Going to a new level of success requires your willingness to solicit honest feedback and your ego's willingness to accept it.
While ego can drive job performance and career achievement, it can also stand in the way of self-honesty and effectiveness. If your ego goes unmanaged—if you allow it to dictate your thoughts and actions—then you are at risk of filtering out any negative feedback and only hearing the positive. Throughout this chapter, you will see how easy it is for all of us to practice self-deception. While it can manifest itself in myriad ways, the primary culprit behind self-deceptive behavior is usually an unmanaged ego.
People whose egos shield them from the truth of their shortcomings are incapable of forging deeper work relationships. Not only are they incapable of taking these relationships to higher, more productive levels, they may also lack the capacity to sustain them at all. The following example illustrates the profound impact "ego blindness" can have on relationships.
As senior manager in an industry-leading company, John was a talented, knowledgeable executive whose management style refl ected his background as a high school football star. Like the most stereotypical of bullying coaches, John believed in management through intimidation. For this reason, it wasn't unusual for him to express his displeasure by yelling at direct reports. Even worse, at times, he would lose his temper in client meetings. Insecure and wanting to control every situation he was in, John was very difficult to work with.
Contrary to his bullying demeanor, John was also a considerate man with a kind heart, and there were instances where he would display these qualities by going beyond the call of duty to help direct reports and colleagues. In John's own mind, he was tough but fair. He had convinced himself that his rigid and demanding style made him a highly valuable and effective manager; he saw the positive aspects of being tough but none of the negative ones. Even when his boss reprimanded him for his temper tantrums or micromanaging tendencies, John rationalized these negative comments, telling himself that his boss didn't realize how it was sometimes necessary to seize control of a situation or let someone know that if she made a mistake, it wouldn't be tolerated a second time. His ego, in short, blinded him to his own faults.
For five years, John's boss supported him despite concerns expressed by the CEO and other top executives that John's style might not be right for their firm. He valued John's contributions because bosses love those who get things done, and he falsely assumed that with time and experience, John would change. Unfortunately, too many things came undone with John. His intimidating manner became more oppressive despite his boss's requests that he "tone it down." After one particularly unpleasant exchange between John and the firm's largest client, John's boss admitted there was a problem and bowed to pressure from his bosses to let John go.
This is a sobering story to begin the chapter with, but a necessary one to serve up because too many people exhibit behaviors that contradict goodness but refuse to acknowledge the truth from themselves or others. It's not always easy to admit faults or insecurities to others, and it's often even more challenging to admit them to yourself. Yet when you're not brutally honest about your own shortcomings, you risk losing trust and credibility from others. This deadly combination can wield a devastating blow to both to your reputation and business relationships as evidenced by John's professional demise.
Now, we are going to explore insights that explain why we don't hear or even probe for the truth so that we are cognizant of the pitfalls and recognize opportunities to move forward. And, as will be the case with all chapters, you will find behavioral techniques that work for getting results, truthful results.
It is not unusual to practice some self-deception because your ego is on the line when you are looking in the mirror. Recognize, though, that this self-deception can permit you to make a statement about yourself, but that statement is contradicted when others know the opposite is true. You may insist that you want to take on a big, time-consuming project at work, but the truth is that you lack the time, discipline, and experience to handle it.
None of this is intended to prescribe negative self-talk, but rather, to encourage realistic optimism. Character and integrity are integral baseline foundations from which we are assessed by colleagues and customers. Influencing others to contribute to success begins when you discover the truth about yourself. To help you learn to be truthful with yourself, let's look at the most common ways people deceive themselves. Keep your self-assessment hat on as you read through the next section.
People tend to hide the truth from about themselves in many ways. It may be a small way, such as telling ourselves that we weren't rude on the phone to a vendor soliciting business when in fact we were abrupt and discourteous. It may be a more significant lie, such as denying to ourselves that we are in the wrong company or even the wrong field. It may be a one-time deception or it may continue for weeks, months or in too many sad cases, for years.
So there's no end to the ways we can lead ourselves astray. Here is a list of the five most common self-deception tactics:
Refusing to acknowledge problems or weaknesses.
Playing the victim.
Believing that if you didn't have bad luck, you'd have no luck at all.
