Blog, culture and engagement | Ambition In Motion

by Garrett Mintz

Thu 18 February 2021

A 360-degree assessment helps you understand your professional performance by having both you and your colleagues assess your abilities across several key skills.

There are generally 3 outcomes from a 360-degree assessment: 1) somebody has underestimated their abilities, 2) somebody has overestimated their abilities, or 3) somebody is self-aware about their abilities.

This article is going to address some possible problems and solutions that might arise for people who have overestimated their abilities. This article is part of a series I’m writing about Ambition In Motion’s 360-Degree Assessments and how their results should be interpreted. There are ten other articles addressing the two other possible outcomes of a 360-Degree Assessment available here:

Underestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Self-Aware- People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

When somebody has overestimated their abilities, they are essentially giving themselves a greater score for whatever category is being measured compared to their colleagues’ scores of them.

At first glance, this can sting because you are essentially learning that your perception of yourself is greater than your colleagues' perception of you which may cause one to think “I must not be as good as I think I am” or “My colleagues must not realize all of the things I do to be strong in this area.”

For most people, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

When my team and I at Ambition In Motion facilitate mentorship programs, we also include a 360-Degree Assessment and report to each participant. We do this for two reasons: 1) these reports can help reveal opportunities for growth in one’s professional skill set, and 2) deep self-reflection is a major launching pad for fostering vulnerability in a mentor relationship. These two components are crucial to developing strong, valuable mentor relationships.

The 5 core areas we measure in our 360-Degree Assessment are: People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management.

Next, I’ll explain the significance of each of these categories, and then suggest ways that someone can learn after finding out they are overestimating their abilities in each category. This should be an opportunity for growth and understanding, not a time to be defensive and stubborn.

Communication Skills

The ability to communicate effectively affects every interaction you have personally and professionally. When you make improvements to your communication skills, you are likely going to improve your skills in every other category measured by our 360-Degree Assessment. Communication is based on one’s ability to listen, trust that others are speaking openly and honestly with them, and understand what others are sharing before focusing on being understood.

If you overestimated your communication skills that means either you gave yourself a moderate score and your colleagues gave you a low score or you gave yourself a high score and your colleagues gave you a moderate or low score.

You rated yourself moderately

There are many reasons you may have rated yourself moderately in your communication skills. It could be that you don’t believe you need strong communication skills to perform your role effectively, or it could be that you’re aware of your weakness here but haven’t found the time to focus on improving it.

If you are of the mindset that your role doesn’t require you to have strong communication skills, you might be right, at least based on your limited view of what your role is. If you are a solo contributor, you may think “I only need to get my work done and that’s it.” These common refrains don’t tell you the whole story though.

The issue with this mode of thinking is that it forces you to walk the tightrope of patience. When you are an individual contributor and you don’t feel like you need strong communication skills, you willingly turn yourself into a commodity; if your company can find somebody to do your work better for cheaper, the economic decision would be to fire you and hire them. The reason is that you aren’t bringing anything else to the table in terms of your contributions to the culture of the company because you have decided that you don’t need strong communication skills so subsequently your interactions with others at your company are likely to be minimal at best and a net negative at worst. Any mistake in your work becomes magnified because you have decided to not invest in your communication skills. Consider which sounds better for management: “Jon made that mistake, but he is a great guy and he pulls the team together” versus “Jon made a mistake and now I feel like he isn’t listening to me or communicating effectively with the team.” Everyone makes mistakes so which Jon would you want at your company?

Maybe you feel like you just don’t have the time to work on your communication skills. So, you gave yourself a moderate score because you “think” you are communicating fairly effectively at least. Well, let this report be the smoke signal informing you that, as the saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You are NOT communicating effectively and what you “think” is just getting by is not making the cut.

If that’s surprising or frustrating to read, try putting the shoe on the other foot.

Have you ever given instructions to somebody or been discussing some important work topic and they responded as if they weren’t listening to a word of what you said? Or they seem like they were listening but still end up acting in a way completely contradictory to what you said? Think about that frustration for a moment.

You know how frustrating it can be to feel ignored. If your team is giving you a low communication skills score, YOU are that person, or at least you are that person often enough for them to notice.

Have you ever felt like you had to sugarcoat the truth when talking with somebody? First off, that is usually a frustrating conversation. But even worse, it’s a recipe for eventual disaster, especially if they need to know the real truth of what you are trying to tell them. Based on your team’s feedback, you are the person they feel they need to sugar-coat the truth for. Your communication skills with your team keep them from feeling comfortable being open and honest with you. Instead, they don’t trust your reactions and worry that you might react poorly to bad news, but that isn’t going to make the bad news go away. When your team does not feel comfortable telling you the full truth, you may as well be flying blind.

When your team gives you a low communication skills score, they are telling you that you are an energy taker instead of an energy giver. People must exert significantly more energy communicating with you because they have to work double-time trying to find how to get their point across effectively. Instead of just getting to the point, they might need to repeat themselves. Or, since they feel that they can’t be fully honest with you, they are forced to plan out what to say so you can handle it. That type of working relationship is untenable. Poor communication skills are bad for business, bad for your team’s patience, and bad for your career stability.

You rated yourself highly

If you rate your communication skills highly and your team gave you a moderate or low score, that likely means that you are consciously trying to improve your communication skills, but it isn’t translating into reality.

People who rate their communication skills highly and then receive a lower score tend to be pretty surprised when they get their results. They may have done their “homework” and are familiar with many communication books or concepts and think they have tried ways to be better communicators. If you fall into this category, you probably are a little confused by these results.

Essentially, what this means is that the efforts you have taken to be a better communicator have not rung true for those you work with.

For your ability to listen to others, do you ever hear what somebody says and then respond with a story or comment on something unrelated? We all do this from time to time. Maybe you felt that their point was likely over and you really needed to get that other story or comment out (what if you forgot it or the moment passed?!). What you may be neglecting is what your response is communicating to the other person. You didn’t realize that, although you heard what they said, they were expecting a relevant response to close out their comment; your completely irrelevant response about something completely irrelevant to that point makes them feel that what they said wasn’t heard. And when people pick up those signals, consciously or not, they begin to feel frustrated. By the way, I – Garrett Mintz the writer of this article – am VERY guilty of this and I try to work on improving this every day.

The other side of communications skills is fostering an environment where others feel comfortable communicating openly and honestly with you. Have you ever seen this type of thing happen with other people? If you are a fan of the television show, Game of Thrones, this type of poor listening reminds me of how people listen to Petyr Baelish, or Littlefinger, when he is talking with them. If you haven’t seen Game of Thrones, Littlefinger is a sly, fast-talking businessman who is constantly playing people off of each other. When he speaks with anyone, he always tells them what they want to hear and everyone thinks he is on their side…that is until he backstabs them and leaves them out to dry. I am not saying that the people you work with are Petyr Baelish, but I am saying that they feel like they can’t give you the whole truth, and eventually, that will rear its ugly head (e.g. turnover, upset clients/employees, missed deadlines, unmet expectations).

