Do you want to 10x your impact at work? Do you know what behaviors hold you back? What about your team—do they admire, respect and acknowledge you? Do they find you helpful?
The gap between how you view your behaviors and actions and how others perceive you is always huge. You may think you’re a great team player or the job that you just finished was outstanding. But how you view your performance may not align with how your boss or team members view it.
You may think you’re being helpful when you step in and solve others problems, but your behavior—the way you tell others what to do or how to solve problems—may come across as obnoxious. The project that you just delivered may look like a great success story to you—on time, high quality with great feedback from customers—but the way you dealt with people along the way or how you made decisions or took actions annoyed many at work. Instead of the project building relationships and bringing people together, it destroyed many.
Many employees are shocked when they learn about this gap between perception and reality. But by the time they receive feedback, they may have already burnt too many bridges or lost great opportunities.
Who doesn’t want a perfect manager? We all do—someone who can give you feedback on the spot, on time, someone who’s always helping you amplify your impact, and someone who cares about your progress, learning and growth.
But let’s face reality. Most managers are so busy with their daily responsibilities—meeting deadlines, stakeholder management, solving conflicts, planning the next big thing—that they hardly have time to think about your growth, align your interests with the best opportunities or give you constant feedback to help you learn, improve and grow.
Now, you can either waste your time wishing for a perfect work experience, complain about what your manager lacks or how unlucky you’ve been, obsess about how much better your life would be if only you had a manager who would do those things or you can get those things by taking the growth in your own hands.
Asking for something is easy, being responsible for it is the part that develops character — Joyce Meyer
Instead of leaving it to your manager to give you the feedback that you need, ask your manager these 5 questions every month:
5 Questions to 10x your impact at work
What are your top priorities this month?
You might have your goals for the month clear and even have some visibility into what other team members are doing, but do you understand how all this work fits into your manager's top priorities or the goals of the organization?
By showing an interest in your manager's top priorities, you can identify ways to be a part of it.
Consider these examples:
Your manager says that they have an upcoming meeting in a week's time where they have to present tech metrics for their team to the CTO (cost, infrastructure, performance etc etc). Chime in to collect this data and give it to them. It’s a great chance for you to add value to your manager while doing work that gives you exposure beyond your day-to-day activities.
In another example, your manager tells you about a new project starting up soon which requires collaboration and integration with other cross functional teams. If you were looking to play a lead role, this might be just the perfect opportunity for you. You can speak to your manager about it “This looks like the right opportunity for me. I want to lead this project. If you give me this chance, I won’t disappoint you.”
Instead of waiting for your manager to assign you tasks and responsibilities, knowing your managers priorities help you align the growth you seek with the available opportunities. You can share when you feel ready for the next level role or bigger responsibilities. You can talk to them about the gaps in your knowledge and how the upcoming work will enable you to build those skills.
Your manager will be delighted to have someone who takes their growth seriously, someone who knows what they want and is willing to do the work to get it. By asking this question, you get to do what moves you forward while contributing to something that your manager values—a true win-win.
What one improvement can help me double my impact?
There are always things about the way we work that stand in the way of our potential. We can’t see them because we are often blinded by biases, cognitive distortions and other self-limiting beliefs.
For example:
Your fear of failure might prevent you from taking on higher level challenges.
Your fixed mindset—belief that your intelligence and abilities are fixed and no amount of effort can build them—makes you give up as soon as you encounter a setback or face difficulties.
Your imposter feelings make you obsess about minor details and seeking perfection prevents you from releasing your work and getting early feedback.
Your behaviors and attitudes—how you respond to challenges and setbacks, how you make decisions, how you deal with failures, how you handle disagreements and conflicts, or how you deal with pressure—play a crucial role in your success. Leading with courage and conviction creates a thrust that propels you forward while letting self-doubt and fear get in the way creates a downward spiral of negativity and toxicity.
Asking your manager this question “what one improvement helps me double my impact” gives you a peek into the limiting behaviors that are often invisible to you while quite evident to others.
Never take the position that things just happen to you; rather, they happen because of something you did or did not do — Grant Cardone
What’s my team’s feedback? Are there areas where I can improve to be a better team player?
What dynamics do you share with your team—do they find you collaborative, helpful, a team player? Do they admire your knowledge and skills? Do they appreciate your kindness and compassion towards others? Or do they find you high headed, someone who’s always looking to be in the spotlight, someone who uses their knowledge and intelligence to abuse others?
Small day-to-day communications in how you engage with your team determine whether they enjoy your company or resent it. Making fun of others just because they find something hard to do that’s easy for you, rolling your eyes when others disagree with you, expressing frustration when they reach out for help or bragging about your exceptional knowledge and skills is bound to put people off.
The only way to know how your team views you is to seek candid feedback from your manager. You might be surprised to discover that sometimes even your so-called “good intentions” are perceived the wrong way.