Convincing yourself that you lack what it takes.
Overinflating your capacities.
Refusing to Acknowledge Problems or Weaknesses
If you're unable to admit to yourself that you lack certain knowledge or skills or that you've come up short on an assignment, you will be unable to recognize your need for improvement in this area. If you've been a high-performance person from the time you started school, this is an especially tough admission. It seems better to fool yourself into believing you're still an A student than accepting that you received a C-. You tell yourself a project failed because you weren't given enough time or other resources. You're convinced that you don't need additional training to move to the next performance level, even though more than one person has advised you that's exactly what you do need.
If you deny that you're having problems, you're never going to improve your performance in the eyes of others. Business associates may assume that you are stuck at your current level and that you are unable or unwilling to progress beyond it.
It is frustrating for consultants and corporate leaders alike to work with people who refuse to look inward. I once coached a brilliantly intellectual bank president named Jane. She had a great education and business background; she was passionate about her job and helping customers. However, an assessment from her employees revealed a consistent pattern—Jane was closed-minded in high pressure situations. When I confronted Jane with this feedback, she snapped, "That's simply not true. I have to make executive decisions," to which I responded, "But your employees are confused about why you ask their opinions but never implement their ideas. That seems to be why they feel this way."
Still flustered and hurt, Jane became firmer, "Well, I'm not closed-minded!"
For me, Jane's situation is, in a professional sense, tragic. She has so much natural drive and intelligence to succeed, but she prevents herself from going to that next level of performance. The utter irony was that almost every direct report on her executive board said she was closed-mind, yet she responded with a closed mind . . . about being closed-minded.
Consultant Alan Weiss says, "You cannot empower those unwilling to be empowered."
People who are unwilling to be enlightened by others display the most obvious symptoms of self-deception.
Playing the Victim
You tell yourself that it's not your fault that you have been victimized by people or circumstances beyond your control, and rather than accept responsibility for your actions, you create fictitious scapegoats. "If my customer wasn't such a tightwad, I would have the resources to achieve the goals he sets" or "I'm never going to shine unless my boss gives me the freedom to do things my way instead of his way" are just a couple of typical examples of playing the victim. There is no doubt that there are many times when colleagues or customers don't provide you with sufficient resources or freedom, but when you use that as an excuse and make it into a bigger obstacle than it really is, then you're guilty of self-deception.
And what you tell yourself has the propensity to be acted out in subsequent behaviors. You probably won't accuse your boss or client of victimizing you, but you may fall prey to doing or saying things that inadvertently convey this impression. You convey negative resistance about a reduced budget or act put out when people ask you to accomplish a task. You may not even be conscious of these behaviors, but your team members will be.
Believing If You Didn't Have Bad Luck, You'd Have No Luck at All
With apologies to Ray Charles who penned those lines, many people who quote them convince themselves that fate, the gods, or whoever controls luck is working against them. They convince themselves that some outside force is altering their job performance, personal effectiveness, and career success. Alternately, when they do well, they attribute it to the efforts of other people. It's almost as if they have reverse scapegoats—people to blame for their success.
People who deceive themselves in this way strike their colleagues as hesitant to take innovative chances and terrified of any risk. These individuals are always advising caution and warning of potential risks. They rarely make bold decisions and always seem like they're waiting for the other shoe to drop.
If this describes you, consider that playing not to lose damages the faith that others have in you, and can significantly impact reliability in your performance as a contributor and leader. It's important to make thoughtful, strategic decisions, but in every industry I've worked in, people do not like being around or working for people who constantly base decisions on worst-case scenarios. Similarly, most clients are unlikely to refer business to a service provider or businessperson who doesn't possess a can-do, solution-focused attitude.
Convincing Yourself You Lack What It Takes
If you tell yourself that you lack the experience or expertise to get the job done, it will ultimately affect your ability to do just that. Subconsciously convincing yourself that you aren't sufficiently assertive, innovative, or competent enough to handle an assignment will influence both your confidence at work and the impression others have of your abilities. Again, thoughts tend to dictate behaviors. If you make a strong enough impression, you may effectively convince others that you will never be able to live up to their expectations. As Vince Lombardi said, "Confidence is contagious, unfortunately, so is a lack of confidence."