There are a few things you can do to improve your communication skills. First, from a listening skills perspective, you can focus on your body language. Your body communicates substantially more than what your words do, even if neither person consciously realizes it. If you feel like you are listening but others don’t think you are, your body is likely telling them another story with mixed signals. To improve your body language you can focus on standing (or sitting) up straight when speaking with others, making 80% eye contact, nodding when they make points, and taking notes (if relevant and appropriate). From a verbal perspective, you must practice actively listening when you are waiting until they are done talking before sharing your response (and don’t interrupt them either!). When you do respond, you can reiterate their perspective to confirm that you understand what they just said. E.g. “If I am hearing you correctly…”

Second, from an openness and honesty perspective, focus on asking for feedback. When people provide unsolicited feedback to others, the brainwaves that are activated by the person receiving the unsolicited feedback are similar to the brainwaves when listening to white noise/nonsense. However, when we frequently ask for specific feedback, we are inviting others to give honest feedback and you are mentally preparing yourself to actually reflect on it. They are much more likely to be conscientious when giving this feedback and compared to unsolicited feedback, it’s much more likely to be a productive critique rather than some trite complaint.

The other thing you can do to encourage openness and honesty with your colleagues is to practice vulnerability exercises with them. In a 1-on-1 environment, ask them if they would be willing to be vulnerable with you, and you in turn be vulnerable with them. Think of the things that concern you with work and try to share these with them; they may share these exact same concerns! The benefit of doing this is that it sets the standard that it’s okay to deliver you potentially negative news on important topics because it was on your mind anyways. People tend to not give people the full truth for fear of upsetting them. By showing others that you are just as concerned, it makes it okay for them to deliver you the full truth of what is going on.

In essence, overestimating your abilities in these categories does not mean that you will forever be this way, but it does mean that there are opportunities for growth that you must tap into if you would like to improve.

by Garrett Mintz

Wed 17 February 2021

A 360-degree assessment helps you understand your professional performance by having both you and your colleagues assess your abilities across several key skills.

Underestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Self-Aware- People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

When somebody has overestimated their abilities, they are essentially giving themselves a greater score for whatever category is being measured compared to their colleagues’ scores of them.

For most people, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

The 5 core areas we measure in our 360-Degree Assessment are: People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management.

Financial Management

Financial management is a skill that is often overlooked but can have a large impact on the company. Financial management is based on one’s ability to manage the resources they oversee (including their time and the way they are spending their time at work), a company budget, and others’ perception of a person being fiscally responsible.

If you have overestimated your financial management abilities, you have either given yourself a moderate score and your colleagues rated you low or you gave yourself and high score and your colleagues rated you moderately or low.

You rated yourself moderately

If you rated yourself moderately in terms of your financial management, there are a few possible explanations. Perhaps you aren’t in charge of a budget, or maybe you don’t think that managing finances is that critical to your role.

If your colleagues rated you low for financial management then that is a sign that there is an opportunity for growth for your abilities.

This is also typically a sign that others believe you could be more effective or efficient with your work. Even if you aren’t in charge of a formal budget, you are responsible for your time and how effective you are with the time you spend at work.

By giving yourself a moderate score, you might think that you are doing enough to get by and do the “normal” amount of work compared to your colleagues. But if your colleagues rated you low, they clearly do not see it that way.

Your colleagues' low score indicates that you are either spending either company dollars or company time on things that aren’t helpful to the business. We aren’t robots; everyone does this to some degree, but once your colleagues start to notice, that’s a strong sign that you need to do better.

Dr. Robert Cialdini has a concept called “what is focal is causal” meaning that what people see is what they perceive and internalize as important or significant. If people are giving you a low score on your financial management ability, they perceive you as lazy, or looking for ways to get out of work, or as someone who spends money recklessly; no matter which way they perceive it, they end up realizing that you shouldn’t be trusted with a budget.

Before getting your results on a 360-Degree Assessment, you may think others aren’t noticing, or that others in the company are way more wasteful than you. However, clearly in the perception of your colleagues, that is not the case and you have been put on notice.

You rated yourself highly

If you rated yourself high on your financial management abilities but your colleagues gave you a low or moderate score, it indicates that you aren’t as strong of a financial manager (in the perspective of your team) as you think you are.

This typically stems from a lack of communication. If you manage a budget and your team sees you spending money on things that seem lavish and unnecessary (from their perspective), this can cause them to feel like you aren’t managing your company’s finances appropriately. This feeling is magnified if they feel underpaid while seeing this. If you don’t manage a budget and your team gave you a low or moderate financial management score, it means that they don’t believe that you spend your time at work effectively or that you are overpaid for your work. If salaries aren’t public information, people make assumptions for income based on your lifestyle, and if your lifestyle appears to be better than others, especially if they see you doing the same or less work than them, they will notice.

If people at your work are staying late and getting in early, and meanwhile they see you working the base 9 to 5, then that may cause them to become frustrated. They might think that either you are lazy, or that you are expecting more from them than is fair. What they may not realize is that your work responsibilities might be deeply analytical and have a compounding impact on the business, or they might not see the parts of your job that take place outside the office. For example, some work directly correlates time with output – essentially the company can get a certain number of tasks done by an employee for every hour they are at work; this is called linear productivity. On the other hand, there is work that, with intentional deep thinking, has an exponential impact on output in shorter bursts, but with increasingly marginal returns over a long period of time; this is called exponential productivity. Not every job has the same types of tasks and productivity needs; but without your open communication with your team, you can end up looking like a slacker.

The point is that until the truth is communicated to those you work with, they will form assumptions to fill in the gaps as to why things are happening the way that they are. Unfortunately, many of these assumptions are negative.

The best thing you can do to improve your financial management abilities, both for you and for how your team perceives you, is to communicate and learn. New innovations are constantly happening to make our work more efficient and effective. If we are open to learning about these tools and resources, we can ensure we are up to date on what needs to be done to be most effective at work – both for managing a budget and managing our time at work. Communicating effectively to those we work with allows them to know how we are spending our budget and our time. The more we can loop our team in on budget decisions and decisions about how to best spend our time, the more aware they will be as to what we are doing and how that is impacting the business. The best-run companies did not end up that way by accident; they intentionally fostered a company culture of honesty, hard work, and accountability from the top down and that pays dividends when everyone is brought into the fold.

by Geoff McCuen

Tue 16 February 2021

One of the lessons that I’m continually being taught is the value of reflection and retrieval. Our last two sessions certainly reinforced this lesson.

Reflection: Making time to deliberately review an event, a day, a week, etc. Reflection is more than just recounting the details or the chronology, but it involves evaluation and analysis. What went wrong? Why? Could it have been prevented? Could it have been anticipated?

More often than we might like to admit, we can learn far more when things don’t go the way we planned, or even if they completely fail, than if they had gone perfectly.

