Developing your Highlights Reel (3/10)

As we approach the end of 2021, we feature 10 handpicked nuggets from the Play to Potential Podcast over the next few days to help you pause, reflect and take on 2022 with renewed energy, clarity and commitment. This is the third article in the 10 part series.

Developing your highlights reel

When I reflect on my journey from schooling days, I feel I have always operated from a frame of Glass 20% empty. If got 90% in a subject in school, the discussion around immediately turn to “where did the 10% go” and we would spend all our energies trying to fix that. Fast forwarding to my experiences in my professional life in McKinsey, the term that would commonly do the rounds is that the firm is filled with Insecure Overachievers. I felt that too. I grew up by leaps and bounds during my stint there but somewhere, I felt I was operating from a space of scarcity and not abundance. Over the last few years, I have been trying to double down on strengths and choosing my canvas based on it. I wish I had gotten here earlier but I discovered that this feedback is not easily available for us unless we go out of the way looking for it.

?Prof Dan Cable of London Business School, has authored the book Exceptional, where he speaks about the notion of developing a personal Highlights Reel as a pathway to unlocking our potential. The concept here is very simple. Just like we watch a 5 min highlights of a T20 cricket match or a Tennis game, what if we proactively source our Highlights reel from the people we have touched all along. He says that we are a poor judge of understanding how we have touched various people all along and how others have experienced us. And if we don't ask the question, we will never know.

I notice that there are a few elements of sub-optimality in the way we receive and process our feedback.

1) How 360 is your 360

We often receive feedback from the people that are around us in our organization. The reality is that even if we take our professional lives, our colleagues represent a subset of the world we interface with. For instance, if I am working with a PE/VC Investor, I am keen to know how he engages with his colleagues. Equally important for me is how Entrepreneurs, Bankers, Lawyers and LPs experience him. I am also find it helpful to speak to some of his past colleagues to understand how he/she has evolved. In addition, speaking to close friends, spouse, siblings and other close relationships give me a sense of how how this individual shows up in other domains in life. I am beginning to believe that there is remarkable consistency in the way we show up in various domains of our life.

2) What complements do you shrug off

Whitney Johnson, Author of the book Disrupt Yourself (based on some of the principles of Disruptive Innovation from Late Clay Christiansen), has an interesting take on how we can discover our superpowers and tune into what makes us distinctive. She says that an easy way for us to figure this out is to think about what people tell us that we are quick to dismiss or shrug off. She urges us not to dismiss these statements but to really accept them gracefully and journal them somewhere. She speaks about tuning into our distinctiveness as we think about disrupting ourselves.

3) "Where to go" vs "How to grow" feedback

I have noticed that the feedback we get when we are at work is often in the context of the job at hand. Very often it is about what you could have done to do better in your role. This is helpful when we are solving for professional growth in that very career pathway. But very often, we find ourselves in cross-roads where we are not necessarily looking to get better in that job but fundamentally rethinking our direction. In that case, the workplace feedback often is of limited use as it doesn't address the question in our minds? The data we need to gather to develop an answer to the question around "where to go" is very different from the data we need for solving "how to grow". This is where Dan's research comes in.

4) Big Bang vs Drip Feed

I hadn't quite appreciated this till I read Dan's book and spoke to him on the podcast. He actually suggests that we source our Highlights reel from 25+ people and listen to the feedback as a Big Bang rather than a drop feed. He says that there is something about the way we "make sense" of information when it hits us like a Tsunami. When I was working with a leader who was trying to determine if he was a "maker or a manager". He had a creative streak and had been an author of several books. He had also worked in the Corporate world as a Chief Products Officer. When I spoke to this individual's father, he spoke about one evening when they had gone for a fair (Mela) and how in a crowded place, this individual had let go of his parents' hand and walked ahead without turning back. His father went on to speak about how self-authoring this person had been at different points in his life. When I was sharing the aggregate feedback and when I brought up this point from his father, I could see something had shifted in the way the leader saw himself and the pathway ahead. The truth is that we rarely pause and ask the people around us (outside of work), how they experience us. And that has strong signals that can inform our direction.

5. Thank you and not a word more

This is something I discovered at an unexpected place. I was speaking with Sally Helgesen, Author of the book How Women Rise. She makes this observation in the context of women but I genuinely believe it applies as much to men as women. She says that when we receive credit, we often get uncomfortable receiving it and end up speaking about several contextual elements that might have led to a good outcome and end up diluting ourselves. She refers to the wisdom she received from Marshall Goldsmith and goes on to say that sometimes, the best response is to say Thank you and shut up and not say a word more. It is simple but often hard to pull off. After hearing from from Sally, I have found several instances where I get uncomfortable with the silence that ensues the Thank you. Just holding the deafening silence often leads to a powerful conversation, something that would not happen if we end up diluting the feedback by deflecting it to other contextual forces.

While it is a good idea to get the brakes out of the way as we think about moving towards future, let us not forget that real outcomes will come from focusing on our engines and one of the best ways to discover what powers our boat is to develop our highlights reel!

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This is the 3rd note in a series of 10 year ending articles capturing some of the lessons I learnt in 2021 from the Play to Potential Podcast (including reference to some of the insights from the archives). Other articles in this Year ending series include Other articles in this Year ending series include 1)?Reflecting on our identities?2)?Becoming the Chief Life Officer??4)?Baby steps towards a habit?5)?Dealing with Lifequakes?6)?Multiple levels of listening 7) Unlocking more women leaders 8) Our relationship with time 9) Driving psychological safety 10) Opportunity for a fresh start.

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