What makes this worse is when we don't acknowledge that this negative self-talk is a bigger barrier than anyone outside ourselves. These inner arguments can become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you tell yourself you don't have what it takes, your perception becomes so convincing that you sabotage yourself. All your doubts and insecurities manifest themselves in your performance and demeanor. To those with whom you work, you come across as terribly insecure. As a result, both colleagues and customers are reluctant to entrust you with important assignments or business needs because your actions or attitude communicates that you can't handle it. The fastest way to rid yourself of negative self-talk is to first admit that it impedes your success and to then respond to that talk with assertive, confident behavior. I've coached both entry-level employees and high-level execs, and this application has worked wonders for breaking through to the next level. Get out of your own way!
Overinflating Your Capacities
While many people refuse to admit their own weaknesses, others hyperbolize their strengths. If you have a tendency to exaggerate your abilities, you tell yourself that you are the company's best salesperson, when in reality you are simply in the upper 50 percent. You may go so far as to insist to yourself that you have a good shot at the vice president opening, when the reality is that the probability is highly unlikely.
While being positive and optimistic is essential to achieving goals, your perception of your capabilities must be grounded in reality if they are to serve you well. You may convince yourself that the level of your abilities and your career trajectory are greater than they are, but you are not going to deceive your relationship partners. If you promise your customers the impossible and don't deliver, you are not going to have those customers for long, and not keeping your word can sustain and amplify a bad reputation.
Dramatizing your abilities is much different from imagining your potential. Creating statements like, "I'm not capable of managing that account right now, but I will be able to in a year with more experience under my belt," are important parts of assessing your performance and setting goals. It is important to be both ambitious and confident, but also realistic about whether you're ready for a project or position that could do more to help your career.
The lines can become blurred between positive self-talk and unrealistic capabilities based on a number of factors, including skill-base, knowledge, and experience. While it's challenging to maintain self-objectivity, hiding what we know to be true about our own abilities or potential for money, opportunity, or status can backfire.
My experience coaching business individuals and teams has provided me with a remarkably consistent insight into human behavior: we are terrified of admitting, to others and to ourselves, who we really are. I attribute this predominantly to the fear of failure. CEOs fear letting their employees down, so they tell themselves they must "always be confident." But confidence and vulnerability are not the same thing. Remember the story about Peter Davoren, CEO of Turner Construction? He won over a group of 100 employees with his statement, "I feel completely over my head. But where I quickly gain confidence is by knowing that I am surrounded by people like you to help all of us continue to succeed and grow as a team."
Davoren told himself and others the truth and look at the trust he gained, the way he got others to relate to him and to perform, which added exponentially to bottom-line profit. Turner Construction is not an industry leader by accident—it all started with their fearless leader who was not afraid to be vulnerable and truthful.
If we are so proficient at deceiving ourselves, how can we ever rectify the discrepancy between our perceptions and the truth about our abilities? The people with whom you have the closest relationship in work environments can generally see through these lies. They know you better than anyone—sometimes better than you know yourself.
People generally think, "What happens inside me stays inside me." Despite my earlier suggestions that being dishonest with yourself will dramatically impact the interaction you have with your colleagues and customers, you may doubt that the impact is significant enough to warrant change. After all, it is not as if you are bragging to your boss that you can do anything, or that you told your customers how doubtful you were that you could handle his most important request.
But the truth is that people are more perceptive and can see right through you, your overconfidence, or your excuses. You hold a lot of what you know about others inside, but you never communicate it. Over time, people pick up on the evidence you inadvertently leave behind. It can be anything from an uncertain tone to an unwillingness to work on a particular team to dominating a staff meeting. Behaviors that suggest insecurity, uncertainty, inconsistency, or a reluctance to take ownership for your actions can elicit the following results:
A perception that you are not trustworthy: When you hide from yourself or seem as if you are lacking self-awareness, you may give others the impression that you are sneaky, dishonest, or at the very least not forthcoming. Maybe you don't make eye contact during conversations, or perhaps you give the impression that you are holding information back. No matter what your behavior, if you are being dishonest with yourself, it could be interpreted by others as untrustworthiness.