Retrieval: The ability to recall both specifics and related information from a past event. One of the challenges in the field of education and training is not just how to cram information into a person’s head, but teaching them how to retrieve them quickly and correctly when needed. Sometimes the ability of retrieval can mean the difference between life and death. The military uses repetition and drills to create muscle memory so that some actions don’t even require concentrated thought. They become more of a reaction than a decision – but “time to think” (or retrieve) isn’t a luxury you often have in combat.

So how does retrieval connect with reflection? If you only take the time to reflect after an event you can glean a lot of useful information. Some of which you may be able to put to good use right away. But if you don’t learn how to retrieve those lessons later, when they are needed, they have greatly diminished value.

I’ve heard many people say how much they “hate” quizzes and tests. I think it’s because we don’t do a good job explaining to students what the test is trying to do – if we did, they would study very differently. Tests don’t measure what you “know” or what you crammed into some small crevice of your brain. They measure what you can retrieve.

Now let me try to bring this all together. In our last two Peer Mentoring sessions, we had the opportunity to revisit some of our past goals and discuss which ones were successfully accomplished and which ones taught us something.

None of the stories we shared were new to either one of us. But in the process of retrieving these stories and telling them again, I was reminded of past lessons learned, maybe even almost forgotten. It helped me to remember how important it is to revisit our own past, success, and lessons, so that when the “next time” comes around we can quickly retrieve the knowledge to help us be more successful.

by Garrett Mintz

Mon 1 February 2021

A 360-degree assessment is a unique survey that uses input from self-assessment and from colleagues’ assessments to understand a professional’s strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots. By gathering feedback from your colleagues alongside your own perspective on those same questions, we can get a deeper look at how your self-perception compares to the way your colleagues see you.

With this data, we can break down the results of a 360-Degree Assessment into three outcomes:

1) Somebody has underestimated their abilities (self-rating lower than colleagues’ ratings),

2) Somebody has overestimated their abilities (self-rating higher than colleagues’),
or
3) Somebody is self-aware about their abilities (self-rating matches colleagues’).

This article is going to address some possible problems and solutions that might arise for people who are self-aware of their abilities. This article is part of a series I’m writing about Ambition In Motion’s 360-Degree Assessments and how their results should be interpreted. There are ten other articles addressing the two other possible outcomes of a 360-Degree Assessment available here:

Underestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Overestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Understanding Self-Awareness for 360-Degree Assessments

When somebody is self-aware about their abilities, this means that they gave themselves a similar score as the score their colleagues provided on the same skill.

Initially, self-awareness may seem to be a cut-and-dry positive outcome but looking a bit deeper reveals some potential issues. After all, the goal of a 360-degree assessment is to identify blind spots and close the gaps between one’s self-perception and the perception of their colleagues. However, we find that there are opportunities for growth within a self-aware 360-degree assessment report and this article will review those opportunities.

At Ambition In Motion, our 360-Degree Assessment has 5 core components:

a. People Management,

b. Innovation,

c. Leadership Ability,

d. Communication Skills, and

e. Financial Management.

While self-awareness is likely the best outcome relative to the other two possibilities, I’m next going to explain how you can leverage self-awareness to grow as a professional and identify blind spots in your professional perspective. I’m going to show why self-awareness on your 360-Degree Assessment is more than just a pat on the back, even if you and your colleagues share similar views on your performance.

Financial Management

If your colleagues' assessment of your financial management abilities is aligned with your own, that can be a very good thing or an opportunity for growth – depending on whether or not the score was high or low.

Self-Awareness but poor performance

If you rated yourself low in your ability to manage finances and your colleagues agree with you, this can be a major opportunity for growth.

Before diving into the implications behind why this is an opportunity for growth, it is probably wise to assess, internally, the reasons for your low self-rating and why your colleagues would also rate you low.

In terms of yourself, why would you rate yourself low on your ability to manage your finances? Are you taking (or have taken) actions that are financially detrimental to the company? If so, did you learn and alter your actions from the circumstance? Or do you think that you simply could be doing more or doing better overall?

One of the largest expenses for a company is human capital. Some managers will rate themselves low in financial management because they are unwilling to have difficult conversations with colleagues about productivity, and those colleagues don’t realize the implications that their actions may have on the financial viability of the company.

This is the type of outcome many tech startups find themselves in. Essentially, they will raise money with the anticipation that by the time the money runs out, they will have garnered enough traction to justify a follow-on round of investment or have enough revenue to cover expenses. The area that most startup founders struggle with is managing the finances. More often than not, they believe they have a strong idea that requires strong employees (with high salaries) to implement the idea. The ultimate balance is between quality talent (and the funds used to pay them) compared to what they produce and the relative difference in outcomes between a top-paid team and a lower-paid group of professionals. Analyzing which aspects of the business require top caliber salaries is crucial because the drop off between the top-caliber and a solid hire but with less pay can be extensive in terms of the effect on the company’s bottom line.

If you don’t manage a team, you might think to yourself “I don’t manage a budget therefore my ability to manage finances doesn’t really matter.”

I am going to make the argument that this notion is not correct at all.

If you are paid a salary (or hourly) for the time you put in at work, you manage finances – that being the time you spend working and how effective you are in the time you do spend at work. In some cases there are egregious misuses of time like taking actions detrimental to the business like working on non-work tasks while on the clock, spreading rumors or negative gossip about other employees, and clocking in late or early.

There is also the contemplation of whether you are optimally using your work time. For example, if you know your brain is optimally effective in the morning, you should be considering that with your daily schedule. If you choose to pursue social tasks or tasks that don’t require deep thinking in the morning, you could be squandering your brain’s daily threshold of deep mental focus. If you have open office hours or are expected to have your emails checked and responded to within an hour, you are diminishing your ability to complete any task that requires focus because you are constantly having to check your email.

Think of your salary as a budget your company allocates to you to be optimally effective at work. Are there components to this budget that are misused or could time be reallocated in a way that is leveraged more effectively? That is a question you will have to answer for yourself, but once you get to a point where you feel like you are optimally leveraging your time at work, you can start to see improvements in your ability to manage the most important budget your company entrusts you with, your salary/time.

The biggest counterpoint I hear about why not be optimally effective with your work time is “everyone else clocks out early or takes breaks more frequently than advised. There doesn’t seem to be a financial incentive to perform any more optimally, so why should I work on optimizing this?”

The answer is that how others work should not affect how you work. Back to the analogy of considering your salary like a budget your company entrusts you with. If somebody mismanages their budget, does that justify that you should mismanage your own?

Of course not! But this is a trap that people fall into all the time.

If you gave yourself a low score for your financial management abilities and your colleagues agree with you, that is a sign that you can improve yourself.

The best way to improve your abilities in this area is to research methods for best managing your time and creating a schedule for yourself that allows you to get the optimum amount of work done in a day given your unique set of responsibilities. This is not a one-size-fits-all solution as everyone has different work tasks. If your role requires you to frequently check emails, perhaps creating a space in time once or twice a day set aside for checking your emails. You could even create a “vacation” response informing senders when you will be checking your emails next so they can anticipate a response. Of course, this would need to account for specific time-sensitive requests if necessary.

