Feedback changed my personality

I was lucky to be offered some life-changing leadership courses. One of them in particular, Fusion, taught me the culture of feedback. I learnt that feedback is a gift and that when properly embraced and acted upon, it led to a deep change in my personality.

I say deep because by listening to feedback and acting upon it, I changed the way I think and act and this change became engrained in my deep self. This is different, say, from a superficial change, whereby our actions might show a change but our thoughts and deep selves remain unchanged.

Over the past 10 years or so I embarked in several personality tests as part of fine tuning my leadership skills. The first one was a Myers-Briggs test and my personality at the time was INTJ.

This was logical as at the time, I had just started my journey from a technical leader to a people's leader. I was hands-on, developed code everyday and it's not uncommon for developers to be introvert, task-oriented and not too feely.

The first evolution: from I to E

As I was asked to lead a wide international team of developers and architects and change the ways of working from Waterfall to Agile, I stepped into uncharted territory. As all journeys into the unknown, there was a lot for me to learn. Thanks to my leaders and followers feedback, I evolved into an ENTJ personality type as I embarked on my second Myers-Briggs personality tests. It took 5 years for my ways of thinking and working and the actions that naturally follow a deep transformation to become engrained in my personality.

In my leadership role I was expected to reach out to more to people, to grow my network, to draw learnings from more experienced colleagues. This caused the evolutions from the I to the E.

My role was still deeply technically involved: not only had I to be hands-on but I was also required to lead my team by example. The scope of the role was still within my team.

The second evolution: from ENTJ to ESFJ

It was only when the scope of my role changed from being focused on a particular vertical to join a central technical leadership role that my second transformation took place.

In this role I was expected to sell (and be responsible for) ideas, strategies, standards and ways or working to the entire organisation for the areas I was responsible for.

I found myself yet in uncharted territory. While I led technology teams towards delivery before, I never had to sell ideas to colleagues ranging from C-Suite executives to architects to engineer all at the same time.

My personal experience throughout this journey has been that in this type of roles, one has to develop a lot more empathy and listening capabilities. One needs to strive for synergy and influence win-win outcomes. One has to be able to understand the requirements of different stakeholders, find what's in it for them as well as trying to promote a particular initiative.

Needless to say, at the beginning of this second journey, my leaders and followers provided me with invaluable feedback. My lack of empathy was making it difficult for me to sell ideas successfully. While eventually I got there, it took a lot longer than it should have and it roughed too many feathers, something that could have been avoided with a different approach. I didn't have many friends :-)

I listened intently to all feedback that I was gifted with at any level. I made it my mission to enhance my listening skills, my empathy, to dedicate genuine effort in understanding my stakeholders' needs as well as identifying what was in it for them.

I embedded this culture of listening, empathy and stakeholder care into my team, relentlessly asking them to run idea by major stakeholders, incorporate feedback (without becoming subservient), listening with empathy with the goal of creating win-win proposals.

In just few years, we established a brand in our organisation, we released strategies, led RFPs, changed the ways of working of our colleagues, became an example that other teams would follow.

While it was taking slightly longer to finalised a DRAFT proposal, it took significantly less effort in getting those approved at every level of the organisation. Since there was ample buy-in from our stakeholders as a result of involving them in the proposals and listening to their feedback, there were a lot less unhappy people when one of our artefacts were approved.

At the time, I didn't know that my personality was changing as a consequence, until recently I took a personality test here. At the end of every year (and many times throughout) I was listening to feedback and acting on it. Listening and acting. This commitment to relentlessly act on feedback drove a change in me as the latest personality test showed.

I moved from being an ENTP to being an ESFJ (Consul). What really struck me was that I could see the reasons beyond this transformation from N to a S, from T to a F although I still need to understand the evolution from P to a J.

The shift from N to S

When one has to sell ideas to stakeholders from different seniority and different cultural backgrounds, there is no room for hearsay or potentials. Executives want to know what they're getting for every dollar they spend. They want to know the impact on the business, people and technology. Therefore one better get to those meetings prepared. Executives also don't have much time for a single topic. Their attention span is limited because like ours, they probably have 10 other proposals in the queue on the same day. Yet if they have to commit to a decision, they know they will be held accountable for that decision. Therefore they demand a proposal that is simple to understand, it's data-driven (or at least has the back of data), shows ROI for every dollar spent, impacts the people in the organisation positively and is feasible. Architects and engineers need to understand the feasibility and the impact that every proposal will have on their day-to-day job.

Seeking success in selling these ideas, drove a change in my intuitive side to a more data-oriented one. This was the shift from N to S.

The shift from T to F

When one engages stakeholders in the formulation of a proposal, one key trait that is needed is to apply empathic and genuine listening.

Every senior stakeholder we speak to is busy, they have their day job to attend to, they're not naturally inclined to dedicate some of that time to you if you don't show that there's value for them.

I noticed that at the beginning of this second journey, before I worked for several years on feedback, I'd assume that I didn't need to involve stakeholders. That I would involve them if I was asked to. In such occasions, I assumed that stakeholders would give me time. Not only, I assumed that what I was proposing was right and it was the only way. I took resistance to such proposals as a lack of vision or knowledge or wisdom in the person I was talking to. Since I saw sense in what I was proposing (and most of the time my proposals made sense) such rare engagements were mostly unidirectional. In my mind something along the lines of: "Listen, I'm the SME and am responsible for this area, therefore I know better" was going on.

The reality is that no matter how good one's intentions or proposals are, if we don't genuinely engage with our stakeholders with the goal of understanding what's in it for them, if we don't genuinely make an effort to identify win-win situations, if we don't genuinely listen to their feedback, especially when they push back on some aspect of our proposal, trying to understand why they did, chances are that such proposal won't be successful or if they go through, it'll feel like pushing them down your colleague's throat. We won't have many friends and our next proposal will be even harder.

As the first of my proposals throughout this second journey were quite challenging, I was lucky that my stakeholders provided me with valuable feedback. I wasn't showing empathy, I wasn't involving them enough, I wasn't valuing their point of view. In a word, I wasn't listening.

I listened and I acted on the feedback. Continuously. Relentlessly. This changed me. For the past couple of years, unsolicited feedback from both my leaders and followers was telling me that it was more pleasurable working with me, that I listened more and that I was an inspiration for them to follow. The results followed.

This didn't take away any of my subject-matter expertise. On the contrary, it made it stronger. Now I could lean on my colleagues' points of view to enrich my proposals and my team could too.

I became a trusted advisor in the organisation. People would call me in meetings not directly part of my day-to-day job to help. When I intervened in meetings I was listened to and my opinions were not only appreciated but respected.

This is because I developed more empathy, more consideration on my colleagues' feelings. Now I would listen to them with an open mind and an open heart to truly understand what was important to them and when required I'd offer my expertise.

This was my shift from T to F.

I haven't yet understood my shift from P to J. The shift is about moving from being more perceptive to being more task oriented. Perhaps a consequence of the two shifts above, perhaps something else.

Once I'll understand the reason, I might share it with you through another post.

I'll be grateful for your thoughts and comments on this post. Did you experience something similar? Has your personality changed as a consequence of feedback?