Poor connections: Unless you are completely honest with yourself, you cannot form deep relationships with others. If you reveal only select parts of who you really are, you may trigger reservations or skepticism from those with whom you are looking to develop partnering relationships. Ultimately, you may never be able to forge the close emotional bonds that elevate relationships to results-producing levels.
A lack of leadership ability: People who cannot accept their shortcomings or are unconscious of them actually repel others. The best leaders are in touch with who they are at their core and conscious of how who they are affects others. Their confidence, competence, and charisma all emanate from the commitment of being transparent—with themselves as well as with others. When you meet these people, it is immediately apparent that what you see is what you get. You are drawn to them instinctively. When you practice self-deception, you deny yourself the opportunity to be a real leader. Your boss will not be able to see past your dishonesty or poor self-assessment to view you as leadership material, and even if he does, direct reports won't want to follow you.
In work situations, people often become so consumed by daily tasks that they overlook the effect their internal dishonesty is having on how others perceive them until significant damage has been done. Molly, a young partner at a large computer consulting firm was facing this exact situation when I was hired by the firm to help them improve internal relations. Having been named partner at a relatively young age because of her analytical brilliance, Molly developed a sense of superiority. Because she was given a lot of responsibility and was able to handle it well, she developed an overinflated sense of self-worth. The internal dialogues that helped her accurately assess her performance and question her actions stopped. She began disregarding that little voice in her head that suggested there might be better ways of handling given situations, and instead, convinced herself she could do no wrong.
Of course, she did do wrong. In her early years in the firm, she developed a strong relationship with a major client. Because she proved herself reliable and trustworthy, this client trusted her opinions and followed her direction implicitly. After Molly became partner, stopped being true to herself, and lost sight of her responsibilities, she made a recommendation to the client that had a very negative outcome. Rather than apologizing to the client, Molly defended her recommendation and said the problem must have been the way the client implemented her recommended strategy. Everyone makes mistakes, even major ones, but honest self-talk is the first voice to listen to. Yet Molly refused to accept any responsibility or admit culpability, which resulted in a breakdown in the relationship between Molly and the important client—a break that resulted in the client (a twelve-year, high-paying client) giving the firm an ultimatum—pull Molly from the account or they would find business elsewhere. Molly's partners knew she was at fault and pulled her from the account. It was only after this significant event that she started to realize that she had been hiding from herself, that she was afraid of showing any self-doubt because it would ruin her idealized image of herself as the firm's superhero, and that she still had much to learn.
The difficulty of transitioning from a self-deceiving mode to a truth-telling mode depends in large part on the extent and duration of your self-deceptions. If you have been dishonest with yourself for a long time, it will be more difficult to find the truth and start being honest. Similarly, if you've been in denial about who you are at work (as opposed to what you do), you will have an even a steeper mountain to climb.
Luckily, it can be climbed! Leveling with yourself takes a certain amount of self-assessment, courage, and will, but you have complete control over the outcome. Accepting who you are starts by facing some hard truths you may have been fighting to hide, but everyone is capable of doing this. The ability to be okay with the admission of your flaws and shortcomings plays more of a vital role between you and yourself, not you and others. Remember, breakthroughs start with breakdowns—breaking down your truths into digestible pieces.
To ensure you are being honest with yourself and being truthful with others, ask yourself the following questions:
What drives my behavior?
Concentrate on some of the specific things you say or do at work, especially words spoken or actions taken that bother you in some way. Has your boss asked you to join him at a trade conference or departmental meeting? Did you tell him you would rather stay in the office and work on a project near deadline? Was that the real reason? Were you anxious about going? Were you trying to show your boss that you are your own person and won't do everything he suggests? Examine the underlying motivations to discover what's really going on inside of you. Don't be satisfied with easy or superficial answers. If you tell yourself, "I don't want to go to the trade show because those shows make me uncomfortable," ask yourself if you find your role at work uncomfortable; ask if your boss has anything to do with this discomfort. As the detectives say, "Get to the bottom of it." This is a rock that few people look under, yet those who do find powerful answers they didn't know existed, many of which create breakthrough possibilities in workplace performance.
What am I really passionate about?