For example:
Say a team member is running late on a deliverable that’s due end of day. They speak to you about it to get your advice, but instead of letting them do their work, you take over the task, finish it in a few hours and push the code to production. Now, you may think that the other person would be glad that you saved their ass, but that’s not how they might view it.
The fact that they couldn’t do it themselves leave them feeling incompetent. From their point of view, asking for an extension on the deadline was better than letting their manager know that someone else did their work for them.
In another example, you’re invited to a meeting to give your suggestions on the design proposal of a new product. The meeting is led by someone junior to you. When asked for advice, instead of sharing your viewpoint, you hijack the conversation. Your ideas are good, so you may leave the meeting thinking you did the right thing. But that’s not how others view it.
They appreciate your ideas, but not your attitude. You could have said what you needed to say while letting the other person stay in charge and feel in control.
Asking this question to your manager “how does my team view me?” is bound to lead to some surprises and may even hurt emotions. But you’re better off knowing how your team really feels about you than living with a delusion.
Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth — Doc Rivers
What top strength did I demonstrate last month? What makes this strength stand out?
We all obsess about our weaknesses and assume they’re preventing us from getting ahead in our career. But it’s not our weaknesses that we should focus on, what deserves our attention are our strengths.
Worrying about our weaknesses makes us play safe which is a big career limiting mistake. We avoid anything that’s difficult or challenging and stick with easy options. The more time and energy we spend trying to cover up our perceived flaws, the less time and attention we pay to things we’re good at.
For example:
Let’s say you find it hard to express your ideas. But you’re very good when it comes to designing systems. Given an opportunity to lead the design of a new project, focusing too much on how you’ll communicate the design to others and get their feedback will prevent you from putting your design skills to proper use.
In another example, let’s say you have a knack for solving complex problems but aren’t so great when it comes to building a quick prototype. Giving up on challenges at work because you fear it will take you longer to put your ideas to action will minimize your potential while using your strength will enable you to maximize your impact.
Asking your manager about the strengths you demonstrate and doubling down on it is bound to get you ahead. This does not mean you avoid weaknesses or refuse to build skills you aren’t good at. Rather, use your strengths to your advantage while slowly building other skills to get ahead in your career.
We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward — Isabel Allende
I failed at [xyz] last month. I made [abc] mistakes. These are my learnings…[share your learnings]. What’s your advice?
You will make many mistakes at work. You will face many setbacks. When you try to hide your mistakes or consider setbacks as obstacles in your path, you fail to learn critical lessons. You fail to recognize that it’s a wrong strategy that’s the cause of failure and not your effort. The plan that turned out to be a disaster was not flawed, unexpected events made success impossible. You failed to meet a critical deadline not because you’re incompetent, but because you refused to ask for help as your ego got in the way.
Separating avoidable from unavoidable mistakes and learning from them helps you identify the gaps in your knowledge and skills. Knowing which mistakes are a result of your growth and which a result of your stupidity enables you to repeat the same mistakes twice.
Adopting a learning attitude has another advantage. Success and failure no longer define your worth. Instead of a single minded focus on the destination you need to reach, you care more about the progress you’re making, how you’re improving and what you’re learning.
Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and as such should be seen as valuable; without them we have no originality) — Ed Catmull
Identifying your mistakes, sharing them with your manager along with lessons and seeking their advice has multiple advantages:
- Your manager finds you as someone who’s highly proactive.
- Telling them about the solutions to your mistakes helps them appreciate your problem-solving skills.
- Sharing learnings and discussing ways to incorporate them into work makes you come across as someone who’s confident in their knowledge and skills.
- Not trying to cover up or hide your mistakes builds trust.
Asking this question to your manager every month and seeking their advice keeps you focused on getting better while giving an opportunity to your manager to contribute. A real win/win.
Don’t let your manager decide where you end up. Don’t wait for them to share feedback that you need. Ask these five questions every month to take charge of your own growth and 10x your impact.
Summary
- Instead of waiting for your manager to give you the opportunities, feedback and coaching that you need, manage up and take responsibility for your own growth.
- Learning about your manager’s priorities enables you to align your interests and skills with the available opportunities. Ask your manager about their top priorities each month and discuss areas where you can contribute.
- Learn about behaviors and actions that are limiting your impact. Your manager can point you to areas where even a small shift in attitude can enable you to maximize your impact.
- Knowing how you collaborate with others and how they perceive your actions enables you to get rid of the tendencies that may seem helpful to you but annoy others. Get this feedback from your manager every month.
- Identifying your strengths and doubling down on it minimizes the negative impact of your weaknesses. Learn about your strengths from your manager every month and spend more time on them.
- Mistakes and failures will be a regular part of your work journey. Acknowledge them, learn from them and share them with your manager. Discuss solutions and seek their advice on how to improve and get better.
Previously published here.
