Public Feedback and Action Steps
I posted a feedback form on my social profiles for anyone who know me to fill out. This one is about why i did it and how will i use it
The Background
I was reading Ray Dalio’s principles, and one thing he mentioned struck a cord for me. He writes, “The difference between people who live up to their potential and those who don’t is the willingness to look at themselves and others objectively and assess strengths and weaknesses.”
It got me thinking about how I have done multiple personality tests to understand the same. Use the results to work on my weaknesses and strengthen my strengths. At the same time, I take quarterly feedback from my colleagues and mentees to improve the respective relationships. Overall I was getting feedback from a couple of different angles. Still, there was a chance I could miss a wide variety of things.
To identify and fill this potential gap, I put a public feedback form to get feedback from anyone willing to take the time. The form was structured to understand my strengths and areas of improvement as people perceived.
The Form
The form questions with the reasoning for each one are below:
Name- Optional to share- Give people an option to write negatives and not name themselves.
How well do you know me? (as per your perception)- Not everyone knows me very well. They can tell me how well they know me, and then depending on that, I can take their feedback with a pinch of salt or a bagful.
Please share three or more best qualities in me you have seen in your interactions with me. - To understand what people perceive as my best qualities.
Please share three or more areas of improvement you have seen in your interactions with me.- To understand what people perceive as my areas of improvement.
What is that one thing that sets me apart from everyone, in your opinion?- This would make them compare me with everyone else.
What is that one thing holding me back from doing much better than I am already?- The biggest flaw in me, according to them.
The Feedback
I received a much better response on the form than expected. I would have been happy with 10-12 answers with 1 or 2 actionable. But I ended up with 22 responses with multiple action items.
The best thing about these responses was they came from people who barely knew me to the ones who knew me very well. It gives me an in-depth understanding of how multiple people perceive me when they get to know me to when they know me very well.
Positives
I would not be dwelling too much on the positives here, as that was not the goal of this form for me. Some of the best qualities mentioned (number of times):- Self-Awareness(8), Helpful Nature(4), Accountability(3), Big Picture view(3), Critical Thinking(3), Curiosity(3), Honesty(3), and Intelligence(3). The things that set me apart are combinations of the above in some form. (If you want to see the detailed feedback, please DM me I will share it with you).
Areas of Improvement
One of the major reasons for this feedback was to find areas of improvement. Hence this section would probably be a long one.
Below is the table of all the areas of improvement I received:
I am happy that I have received multiple areas of improvement. I am outlining below the plan to proceed with each of them and the reasoning.
Stability/ Impulsive Nature: Do nothing about it.
Even though this is the most repeated area of improvement for me and given by people who perceive they know me very well, I am not doing anything about this. I think my nature of taking risks and finding ways to test and iterate on things is one of my biggest strengths. Actions that might seem impulsive or unstable to others are perfectly normal for me. So do nothing.
Staying in touch: Add calendar reminders to call close friends.
I know I am historically bad at staying in touch. I follow my calendar, so it seems the logical way to solve this.
Branding/ Content: It’s not the right time yet.
I have been told multiple times, personally as well, that I should create more content. I don’t think right now is the best time to do that. I am yet to achieve something noteworthy that gives me the credibility I want. My goal is to impact a billion people, I need to keep that perspective in mind.
Fitness and Patience: Already working on these. No changes are needed.
Self-Analysis: Do nothing about it.
Self-analysis is one of my major strengths. It does backfire for me sometimes, but that’s the trade-off. I think I know the risks associated here and would prefer not the make any changes.
Taking Compliments: I agree, but not sure how.
Mental Health: Already done a lot and continuing the path.
Multi-source Learning: Test things out.
I have always thought about learning instinctually and have never thought about multiple ways of learning. This one is something I need to think about, create experiments and iterate to find 2 or 3 more ways of learning for myself.
Travel Experiments: Work will take care of it now.
Things holding me back
In this section, feedback was majorly the same as in the last. Two things stood out that I am going to work on.
Focus: My good friend Mika pointed this out. Focus has been challenging over the years, and I still struggle with it sometimes. I am in the building stages of the startup right now I still need to juggle multiple things around. I have used that as an excuse for not building processes to build focus. Over this quarter, I will experiment with being focused.
Not living in an echo chamber: This feedback came from a friend who knows me well. Ganesh was the only one who rated that he knew me 9/10, and I agree. Humans tend to make friends and build our tribes around people who think similarly. This brings a potential pitfall of not getting different perspectives. I have faced this one in the past and worked to rectify it. I have not worked on this recently. I am not sure what’s the best way to solve this would be. I will find 5-7 potential ways of solving this.
Actionables
The list of actionable from this feedback is below:
Add calendar reminders to call close friends.
Test out strategies and methods for multi-source learning.
Build and run experiments to be focused and not get distracted.
Research and note 5-7 potential ways of solving the echo-chamber problem.
I will work on these for the next 3-4 months and come back and share the results. See you next time. Thank You for reading.
Always remember, This Too Shall Pass, good or bad!