The Talent Pool
It's been a few months since I started this company sponsored management training, and this is a natural point to reflect and share. The details (in broad brush strokes, because even though I don't think this is confidential, I'd rather be vague than wrong.) There are about 16-18 candidates from within the major branches/subsidiaries of our parent company (Think 40,000 people. Woooo!).
It's 18 months long. It kicked off (for me) in June, and the first phase has been a sort of self-evaluation. It seems to me that the company hires a management consultant firm on a pretty regular basis to groom the leadership. They also headed up this self-evaluation phase. The soul searching came in the form of about 8 different exercises, included various questionnaires, at least 2 role-playing exercises, and an evaluation from about 15 people that work with or for me, and also my boss. 2 weeks ago I got the results back in a one-on-one interview with my life (ahem, *management*) coach. She is pretty great. There were a lot of really nice things in there that felt awesome to hear. But telling someone their flaws and highlighting with personal examples is never a comfortable conversation. In fact, it just may be THE definition of uncomfortable. Before I started this process, I would say that I had a good idea of my weaknesses. Going through it, they became more apparent to me. By the time we finished that assessment call, I felt pretty rough - exposed, vulnerable, dejected, angry. I know my flaws. I don't know how to fix them. And I know that the point is not to fix them, but to work *with* them to become better. I KNOW that. It still seems insurmountable and frustrating.
That was compounded by the fact that I finally read through my reports last Friday, and one of my direct reports rated me very low in a couple of areas - ethics, anticipating needs, trust, etc. Now, to put it in context, this was about 5 responses out of 50 questions, and if 15 people responded, 750 total responses. The rest of the responses were really helpful and nice. But something I did must have hurt them very badly to have elicited that response, and I can't for the life of me think of what or who it was. It makes me sad. Relationships are my thing. I can't believe I did something like that, and it makes me feel very bad. I hope it was just a one-off incident that happened to coincide with the report. Maybe that bad feedback will stick with me and make me extra-conscious of my interactions in the future so that it doesn't happen again. I hope. (And as my majorly empathetic husband said, "You don't get to be President without pissing a few people off." Although, I think he said that to just get me to quit moping about it.)
The next step is to take the top 3 "areas for improvement" and come up with a concrete plan to work on them. Read books, shadow people, go to trainings, whatevs. And then the NEXT step (the one that terrifies me) is that I have to go stand in front of the bigwigs and tell them about my strengths and weaknesses, and then my plan to work on them. My analogy for that is like diving into a shark tank and then deliberately cutting yourself. It'll be fine, I know. At the end of the day, they're just people, flawed people at that. They've probably been through something similar to this, and I bet they will be nice about it. I still think that an appropriate level of apprehension is called for. :)
And that's where it stands. Overall, this is a mind-blowing and fantastic experience that I am unendingly grateful for. I always wished that my Navy reports could have had the opportunity to review me so I could mark whether or not I might measure up to some of my mentors. I wish all managers went through it, but know that some of them would implode during the process :)
It's 18 months long. It kicked off (for me) in June, and the first phase has been a sort of self-evaluation. It seems to me that the company hires a management consultant firm on a pretty regular basis to groom the leadership. They also headed up this self-evaluation phase. The soul searching came in the form of about 8 different exercises, included various questionnaires, at least 2 role-playing exercises, and an evaluation from about 15 people that work with or for me, and also my boss. 2 weeks ago I got the results back in a one-on-one interview with my life (ahem, *management*) coach. She is pretty great. There were a lot of really nice things in there that felt awesome to hear. But telling someone their flaws and highlighting with personal examples is never a comfortable conversation. In fact, it just may be THE definition of uncomfortable. Before I started this process, I would say that I had a good idea of my weaknesses. Going through it, they became more apparent to me. By the time we finished that assessment call, I felt pretty rough - exposed, vulnerable, dejected, angry. I know my flaws. I don't know how to fix them. And I know that the point is not to fix them, but to work *with* them to become better. I KNOW that. It still seems insurmountable and frustrating.
That was compounded by the fact that I finally read through my reports last Friday, and one of my direct reports rated me very low in a couple of areas - ethics, anticipating needs, trust, etc. Now, to put it in context, this was about 5 responses out of 50 questions, and if 15 people responded, 750 total responses. The rest of the responses were really helpful and nice. But something I did must have hurt them very badly to have elicited that response, and I can't for the life of me think of what or who it was. It makes me sad. Relationships are my thing. I can't believe I did something like that, and it makes me feel very bad. I hope it was just a one-off incident that happened to coincide with the report. Maybe that bad feedback will stick with me and make me extra-conscious of my interactions in the future so that it doesn't happen again. I hope. (And as my majorly empathetic husband said, "You don't get to be President without pissing a few people off." Although, I think he said that to just get me to quit moping about it.)
The next step is to take the top 3 "areas for improvement" and come up with a concrete plan to work on them. Read books, shadow people, go to trainings, whatevs. And then the NEXT step (the one that terrifies me) is that I have to go stand in front of the bigwigs and tell them about my strengths and weaknesses, and then my plan to work on them. My analogy for that is like diving into a shark tank and then deliberately cutting yourself. It'll be fine, I know. At the end of the day, they're just people, flawed people at that. They've probably been through something similar to this, and I bet they will be nice about it. I still think that an appropriate level of apprehension is called for. :)
And that's where it stands. Overall, this is a mind-blowing and fantastic experience that I am unendingly grateful for. I always wished that my Navy reports could have had the opportunity to review me so I could mark whether or not I might measure up to some of my mentors. I wish all managers went through it, but know that some of them would implode during the process :)
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