
I would like to think that I am becoming a better version of myself. That if I look back across the decades, I am better than I was 10, 20, or 30 years ago. The work happens daily, but the progress is often hard to see without the advantage of many years’ view. Some of that change came from allowing others to be honest with me, but possibly the greatest change has come from outright asking.
The three questions our team and partnership ask quarterly are:
What do you enjoy most about working with me?
What do you find most challenging?
What is one thing you think I least want to hear about myself?
I love getting the answers to the first question, but my life has been transformed by hearing the feedback from the other two and making course adjustments as a result.
Consider
Who are you?
Who are you becoming?
Do you have people you trust to tell you things you need to know to get you and your organization there?