Power of Knowing Yourself

Approximately 2.5 years ago I took on a new challenge and pushing my skills around an area that I certainly was not comfortable and that is public speaking, writing. It was not an easy feat but I can say the steps I have taken so far has helped me manage this vulnerability with great confidence. The output of this exercise has been the 23 articles that I have to my record over these past 2.5 years and one venue where I was able to be a keynote speaker at a technical conference. This is my first post for 2021 and certainly not the last nor done. Every time I publish an article, my mind ponders on what the next one should be and as the new year rolled in I saw posts about aspirational goals for the new year which drove me to ask myself how much do I know myself ?

In my previous article “Interviewing with confidence”, I spoke about a few practical tips to ace your upcoming interview with confidence. And in the same article, I made a subtle reference to “being yourself” during an interview process. As a matter of fact, I also made a reference to the same in another article around “You Vs. You” some time ago where I also emphasize the need of “being yourself”. In this article, I want to build on the theme of “knowing yourself” better and put out a cheat-sheet that will help all of us to self-reflect this new year.

And as always a few top of my mind disclaimers -

• The list of questions below is not from a specific source, site, person or a company.
• While many questions on this list seems obvious, what makes it challenging is the self-reflection aspect and how true you are to yourself.
• Questions on this list are not arranged in a specific order and expect overlap on a few.

The cheat-sheet to knowing yourself

• Tell me about yourself?
• What are your biggest strengths?
• What are your biggest weaknesses?
• What drives you out of bed every single morning?
• What is a recent goal you accomplished?
• What are your near-term, short-term and long-term goals?
• Where do you see yourself in 3-5 years from now?
• What is your leadership philosophy or management style?
• What is the biggest risk you have taken?
• What is the biggest failure in recent years?
• How do manage your time effectively (i.e. what is your time management policy or framework)?
• What does a customer mean to you and why?
• When you take on a task, how do you when it is “done”?
• What do you do to get better?
• What is your communication style?
• What gives you happiness - money or title or both?
• What decision you made had a negative impact on you or someone around you?
• What unconscious bias influences you the most and what do you do about it?
• How do you keep yourself close to technology and yet not lose emphasis on people, process?
• How do you define success or what does success look like?
• What is your favorite hobby (outside of work)?
• Who is your role-model and why?
• When it comes to making decisions, do you resort to making decisions spontaneously or what is your style?
• What is the most rewarding part of your role or function?
• What are the keywords that best describe who you are?
• What is your biggest passion?
• What is a quote from someone that has influenced you a lot for who you are?
• What is your personal favorite quote you often use in your conversations?
• How do you manage conflicts?
• What words do you often tend to repeat in conversations and why?
• What is your personal branding statement and why?
• Who is your competition?
• How do you manage multiple priorities?
• What do you do to earn trust with people around you?
• How do you decide what to delegate and what not?
• When you miss a deadline, what do you do about it?
• When you disagree, what do you do typically?
• How do you react to a change?
• What do you do to acclimate with frequent changes?
• What’s your worst fear and what have you done about it?

And to call it a wrap, please ask yourself the famous words of late Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam “Want to be you or everybody else?”.