The Insights You Can’t Get On Your Own
I do a lot of Working Genius workshops.
And they go well. Really well.
People finally have language for why certain work energizes them and why other work feels like it’s slowly draining the life out of them. Teams stop taking things personally and start understanding each other faster.
It’s one of my favorite things to facilitate.
But every once in a while I suggest something else…
Not instead of an assessment, in addition to one.
Direct feedback from the people you work with. And that’s usually where the energy in the room drops.
I was reminded of why recently when I heard about a CEO who was completely sold on 360 feedback for his leadership team. Until someone pointed out he’d have to participate too. And just like that, the enthusiasm died.
Why the knee-jerk response?
Most people don’t resist feedback.
They resist feedback they can’t control.
An assessment and 360 feedback aren’t the same thing. One asks you to look inward. The other asks you to listen.
An assessment tells you how you’re wired. That’s self-reported. You control the narrative.
360 degree feedback from your team and your colleagues tells you how you land with other people. That’s other-reported. You don’t get to shape it before it reaches you.
So it makes sense that it feels a little uncomfortable.
But the biggest gap isn’t how we see ourselves… It’s how others experience us. That’s the gap most leaders are operating with.
Here’s the part we don’t talk about enough
We’re not wired to see our own impact clearly.
The feedback that would tell us what people actually experience when they work with us. Whether we’re inspiring people or quietly exhausting them — that information belongs to someone else. Not us.
Without outside input, that gap stays invisible. Asking feels risky. But staying in the dark is riskier.
The leaders who grow most consistently do one thing differently
They don’t wait for feedback to find them.
They do the risky thing and go looking for it.
It’s not always comfortable. But they realize no one grows in the dark. And the only way to change that is to ask.
Here’s what I’ve noticed after nine years of working with leaders. The ones who keep getting better are almost always the ones who keep asking.
It’s that simple… and that hard.
When’s the last time you did something intentional to build your own self-awareness?
And how comfortable would you be asking the people closest to your work for honest feedback about what they experience?
Those two questions will tell you a lot about where your next level of growth is waiting.
To knowing how you land,
Laurie
P.S. Getting the feedback is step one. Knowing what to do with it is step two. If you want a thought partner for both, I’d love to talk. Just hit reply.