This is also a very telling question that can hit hard, but in a crucially necessary way. What gets you fired up, enthused, excited, and motivated to perform at your best? To get to the most revealing answer, ask yourself this question when you find yourself dissatisfied with what you are doing at work. Part of being honest with yourself means determining if your work is meaningful and fulfilling to you. Every job has parts that are a pain and that we'd prefer not to do or to delegate to others. But if you are not consistently passionate about what you are doing, whether you're a software designer or selling radio ads, you will not be able to hide from this truth very long. Dale Carnegie said, "You'll never achieve real success unless you like what you're doing."
Am I playing to win or not to fail?
I was hired to coach Susan, the vice president of an architectural development firm, on her presentation skills. Her firm was vying to win business for a $550-million project and the partnering firm suggested that everyone get coached on their presentation skills, but I was sent in to target her behavior in front of a group, and I quickly learned why. When Susan got up to speak, she was robotic. She would stammer and look down and read the PowerPoint slides. How did the typical audience respond? They would lose confidence and interest both in her team and company. Why? She played not to fail. When I coached her alone, I told her to forget about the potential business. "In fact," I said, "stand up and tell me about your family members and all the things you love about them."
At first, Susan gave me a hesitant look, but I smiled supportively so up she stood, and a transformation ensued. When Susan talked about her spouse and three children, she beamed with energy and confidence. She not only emanated a magnetism of the type that build relationships and gets results, but she proved she had teeth because she smiled!
This strategy works far and wide in all types of industries because it forces others to tell themselves that "playing not to fail" is more pervasive than they consciously realize. When high-level executives are serious and all business, it's usually fear-based behavior that detracts and turns away clients and employees instead of attracting them. What position are you playing from?
Am I apprehensive about being myself because I have to "act" a certain way?
This is a complex but important distinction to make: be honest with yourself about whether you are truly being yourself. This is difficult because we do behave differently in different situations. How you interact with a client who is conservative and wants nothing but bottom-line data will differ from a direct report with whom you share a fervor for the same sports team that won a big game the night before. The ability to adapt is a critical component in your ability to develop results-producing relationships with a wide variety of people. However, while your behaviors may change, your authenticity and values should not.
A Defining Moment of Self-Realization
Many years ago, I was the opening keynote speaker for a sales convention with 1,900 attendees. It was a rowdy crowd and the energy and competitive spirit was through the roof. The connection I made with the group was good, the verbal feedback was good, and the written evaluations I read a week later were also good. But there are times when good stinks because you know you're capable of great or beyond. Then came the moment of truth.
A week later, the company who filmed the convention sent me a video copy of my keynote speech. Remember, I coach presentation skills for a living, and as soon as I started watching the video, I intuitively knew something was missing. I meticulously critiqued my skills in the video. My gestures, eye contact, voice projection, movement, pausing, and body language were fluid and consistent. But still, something was missing. I watched the video for another 10 minutes, frustrated at my inability to see what it was, especially when I coach other people on it every day. Then it hit me like a linebacker drilling a quarterback on a blind-side blitz. Whammo!
I was not being myself. It's not that I wasn't sincere about my message or didn't believe every word I delivered. I was trying to be a great speaking professional instead of being myself, a person who possessed solid presentation skills. I put the performance before the authenticity, and it was the most refreshing slap in the face I'd taken in business up to that point. From that moment on, I realized, I would always be myself first and do my best to apply the skills required to build relationships and win business. The results have been astounding as I shed that insecurity: my confidence, connections, and results through relationships have headed straight north, and the stress of trying to be "the man" is all but gone. I couch this by admitting that my room for growth in business and relationships is boundless, but knowing that I'm operating from a core of self-truth is liberating beyond the workplace. But this would not have happened without the third-person perspective provided by the video, which leads to: perception alignment—a technique to uncover the absolute truth about you.
Perception Alignment
There is a major difference in how effectively most leaders/ professionals think they connect with others versus how others actually view them, which is often worlds apart.
The obvious objective here is to bring those two dynamics closer together. We can do this by using a process called perception alignment. This process to close the gap between intent and perception begins with seeing what other people see in you to gain a third-person perspective. Moreover, this critical path toward great communication with others warrants an ego willing to accept brutal honesty for the purpose of growth.
