What matters the most — (A) how you view yourself or (B) how others view you? The bottom line is — they each matter, but for different reasons. The important thing here is that you don’t overlook how important understanding your reputation is for your own growth and development. We live in a society that is individualistic and we tend to focus solely on ourselves; to be a highly-effective leader, we need to balance that with how others view us.
How you view yourself is important because effectiveness starts with self-awareness. How can you understand others if you don’t understand yourself? Developing self-awareness has the following benefits:
🌟 Better leadership skills
🌟 Improved relationships
🌟 More likely to make sound choices
🌟 Increased self-confidence
🚩 you’re reactive
🚩 you’re defensive (easily hurt by criticism)
🚩 you don’t actively listen or seek to understand
🚩 you don’t have a solid understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, or your unique value proposition
🚩 you don’t understand your emotions
🚩 you are unable or unwilling to express your emotions
🚩 you are quick to judge others
🚩 you don’t understand what motivates you
🚩 you are intolerant of others who think or view things differently
🚩 you are insecure / you lack self confidence
🚩 you don’t take responsibility for your actions (you blame others for your mistakes)
🚩 you are indecisive
Can you see how these things make for an ineffective, dysfunctional leader? Do you want to have a boss who exhibits these qualities?
To enhance self-awareness, you want to really dive deep into your beliefs, assumptions, expectations, how you view things/situations, what meaning you are assigning, what your strengths/weaknesses are, what makes you unique, how past dysfunctional experiences have shaped your beliefs, what triggers you, etc. For a lot of this, it’s helpful to have input from others because we are often blind to our own strengths and sometimes our own interests because they are so natural to us.
Understanding our shortcomings or blind spots is crucial to being an effective leader. When you recognize that no one is perfect, you are more inclined to understand your own weaknesses and then proactively decide how important they are and what to do about them.
How others view you is important because your career trajectory and compensation (raises) depends on how others evaluate you. It’s how others see you and measure your performance that determines how you do in a performance appraisal or whether you get promoted.
As a leader, this has immense impact and consequences because how others view you directly determines how cohesive, productive, and effective your team is, how well you develop & grow your team, and how well you retain your employees (people tend to leave bad leaders). If you don’t care about how others view you or don’t seek to learn, you are modeling ineffective, dysfunctional behavior, which ripples down.
Additionally, people remember how you make them feel. Taking a genuine interest and caring for your team and coworkers will build trust, respect, and improve your influencing capability (in a non-manipulative way).
How do I convince others that their reputation is important?
If you work in HR or manage other leaders, you might be wondering “How do I convince others that their reputation is important?” and that’s a great question. My suggestion is to consistently talk openly about it and to shape your organizational culture toward one of continuous development and soliciting feedback. You should coach leaders on how to approach this with their leaders. And, adding this element to be part of performance appraisals is crucial — if your team is doing well, you do well.
As an Executive Coach, I balance both of these with my clients. Usually, my clients haven’t made an attempt to understand how others perceive them — to the detriment of themselves, their organization, and their own growth.
