Vatsan’s Ramblings

Day 2 of Management Excellence Event

After working with my team for almost 10 hours straight in a very intense getting-to-know-each-other process and making incredibly good progress, we met at 6pm for some honest, direct and as much as possible, non-judgmental feedback about each other.

Earlier, in our full-group check-in, I mentioned that since judgments matter, I would be happy to receive those too, because they matter in our effectiveness to get things done. I didn’t say this, but others perception of me, and their judgments – they definitely matter to my sense of self esteem and worth. So it was important to learn what I could. I also expressed my fears of working on a project that made me feel out of my depth, and that since I was used to managers/leads being experienced and with the capacity to offer up wisdom to their teams as needed, I was worried that when it would be my turn to be the project manager, I needed to have somehow figured out how to become that person who can offer qualities of a leader.

In the lunch line, one of the participants mentioned that he really appreciated how articulate I was and how freely I was willing to share my thoughts at the circle.

So this is what I heard during feedback time. It was very easy to just take it in and say thank you in return. But the feedback was far from rosy – it was quite the contrary – and very extreme. It was also perfect – I believed my teammates because they were very honest and not at all judgmental in their attitudes. And they also were very honest with praises.

I had always hoped that my own manager would have given me feedback like this. It’s easy to see why he didn’t – because it is too much of a risk to take to be so honest – I could just feel very insulted or hurt that I’d never be able to work with him again. But I suspect that I would have easily taken it in and learned – but once again, that is something very hard to know about anyone before taking the chance and actually giving a very honest feedback…

So this is what I heard..

• Analytical
• Willingness to speak his mind without fears
• Pushes the envelope with ideas and open articulation.
• Could greatly benefit by talking a little less
• Constant stream of ideas like bullets – but not always very well thought out or concisely articulated
• Good intellectual horsepower
• Pushes ideas relentlessly, does not get discouraged easily, or acts afraid.
• Doesn’t know when to stop pushing – could do better by stopping earlier and backing off a bit.
• Comes to the table with preconceived “right” answers. This causes some listeners to not want to agree. Would be better served by trying to work with others to construct/create a solution.
• Talks more. Asks less. Could be better served by asking more questions, and listening.
• Very charismatic. Strong presence that can’t  be easily ignored. Easily commands a “I like you” reaction.
• Creates overly broad generalizations from narrow bases of observations.
• Perceptive
• Does not always care about brining perspectives to the table that apply broadly. Instead, he brings his own experiences and (wrongly assumes that they will directly fit/apply broadly to other situations.
• Acts more confident than he really is. Very ‘I’  and ‘me’ centric.

My take on this -

• The feedback about personal presence is surprising to me. But in hindsight, I probably should have known that a long time ago.
• I talk a lot. I need to learn to listen, and ask more useful questions.
• Overgeneralizations from narrow experiences- I learned to do this very very young in my teens. I already know that this is a weakness. Sounds like I need to work on changing this behavior all over again!
• ‘I’/'me’ centric – is this ego or compensating act for insecurities? Not sure, yet. I suspect a combination of both, but more of latter. Either way, not a very attractive trait.
• Not very well thought out ideas – I was not intending to be well thought out anyway! I was trying to think aloud and collaborate on the thinking process. In hindsight, I think that this is not often done – so I might be better off learning to think within my head instead of doing that aloud!
• Narrow perspectives – Need to observe myself on this front. I suspect that working on this project with a team of non-engineers might have something to do with this feedback – since I really do lack perspective on life outside of engineering disciplines. So my choices were really between not bringing anything to the table for fear of narrow applicability, or to just go to the table with what I had. I chose to go with what I had. I wonder if I failed to acknowledge that and instead tacitly pretended like my ideas were broadly applicable? for now, I’m leaving this as an exercise for further self-reflection

I can very much see how this feedback process can cause many a tears to be shed. But I’m really excited to have this information – what better way to learn and grow than to have a true mirror to show you all that is beautiful and ugly in you at the same time!

Another point here – I’m glad to be among my teammates. They are very very smart and a great company to keep, besides being very good at giving honest feedback. They all got this type of feedback too – so I hope they are excited about learning about themselves as much as I am