As you know by now, feedback is an integral step in learning about who you are, earning the trust of others, improving your relationship skills, and developing an accurate assessment of your abilities. It is a terrific tool for building confidence, performance, and connections with others. In this context, it helps you determine if what you tell yourself internally is consistent with what the outside world perceives. To determine if a disconnect exists between who you think you are and how others perceive you, consider the following exercise:
Contact four to seven reliable work colleagues who are familiar with your workplace performance and ask them if they would be willing to provide you with some honest feedback about your performance.
Write a brief description of your strengths and weaknesses in the workplace; focus on what you feel you contribute to your organization and your team as well as where you might fall short.
Send those who are willing to participate an assessment form with the following three questions:
What should I start doing that would improve my performance in the workplace and my relationships with others?
What should I stop doing that is hurting my performance and my relationships with others?
What should I continue doing that is helping my performance and enhancing my relationships with others?
When you receive the responses, compare them with your own written description of strengths and weaknesses; identify the disconnects.
If one (or more) of the people who provided you with feedback is willing, set up a meeting to discuss the disconnects and so that you can ask questions to help you understand the conflicting point of view; be open to what you hear.
Part of this process is similar to receiving a 360-degree assessment on your behavioral performance. However, the difference is that you are doing the legwork. The realistic downside is that some people will not be comfortable in engaging in the process. A very strong upside is that you will uncover insights and make breakthrough connections that impact your company's and your own bottom line, multifold.
In a three-year period with one client, my firm had 51 out of 52 executives from a major corporation say this process was one of the most powerful learning and growth experiences in their career. Many of these folks had been in business for 30+ years.
The perception alignment process works, but how you frame it up front is instrumental. Be sure to inform your participants that you're seeking transparently candid feedback for professional growth and development.
The following sample instructions may help you implement the process:
Dear Jane,
As I mentioned to you recently, I'm following up with an attached assessment of my leadership skills, performance, and behavior. (This will have the three questions mentioned previously.)
To help me reach a new level of improvement as a leader and contributor to our organization, please make sure you are completely candid. The only way for me to build on existing strengths and remove dangerous blind spots that may be hurting me, my team, or our organization is to know what these opportunities are.
Additionally, if you're willing, I'd like to set up a personal meeting to discuss your feedback for 20 to 30 minutes. Prior to our meeting, please e-mail me your responses so that I can look them over and prepare my questions. When we do meet, please provide three significant discussion points from your assessment:
Elaborate on my strengths, so that I may build on them for better performance.
Elaborate on my areas that most need improvement for better performance.
Offer suggestions or solutions that you believe may support my growth as a leader.
The dates I have available to discuss this are
1.
2.
3.
(Provide three options here that include 20-to-30 minute windows—again make sure they provide you with the completed assessment no later than 24 hours before your debriefing meeting).
I appreciate your honest and candid feedback. Thanks for your participation in making me a better leader.
Joe
One more suggestion: If the perception alignment process seems too bold for you to conduct alone, ask others to do it along with you. Have your team members swap questionnaires with each other or your sales team members swap questionnaires with customers. In all the years I've worked with professional organizations where participants committed to this exercise, increased knowledge and performance improvement behaviors were guaranteed.
Feedback Tools
More and more businesspeople are on autopilot and never question themselves or their abilities. They don't take time to analyze their concerns or fears with determination and honesty. Instead, they camouflage insecurities and deny that problems exist. Or they may just adopt an attitude—cynical and negative—that allows them to avoid asking or answering revealing questions.
Here are two useful ways you can uncover the truth about yourself and your abilities:
Use videotape of yourself to clarify the feedback.
In other words, use visual evidence to determine if your outward communication (impact) is consistent with your internal voice (intent). Ideally, you will be able to find someone to videotape you in a variety of situations—presentations, meetings, one-on-one conversations, and so on. The less conscious you are of the camera, the more likely you are to act normally and create a useful tool to gauge and improve your skills. Generally, people forget about the camera after a while and revert to their natural styles. (And thinking that the camera puts on an extra 40 pounds isn't telling yourself the truth either.)
Practice talking honestly to yourself based on the feedback you've received and the questions you've asked yourself.