If you are willing to take action to start improving your efficiency at work (and encouraging your team as well, if necessary) you can start to measure whether what you tried worked or didn’t work. The best way to achieve improvement is to try things you haven’t tried before.

Self-Awareness and high performance

If you rated yourself relatively high on your financial management abilities and your colleagues agreed with you, that is excellent. That is a positive sign that you are properly managing the time you are paid for both in terms of your salary and (if applicable) the budgets you have responsibility over.

However, this is not necessarily something to get caught up in because there could be factors contributing to your colleagues' (potentially generous) rating or a lack of self-awareness causing you to rate yourself high. This may not be the case, but it is important to point out examples of these types of situations so you can assess whether they hold any weight.

For those who manage a budget, oftentimes their team will rate their financial management abilities high because as long as they receive their paycheck every two weeks, nothing else really matters. Many teams are completely unaware of which activities are the most expensive to the business. Most employees don’t understand the relative dollars they generate from their work and the specifics of why paying their specific salary is a financially responsible decision.

Let’s use a pizza restaurant as an example. Say there are 3 people working inside the pizza place each making $10/hour and an additional manager making $20/hour. On top of that, the cost of running the ovens and the electricity comes out to roughly $5 per hour. If each pizza costs $10 and the company on average sells 10 pizzas every hour, they are driving an average net profit of $45 per hour. If the employees of the pizza place understand this, they can work on ways to try and sell more pizzas in the same hour to improve their own performance and the performance of the company – making them more valuable to the company.

Some leaders might read this story and start playing the “what if” game (e.g. what if my employee's demand raises because they understand the financial impact of their work?), coming up with every bad possible outcome if their employees knew their financial value to the company. But these old thought patterns should be reconsidered with new research.

In research from companies that leverage Open Book Management, companies in which the employees have a greater understanding of the financial implications of the company’s decisions perform better and are more profitable than companies who don’t. Conversations around raises and relative improvements to the business become substantially more tangible and objective when there is hard data justifying and showing how one person’s improved efficiency deserves greater compensation, especially compared to the “everyone gets a raise just because!” method of giving raises.

If you are an individual contributor for your company and you don’t manage a budget, per se, you still manage your time. If you consider your salary as a budget your company has entrusted you to manage, are you optimally using that budget?

One way to make improvements in this area is to identify potential opportunities for you to become more efficient at work. You could ask your boss or co-workers for feedback on ways you can be more efficient at work. And you could also provide some (ideally research or evidence-backed) suggestions for ways you have identified to help make yourself more efficient at work. Your manager will likely appreciate your drive for improvement and the fact that you came prepared with research-backed suggestions on ways you could improve your own efficiency and work output.

Overall, having a self-aware response on your 360-degree assessment report isn’t a free pass to give in to stagnation. It simply shows that you and your colleagues are on the same page. But, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. The implications from having a self-aware score are not wholly positive or wholly negative. Instead, it is a snapshot of your current performance which can help you make informed decisions about where you need improvement. As long as you possess an open-mindedness about making improvements and are willing to measure whether the new changes worked, you can ensure that you are on a positive track towards continual growth and improvement.

by Garrett Mintz

Sun 31 January 2021

With this data, we can break down the results of a 360-Degree Assessment into three outcomes:

1) Somebody has underestimated their abilities (self-rating lower than colleagues’ ratings),

2) Somebody has overestimated their abilities (self-rating higher than colleagues’),
or
3) Somebody is self-aware about their abilities (self-rating matches colleagues’).

Underestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Overestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Understanding Self-Awareness for 360-Degree Assessments

When somebody is self-aware about their abilities, this means that they gave themselves a similar score as the score their colleagues provided on the same skill.

At Ambition In Motion, our 360-Degree Assessment has 5 core components:

a. People Management,

b. Innovation,

c. Leadership Ability,

d. Communication Skills, and

e. Financial Management.

Communication Skills

If you are your colleagues are in agreement on your communication skills, that is excellent, but that could mean that they agree that you are a poor communicator or a great communicator.

Self-Awareness but poor performance

If your colleagues rated your communication skills relatively low and you agreed with them, that typically is an indicator that there are opportunities for growth.

You may think to yourself “I am in a pretty isolated role and communication isn’t a big part of my work.”

That may seem to be true, but that doesn’t mean that improving your communication skills will be wasteful.

A key component of communication skills is the ability to listen to others. If others believe you are a poor listener and agree with your self-rating, this indicates that you are probably giving off negative physical cues that signal that you aren’t listening AND you aren’t actually listening to what they are saying.

This has negative consequences. If you are struggling to listen to what others are saying, it can be difficult to accomplish any work tasks because you have no idea if you are missing some key information. People can recognize a poor listener and they’ll dislike working with you because they feel like their time spent communicating with you is wasted.

The other key component to communication skills is trusting that others are being open and honest with you.

If you feel like others aren’t being open and honest with you, that is a HUGE red flag. This means that you should reflect onto yourself why you might feel that way about others. Do you feel like people are hiding things from you? Do you feel like people are skirting the truth because they only want to deliver you good news? Do you have any reason to believe that they are being dishonest or withholding the truth? Has something like this happened to you before in the past?

If your colleagues agree with you, ask yourself, why might this be? Are you giving the impression that others must give you the best news, even if that means stretching the truth? This might be a difficult pill to swallow but could this be a possibility? And if this is the case, what are the implications of this? This could mean getting blindsided, surprised, or feeling deceived.

A great example of this is in HBO’s Silicon Valley. The show is about a group of people who found an up-and-coming startup business called Pied Piper. Pied Piper’s major antagonist is the CEO of a large conglomerate named Gavin Belson. Gavin is the type of leader who demands only good news, so much so that his people will lie to him to appease him, even if it makes him look like a fool later. A hilarious example of this rearing its ugly head is when Gavin is launching a new server called “the box”. Because Gavin is a narcissist, he requests that his signature be on every single box so his team creates a contest throughout the entire company to draft the best signature to go on the box. The signature that received the most votes was the signature “Gavin B”, which when displayed in the particular font used, looked like a phallus. The reason this scene is hilarious is because everyone on Gavin’s team can see exactly what it looks like, but Gavin is too self-centered to see anything but his name. Everyone is afraid to tell Gavin the truth, so Gavin moves forward shipping millions of boxes embossed with an ornate phallus prominently on the front.

The point is that if you feel like your team isn’t being open and honest with you and your team doesn’t feel like they can be open and honest with you either, you need to take action to create an environment and setting where others can be honest. This can start with asking for specific feedback on your work and the way you have communicated with others.

Self-Awareness and high performance

If you gave yourself a relatively high score and your colleagues agreed with you then that is excellent. That indicates that your colleagues feel comfortable being open and honest with you and they feel like you are a good listener and overall communicator.

