I started coaching about 10 years ago. In that time I have received thousands of hours of insight in to what it takes to lead and what prevents people doing that to the best of their ability.
Obviously there are limitations in the environment and other people can get in the way too. A boss who takes credit for your work, a colleague who confronts you no matter how congenial you try to be, a company infrastructure which overlooks innovative, original people in favour of cookie-cutter managers...And there is no doubt that these things get in the way of people doing their best work.
However, there are also a million other pieces of personal feedback which my clients try to sift through and handle. These relate to their own performance, things like their work-style preferences, their habits, their personality. Over the years they have probably been told a hundred different stories about what holds them back, many of them contradictory, covering the whole range of possibilities.
You see, we receive feedback from people who are equally flawed. They see our "issues" through their own spectacles. To one person we are too outgoing and should take more of a back seat. That person might be a "back-seater" themselves and dislike others who behave in a different way. Or they could be show-offs who don't like you taking their spotlight. Or they could just be repeating something that was told to them, years ago, by someone who had issues of their own. And, of course, another person might feedback that we should push ourselves forward more...which one is right?
And what are we supposed to do with all of this information? How do you use it to gain a greater understanding of yourself and, therefore, grow as a result?
My view is that you take it all with a pinch of salt. Look for themes. Look for extremes. But ignore the rest.
In fact, the best feedback comes not from listening to others but to listening to oneself. What beliefs do you hold which have never really been analysed and questioned? What do you say all the time as though it were "the truth"? What do you do which annoys yourself?
We don't really need other people to hazard a guess about what our problem is if we are astute enough to listen to the feedback we give ourselves.
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