You won't be talking to yourself out loud with strangers around as you walk to the train. Still, it may feel strange at first and may take practice to understand and accept the new reality you've discovered. Your reflex will be to revert to hiding behind old self-deceptions, especially in times of stress. When you make a mistake in a work situation, you may rationalize why it wasn't your fault, why it isn't indicative of a weakness or deficiency. Alternately, you may take a more negative view and magnify the mistake so much that it becomes more serious than it actually is. The only way to overcome these refl ex responses is to keep asking yourself the questions noted earlier and keep soliciting feedback from reliable sources. These are the best ways to root yourself in reality and to refl ect that reality in the truths you tell yourself. As you've experienced in heated situations, cooler heads prevail after things happen. The key to telling yourself the truth for stronger relationship performance is to tell yourself the truth as it's happening. This is easier written then executed, but application is key, and it all starts with disarming our biggest success stopper—the cynic within.
The best thing about how we deal with ourselves, our ego, and our interpretation of the truth is that we are often granted the opportunity to turn things around. That was the case for Stephanie. She was a highly driven salesperson for a top Los Angeles radio station, and her confident, extroverted demeanor helped her achieve an impressive $300,000 annual income. Stephanie figured she had gone about as far as she could in radio sales and wanted more. A vast networker with many contacts, she left her company and took a job as business development manager for a successful commercial real estate firm. Her base salary was lower than it had been at the radio station, but her commission opportunities promised earnings of three or four times her radio income if she executed the projected sales plan. Though Stephanie didn't know a ton about commercial real estate, she had confidence in her people skills and an ability to connect with others.
The first year in her new job was challenging for Stephanie, both financially and emotionally. She didn't hit her quotas or drive as many new clients to the firm as she had promised. She also wasn't used to working in a traditionally male industry; the big-earning members of her particular firm were all men. During that first year, Stephanie told herself that the problem was sexism, that she wasn't a member of the "boy s' club" and many potential clients were turning her down because she wasn't a man. Her ego prevented her from considering any other explanation as to why she was encountering problems.
Stephanie's boss, Derek, knew that the problems lay deeper, but he wanted Stephanie to discover them for herself. That's why after her annual review, he asked her to consider the following question: "What is your biggest obstacle to producing at the level both you and I know you're capable of?" He told her to take the weekend to reflect on that question and then have an answer for him on Monday.
On the drive home from work, Stephanie thought about the question and repeated what had become her litany: "I'm a woman in a male-dominated industry, and Derek can't see that because he's a man." Yet, the more she heard herself say that, the more she realized that her answer wasn't completely accurate. Certainly some prejudice existed, but it was more than that. At some point during the weekend, an epiphany hit Stephanie. Though it was tough for her to accept the revelation, she realized it was accurate.
"I am the biggest obstacle to my success," she told Derek when she met with him on Monday. "I've been letting the insecurities of being a woman and not knowing the industry say no to me before I gave anyone else a chance to say yes. But you didn't hire me to be the knowledge guru of commercial real estate, you hired me because I connect with people, network well, and generate interest and relationships even better."
Despite his confidence in Stephanie's abilities, Derek wasn't certain that she would be able to admit the truth about her fears to herself. That she had done so and was sincere about it reinforced his faith in her. More than that, he admired and respected Stephanie's willingness to recognize where she had gone wrong. He knew that was a difficult thing for someone like Stephanie—someone who had achieved a considerable amount of success in her career and whose self-confidence had been instrumental in achieving that success. Because of Stephanie's recognition of her truth, Derek became even more supportive of Stephanie than he had been in the past. He committed to spending more time educating her about the commercial real estate industry and helping her figure out a strategy that would result in more and better connections. Derek fulfilled this promise, and by Stephanie's second year with the firm, she had earned $875,000, and the firm's sale s numbers increased by 22 percent.
Accepting shortcomings and overcoming obstacles erected by egos are not easy tasks. Facing these hard truths has a huge relationship payoff. As Stephanie learned, being honest with herself energized her boss to do more for her. In fact, even if Stephanie had simply faced her truth and acted on it (without telling Derek about it) the relationship would have benefited because Stephanie would have approached her job in a very different manner. The key, therefore, is leveling with yourself and asking others to do the same. Those who are constantly willing to look both inward and outward to seek the truth are those who improve business relationships and reap the rewards that come from those relationships.