The question one should then consider is the balance between productivity and communication.

If you have an open-door policy or situation where anyone can ask you a question at any time, then you are making yourself available and are clearly making yourself present while having a conversation with those you work with, but are you optimally productive?

Research from Stanford shows that it is impossible to multitask and that mental residue builds up when switching between tasks. Therefore, if anyone can communicate with you at any time, the gaps in time from pausing your work and having a conversation before finally getting back on task are essentially wasted. This is also very true for emails/texts/phone calls/social media. If you focus too much on being available for everyone at every moment, you are sacrificing your ability to get into deep mental focus for the sake of being available to communicate. You are being communicative and present, but you are not being as productive as you possibly can be.

Some people have subsequently adopted office hours where they are open to people jumping in and asking them questions only during certain time periods, minimizing the gap time mental residue that is created from switching tasks.

As new technology comes out, making it easier to communicate with those on our team, there can always be new ways to improve our communication and optimize our performance.

by Garrett Mintz

Sat 30 January 2021

With this data, we can break down the results of a 360-Degree Assessment into three outcomes:

1) Somebody has underestimated their abilities (self-rating lower than colleagues’ ratings),

2) Somebody has overestimated their abilities (self-rating higher than colleagues’),
or
3) Somebody is self-aware about their abilities (self-rating matches colleagues’).

Underestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Overestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Understanding Self-Awareness for 360-Degree Assessments

When somebody is self-aware about their abilities, this means that they gave themselves a similar score as the score their colleagues provided on the same skill.

At Ambition In Motion, our 360-Degree Assessment has 5 core components:

a. People Management,

b. Innovation,

c. Leadership Ability,

d. Communication Skills, and

e. Financial Management.

Leadership Ability

Leadership ability is an important skill for any professional, regardless of whether you hold an official leadership position. Leadership ability is based on one’s ability to set proper expectations for their work and communicate those expectations clearly and effectively. Skilled leaders demonstrate their ability to motivate others towards a purpose that benefits everyone, their willingness to take accountability when things go wrong, and the modesty to give credit when things go right.

If you gave yourself a score that was consistent with what your colleagues said of you, it can mean that you gave yourself a high score and your colleagues agreed with you or you gave yourself a low score and your colleagues agreed with you.

Self-Awareness but poor performance

If you gave yourself a relatively low score on your leadership ability and your colleagues agreed with you, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are a bad leader and your colleagues have confirmed it. Oftentimes, we give ourselves a low score on our leadership ability out of humility and recognition that leadership is a trait that can always be improved. However, when our colleagues feel like we aren’t strong at leadership either, this can typically be attributed to our ability to communicate.

People tend to perceive others as lacking leadership abilities NOT because of their inability to speak up, but more often because when one does speak up, it is perceived as self-centered and only benefiting the person making the request. Simply, leadership for yourself instead of for the team.

Here is an example of this situation. Many years ago, I was a server and bartender at a restaurant. My manager was a well-intentioned guy who read all the leadership books and constantly talked about how he wanted to improve his leadership abilities. I didn’t give him a 360-degree assessment, but I would imagine that his self-rating on leadership ability would be somewhat low because he recognized that there were areas for growth in his leadership repertoire. The issue was, although he understood the theory and high-level ideas from his books, his implementation of information was off. He never had a pulse for how we, the people who reported to him, felt about his management style and the processes he wanted to implement. To convey the importance of organizational citizenship and helping fellow servers and bartenders, he told all of us a story of a time that he pulled over to help somebody fix a flat tire. His goal was to convey that helping others is the right thing to do and can have a positive impact on the team. However, we noticed that the story was just about him. To us, it felt like he was just patting himself on the back, and because he never gave a resolution (e.g., the person he helped never spoke with him again), it was relatively unclear as to why helping others can have a positive impact on the rest of the team.

The point is that sometimes we can be educated about the theory of what it means to be a leader, but our efforts to implement those leadership strategies may not fully resonate with those we work with unless we ask for feedback and be open to making adjustments after learning the feedback.

Another reason you may have given yourself a low leadership score (and your colleagues agreed with you) could be because you don’t actually believe you are a strong leader and your role doesn’t necessitate that you be a leader.

But being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to have a placard or title labeled leader. Leadership abilities can include helping set expectations for your work with those you work with, taking accountability for mistakes that may happen, and giving acknowledgement to others when they have helped you.

Leadership ability transcends titles and enters into the realm of just being a good professional to work with. Thinking you aren’t good at these skills and then having your colleagues confirm these beliefs can be tough. But it’s no help if you start thinking there is nothing you can or need to do about it. If you don’t work on these components of your professionalism, you become an energy-taker instead of an energy-giver. People will resent working with you because they will perceive you as being selfish and uninterested in the outcome of the team. And if you are actually selfish and uninterested in the outcome of the team, then perhaps it makes sense to reflect on yourself and on your time to figure out the best use of it. There are plenty of jobs out there. If you are working at a company with a team, or just doing work that is uninteresting to you, then perhaps it is time to consider another line of work because the time you are spending doing your current work doesn’t appear to be serving you or those you work with.

Self-Awareness and high performance

If you have a relatively high leadership ability score and your colleagues agree with you, that is excellent, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have achieved the pinnacle of leadership ability.

Leadership ability is an interesting concept because the ultimate measure of success as a leader is both: how does my team feel about working with me AND what outcomes are we achieving as a team.

If you rated yourself highly and your team agrees with you, you can check off half of the box. However, how is your performance? Finding the right balance between output and keeping people satisfied, both doing the work and in your leadership ability, is the key to being the best leader you can be.

Therefore, when it comes to the question of output, you must assess comfort versus optimization. In terms of comfort, the question is: are you and your team achieving a performance level in which 1) the business can operate effectively, and 2) people are satisfied with their compensation? If the answer to either part is no, then you have a big problem. This means you are a supportive leader and your leadership style is appreciated, but it also means that you haven’t set the bar high enough. Something needs to change so the business can run at a level where everyone is comfortable.

There is a tv show on Hulu called Ramy. It is an interesting show about a man in his late 20’s trying to figure out his life. At the beginning of season 1, Ramy is working at a startup. He and his colleagues recognize that they aren’t paid the best, but they believe in the mission and they like the people they work with. Unfortunately, the company performance leaves much to be desired. Eventually, the company isn’t able to drive the revenue or fundraising it needs to survive and everyone gets fired.

This is a small story within the tv show, but it shows that Ramy appreciated the founders of the startup at one point in time (e.g. would have given a high leadership score to the founders), but once the company started to fail and everyone was fired, they all left with a salty taste in their mouth about the entire experience.

There are many factors for why a business eventually fails, but sometimes for fear of being perceived as a bad or overly aggressive leader to our team, we set lower bars for those we work with, even if it means the business can’t run comfortably.

However, if your work exists comfortably (either from a leadership perspective or as an individual contributor), and your leadership ratings are mutually high, then you have to ask yourself if your work is running optimally.

