Page 38 - Free Yourself From

Taking Action for Knowing and Being Yourself 21

effectiveness. The key is to focus on a few critical behaviors
that have the strongest weighting in your success and to
look at the strongest trends and patterns—the things you
hear over and over rather than the one-off comments. Once
you’ve gotten a clear picture of what’s good and what needs
improvement, work with a coach or mentor who can help
you develop a plan that might include cross-assignments,
mentoring by experts in areas where you come up short, or
formal development tools and programs from inside or
outside your organization.

Managing and Leveraging Your Feedback—
Make It Count

Once you have people offering their perceptions of you, you’ll need
to be open and accepting about what they have to say (and if you
aren’t, don’t expect people to offer this feedback again). This isn’t
easy, but it’s the greatest gift you can receive as an executive, or aspir-
ing executive.

Self-Image: The Overlooked Success Factor

We spend so much of our career-planning time thinking about the
hard, tactical stuff such as skills, experience, knowledge, goals, and
performance, that we can forget how dramatically the softer stuff,
like self-image, can impact our success. So next up, you’re going to
take a close look at what you think of yourself and why and how that
self-image is fostering or impeding your ultimate success.
To get started, imagine you are sitting at dinner (table for one),
and you ask yourself, “What sort of person am I?” You might
respond, “I’m a fix-it person. I clean up other people’s messes and
botched projects.” Or you might say, “I’m a department head type.”