If you are an individual contributor, the incentive may not be as clear as to why you would question this or pursue improvement to the optimum level. You are not necessarily getting compensated any more to make these improvements. As a leader, the motivation for this is pretty obvious – e.g. the better your team performs, the more valuable you are to the company.

But as an individual contributor, a big reason for wanting to improve your output to an optimum level, while maintaining a high level of respect from your colleagues as they perceive your leadership abilities, is control and autonomy. If you show a desire to push the status quo and improve the company’s output, you become substantially more valuable to the company. Being able to identify more efficient and innovative methods while keeping it easy for your colleagues to work with you because you set proper expectations and help them see opportunities that they may not have already seen, you become substantially more valuable to the company. If your company can’t live without you, you will have the control and autonomy to try new things that the company would not trust others to try.

If you ever had a shared family car growing up, this would be like always making sure you return the car to your parents with a full tank of gas (and occasionally a car wash) after you borrow it. Later, when it comes to borrowing the car for a concert 4 hours away, you have a track record of responsibility and respect for your parent’s car.

The key to getting performance to an optimum level is not sacrificing the way your team feels about your leadership ability. The real key to being the best leader you can be is finding the balance between optimum performance and having the respect and support of your colleagues.

by Garrett Mintz

Fri 29 January 2021

With this data, we can break down the results of a 360-Degree Assessment into three outcomes:

1) Somebody has underestimated their abilities (self-rating lower than colleagues’ ratings),

2) Somebody has overestimated their abilities (self-rating higher than colleagues’),
or
3) Somebody is self-aware about their abilities (self-rating matches colleagues’).

Underestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Overestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Understanding Self-Awareness for 360-Degree Assessments

When somebody is self-aware about their abilities, this means that they gave themselves a similar score as the score their colleagues provided on the same skill.

At Ambition In Motion, our 360-Degree Assessment has 5 core components:

a. People Management,

b. Innovation,

c. Leadership Ability,

d. Communication Skills, and

e. Financial Management.

Innovation

Innovation is a critical skill to possess in any working environment, even (and probably especially) if your role requires you to follow strict protocols and procedures. Innovation stretches across one’s willingness to pursue new activities or actions that can drive different results, ability to incorporate others in the innovation process, and propensity to challenge conventional thinking.

If your score was self-aware with your colleagues, it can mean that you gave yourself a high score and your colleagues agreed or you gave yourself a low score and your colleagues agreed.

Self-Awareness but poor performance

Innovation is an interesting component to work with because there is a relatively wide gap between being innovative and others knowing that you are innovative.

The reason for this is because innovation is time-intensive, difficult, and requires persistence. And to put it simply, not everyone is willing to put in the work needed to innovate.

For this reason, if we choose to stick with a problem and try to identify a better solution, sometimes we can ostracize ourselves from others because we may fear that they won’t be as motivated as we are to focus on identifying the solution.

If this is the case, others have no idea that what we are doing is innovative.

Another common characteristic of those that are innovative is humility. Innovation is a never-ending pursuit. Because of that, many people who are innovative at heart will rate themselves low on innovation. Instead, they may focus more on where they want to be rather than where they are now.

You may be on the other side of this coin where you actually don’t believe you are innovative. You might think that you don’t invest the time, hard work, and persistence necessary to come up with innovative solutions at work. This could be because of lack of opportunity, lack of knowing what to do, or just lack of interest.

If you lack interest in being innovative, there probably isn’t much here that is of interest to you. And that could be totally fine because some roles don’t require constant innovation. Instead, these types of roles demand consistency and perfection for crucial, yet repetitive, tasks. And this type of work can allow the person to live the life they want to live outside of work and not have to invest their limited time on the next big breakthrough.

But if you feel like you lack opportunities or are unsure of what to do, becoming more innovative starts with you putting in the effort. Take a moment to jot down all the components of your work that frustrate you or your colleagues. Imagine an ideal world where your boss immediately implements your ideas and gives you the budget to follow through – how would you alleviate those frustrations? Once you have identified the ideal version of the solution, take a step closer to reality and think about how that idea or an idea similar to that idea and achieves a similar result could be done on a minimal budget. Once you have identified the minimal budget idea that would minimize frustrations, take one more step closer and think about how that idea could be implemented in a way that has minimum impact on the way your team or boss does their work. Finally, now comes the part where you must take a chance: testing out your idea. You should (usually) ask your boss for permission if you feel it is required, but the dirty little secret here is that the preferred method is just taking the plunge and going for it. Most change initiatives are met with reflexive resistance, and sometimes you will need to be decisive to innovate. If it works you are a hero and if it doesn’t, what is the worst that could happen? If you think the worst thing that could happen is really bad - like getting fired or hurting somebody, ask for permission. But if the worst that could happen is a lecture about why you shouldn’t have done that, I would give it a shot.

Once you start getting into the practice of innovating, invite others to join you in the innovation process. By including others, you empower them to be innovative and build upon your shared experience and perspective, reducing the chance that a blind spot will turn your innovative ideas into creative disasters. As an additional benefit, humans are social creatures, and collaboration makes the team more supportive of innovative thinking.

One example of this was when I studied abroad in China. I have always been fascinated by business and entrepreneurship and I loved (and still love) to discuss entrepreneurship with my friends (and really anyone who was willing to engage with me in conversation). Many of my friends that I studied abroad with in China had wealthy parents who had expat friends living in China. My friends knew that these expat friends were going to talk about business and entrepreneurship when they took them out for dinners. So, when my friends attended those dinners with these expat venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, I was the friend they invited to tag along because they knew that I would chat about entrepreneurship with them.

The point of this story is that what you put out you receive back (law of attraction). If you put out that you are interested in innovating on components of work that are frustrating, others will approach you to innovate AND consider you a more innovative person.

Self-Awareness and high performance

If you gave yourself a relatively high score for your innovation and your colleagues agreed with you, that is great, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t room for growth.

People can only base their perception of somebody or something based on what they have already experienced. If they are used to work styles that aren’t conducive to innovation, they might have an overly generous view of your own innovativeness. That is not to say that your actions aren’t innovative, but it does mean that you should question and challenge yourself to see if you can be more innovative.

Innovation is not a destiny, it is a journey. To convey this point, I like a story Tony Robbins has shared. Tony Robbins is a popular motivational speaker and at one of his events, one of his attendees mentioned to him “In 3 years, I am going to be where you are at!”

Tony’s response was “That may be true, but when that time comes you will be where I was 3 years ago!”

by Garrett Mintz

Thu 28 January 2021

With this data, we can break down the results of a 360-Degree Assessment into three outcomes:

1) Somebody has underestimated their abilities (self-rating lower than colleagues’ ratings),

2) Somebody has overestimated their abilities (self-rating higher than colleagues’),
or
3) Somebody is self-aware about their abilities (self-rating matches colleagues’).

Underestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Overestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Understanding Self-Awareness for 360-Degree Assessments

When somebody is self-aware about their abilities, this means that they gave themselves a similar score as the score their colleagues provided on the same skill.

At Ambition In Motion, our 360-Degree Assessment has 5 core components:

a. People Management,

b. Innovation,

c. Leadership Ability,

d. Communication Skills, and

e. Financial Management.

People Management

People Management abilities are extremely valuable, regardless of whether or not you are in a leadership position or have the title of manager. People management stretches across one’s ability to maintain positive relationships with those they work with, participate in organizational citizenship activities (e.g., supporting a colleague with their work), be open to constructive feedback, and show that you are always open to learn more.

If you gave yourself a people management score that aligns with your colleagues, we can consider two types of outcomes depending on how well you rated your performance.

Self-Awareness but poor performance

If you gave yourself a relatively low score and your colleagues agree with you, the reason why this isn’t a good thing should be immediately apparent. You perhaps gave yourself a low score because you don’t believe that people management is one of your strengths. Of course, acknowledging your shortcomings is the first step to improvement, however, the fact that your colleagues agree with you is concerning because that means they feel it as well.

One option is to just shrug it off and think to yourself “I am not in a role that requires me to manage people so my performance in this area doesn’t really matter.”

If you feel this way, I want to challenge that thinking. Whether you are relatively low on your company’s org chart, are a solopreneur and don’t have any direct reports, or are in pretty much any scenario where you don’t think you are managing people, I can make an argument that there is some form of people management going on.

If you are relatively low on your company’s org chart, that does not mean that you can’t manage up. Managing up is the notion that we, as employees, control our work environment and outcomes just as much as our managers do, and we have the capabilities to communicate our goals, roles, and what we are comfortable with in a way that allows for us to be productive while protecting our boundaries.

If you are not able to manage up, you may end up entirely at the mercy of your manager or other stakeholders. For example, if you are a full-stack developer but prefer to work on front-end design work and your boss keeps assigning you to back-end data tasks, without managing up, you are going to be frustrated/bored with the work you do. Either your leadership will keep asking you to do things because they are assuming that you will tell them when enough is enough or you will get the same tasks over and over again and feel the strain of monotony. Either way, the inability to people manage will create stress on your life.

If you are a solopreneur without any direct reports, you still report to your clients. People management is the ultimate in setting expectations and delivering results. Your clients could end up “firing” you if you can’t properly set and communicate expectations, or you could burn yourself out by working yourself ragged meeting trying to meet and achieve an impossible goal that a client demands. By practicing people management, you could change those outcomes by creating a shared perspective on the tasks ahead or even helping your client avoid an impossible expectation without causing them offense.

If you are in any other scenario where you don’t feel like you should improve your people management abilities, challenge yourself with the following questions:

· Am I enjoying my work?

· If I continue doing my work like this with the same people for the next 5 years, will I still continue to enjoy my work and get compensated in a way that satisfies me?

· Will I feel like I am growing in my career in 5 years if things stay the same?

If you answered yes to all 3 questions, then there is nothing you need to change. But, we find that the vast majority of people say no to at least one of these questions and that necessitates interacting with others and managing those relationships.

Self-Awareness and high performance

If you gave yourself a relatively high score for your people management ability and your colleagues agree with you, that is a great thing.

But, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for growth!

Here is a story that I believe exemplifies this. I have a cousin named Xavier. Xavier loves to play basketball. When Xavier plays basketball with his friends that live in his neighborhood, he crushes them and they think he is a great player. But, when Xavier plays against kids at his high school, he gets beat. Unsurprisingly, Xavier loves the comfort of playing against kids in his neighborhood and doesn’t love getting beat (so Xavier doesn’t bring it up to them). Since the kids in his neighborhood never get to see him getting beat, they still believe Xavier is the best player they have ever played against.

The point: oftentimes at work we lose objectivity.

We don’t have a work version of “high school basketball” where we can compare our skills. All we have is our insulated work environment. So, all our colleagues know is our current work environment and their past work environments to compare it to. Without additional experience, they might not realize your potential for growth, even with a high rating.

The question you have to ask yourself is: “Am I really the Michael Jordan of people management? Or am I more like Xavier?”

More likely than not, you are more like Xavier.

This isn’t a bad thing. It is awesome that you have the respect and admiration of those you work with. But it doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. And honestly, even Michael Jordan would realize that his personal best is only his best so far if he keeps improving.

What you can do to improve

Ask - If you would like to know how you can be more helpful to your colleagues - Spend more time intentionally asking your colleagues how you can help support their work.

Introspect - If you would like to start being more helpful to your colleagues on your own - Take more time to consider what you could do to be more helpful for your colleagues. Be sure to check with them if that would be helpful to them.

Manage - If you would like to be more approachable for constructive feedback - Spend more time asking your colleagues for areas in which you can improve and communicating you want this feedback so you can improve yourself as a professional.

by Garrett Mintz

Tue 26 January 2021

The goal of a 360-degree assessment is to identify blind spots and vulnerabilities in your professional skillset. By getting feedback from your colleagues and comparing their perspectives to your self-assessment, you can get a deeper understanding of your work performance.

There are generally 3 outcomes from a 360-degree assessment: 1) somebody has underestimated their abilities, 2) somebody has overestimated their abilities, or 3) somebody is self-aware about their abilities. There are ten other articles addressing the two other possible outcomes of a 360-Degree Assessment available here:

Self-Aware - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Overestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Understanding Underestimating your Abilities for 360-Degree Assessments

When somebody has underestimated their abilities, they are essentially giving themselves a lower score for whatever category is being measured compared to their colleagues’ score of them. At first glance, this may seem like a positive thing: “If my colleagues believe that I’m better than my self-assessed performance, then I must be doing pretty well!” This is partially true, but this article will shed light and provide examples of how underestimating your abilities can be an opportunity for improvement.

When my team and I at Ambition In Motion facilitate mentorship programs, we also include our 360-Degree Assessment (and its report) to each participant. We’ve found that our members use these insights to reveal the areas most in need of improvement. This has helped members identify the best course for professional growth and helps provide a major launching pad for helping them open up and be vulnerable in their mentor relationships.

The 5 core areas we measure in our 360-degree assessment are People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management.

This article is one in a series of articles focused on why underestimating one's score on a 360-degree assessment report based on the 5 core areas listed in the paragraph above is not necessarily advantageous for one’s career.

Financial Management

Financial management is a skill that is often overlooked but can have a large impact on the company. Financial management is based on one’s ability to manage the resources they oversee (including their time and the way they are spending their time at work), a company budget, and others’ perception of a person being fiscally responsible.

If you gave yourself a lower score than your colleagues did on your financial management, that could indicate that your team is unaware of the way you are spending resources or that you don’t trust yourself as much as your team trusts you with financial management.

Your team is unaware of the way you are spending resources

If you are in charge of a budget and the only thing your team sees is whether or not you are able to pay for things (e.g. their pay stubs and other amenities around work), it can be easy to understand why your team would think that you are managing the funds optimally. When teams are left in the dark, all they can formulate is their perception of what is going. If you put on a good face and they consistently get their check, they may feel like there is nothing to worry about. If you feel like you have made some poor financial choices, your team could be completely unaware of these choices (or their effects). If you aren’t directly in charge of a budget, you could be wasting time or resources at work. If everyone sees you at work and it seems like you are working hard, most people won’t question whether you are putting in an optimum effort. If you know that you could be more efficient or productive at work and others don’t know, that could be a reason for a gap between self-perception and colleague perception.

You don’t trust yourself as much as your team trusts you with finances

In school, many people get stuck in the rut of being “naturally just bad at math”, and they let this label hinder their ability to grow their math skills. In the professional world, a similar issue can arise with Financial Management skills. Many people have been conditioned to believe that they just aren’t great at managing finances because of things that have happened in their own or their family’s past.

Here are a few solutions to help close the gap in one’s financial management. Ask your colleagues why they believe you are so strong in financial management. Try to find out what specific tasks you do and actions you take that give them that impression. Share your expenses with your team and try to find out whether you could be better at managing them. Be sure to listen to their feedback and incorporate useful ideas into your own methods. And if you manage your team’s budget, create incentives that encourage cost-consciousness. If you don’t manage your team’s budget, ask the person who does which parts of your work are the most prone to waste and ask for feedback on how you can be more efficient.

Counter-argument

The eternal counter-argument to this is “I just set the bar really high and I feel like I am not where I would like to be in this area.” If that is the case, then you are not effectively communicating your standards to those you work with. If your colleagues don’t know your standards, then they can’t properly assess your abilities in relation to those standards.

Overall, the goal of a 360-degree assessment and report is to identify the gaps and blindspots one may have so then they can improve their performance. The goal is to be self-aware, thus enabling you to work towards excellence in each area. Underestimating your performance might feel good at first because it shows others think highly of you, but continually failing to meet your own expectations means that you risk burning out or losing engagement. So, try being honest with yourself and setting honest goals. Professional growth is a slow process that takes dedication, consistency, and honesty, but by following the path, we are all capable of becoming our best selves.

by Garrett Mintz

Mon 25 January 2021

The goal of a 360-degree assessment is to identify blind spots and vulnerabilities in your professional skillset. By getting feedback from your colleagues and comparing their perspectives to your self-assessment, you can get a deeper understanding of your work performance.

There are generally 3 outcomes from a 360-degree assessment: 1) somebody has underestimated their abilities, 2) somebody has overestimated their abilities, or 3) somebody is self-aware about their abilities. There are ten other articles addressing the two other possible outcomes of a 360-Degree Assessment available here:

Self-Aware - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Overestimating - People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management

Understanding Underestimating your Abilities for 360-Degree Assessments

When somebody has underestimated their abilities, they are essentially giving themselves a lower score for whatever category is being measured compared to their colleagues’ score of them. At first glance, this may seem like a positive thing: “If my colleagues believe that I’m better than my self-assessed performance, then I must be doing pretty well!” This is partially true, but this article will shed light and provide examples of how underestimating your abilities can be an opportunity for improvement.

When my team and I at Ambition In Motion facilitate mentorship programs, we also include our 360-Degree Assessment (and its report) to each participant. We’ve found that our members use these insights to reveal the areas most in need of improvement. This has helped members identify the best course for professional growth and helps provide a major launching pad for helping them open up and be vulnerable in their mentor relationships.

The 5 core areas we measure in our 360-degree assessment are People Management, Innovation, Leadership Ability, Communication Skills, and Financial Management.

This article is one in a series of articles focused on why underestimating one's score on a 360-degree assessment report based on the 5 core areas listed in the paragraph above is not necessarily advantageous for one’s career.

Communication Skills

The ability to communicate effectively affects every interaction you have personally and professionally. When you make improvements to your communication skills, you are likely going to improve your skills in every other category measured by our 360-Degree Assessment. This is because when you underestimate your abilities with these skills, it is typically caused either by a lack of effective communication with your colleagues about what you are doing or by a lack of communication back about what your colleagues appreciate about your work. Communication is based on one’s ability to listen, trust that others are speaking openly and honestly with them, and understand what others are sharing before focusing on being understood.

If you gave yourself a lower score on your communication skills than your colleagues did, this could indicate a lack of trust, strong body cues for listening without retention, or a perceived lack of patience.

Lack of trust

The reason why underestimating your communication skills compared to your colleagues could indicate a lack of trust revolves around the question of trust: do you trust that others are speaking openly and honestly you? If you feel like others can’t be open and honest with you, but your colleagues feel that they can be, it is typically a sign that you don’t trust that you are getting the full information when you are speaking with your colleagues. The key is understanding why you might feel this way. Try to consider if you have a valid reason to not trust their honesty and you might just end up realizing that your assumptions are incorrect.
Strong listening body cues but a lack of retention

When it comes to non-verbal communication, some people have naturally great body language while others must work to ensure their body language fits the situation. As humans, the majority of what we perceive in the form of communication is via body language. We believe we are heard when we perceive the physical cues that the person is listening to. However, in some cases, people are great at giving physical cues that they are listening, whether or not they are paying attention at all. While naturally good body language is a gift, you might need to check that your internal response matches your external cues. By realizing when you are listening and when you aren’t, you can gain confidence in your communication abilities and know where you need improvements.

Perceived lack of patience

Some people are hyper-aware of their feelings and level of patience with other people. Some people feel that they are losing patience when communicating with their colleagues, but their colleagues aren’t perceiving it this way. Similar to having strong listening body cues, what others pick up from you is different than your perception of yourself. The difference is that when somebody feels like they are losing patience with somebody else, they are at least aware that they are losing patience – even if it isn’t perceived by the person somebody is speaking with.

A few solutions to help close the gap in one’s communication skills is to start practicing trusting your team. Try giving them responsibilities and information that you previously felt guarded about to start building trust. You can also deliberately practice reflective listening–meaning you mirror other people’s statements back to them and consider their words carefully before responding. Just by asking your team to share their concerns for their work and the upcoming hurdles they may face, you are growing mutual trust and practicing patience.

Counter-argument

The eternal counter-argument to this is “I just set the bar really high and I feel like I am not where I would like to be in this area.” If that is the case, then you are not effectively communicating your standards to those you work with. If your colleagues don’t know your standards, then they can’t properly assess your abilities in relation to those standards.

Overall, the goal of a 360-degree assessment and report is to identify the gaps and blindspots one may have so then they can improve their performance. The goal is to be self-aware, thus enabling you to work towards excellence in each area. Underestimating your performance might feel good at first because it shows others think highly of you, but continually failing to meet your own expectations means that you risk burning out or losing engagement. So, try being honest with yourself and setting honest goals. Professional growth is a slow process that takes dedication, consistency, and honesty, but by following the path, we are all capable of becoming our best selves.

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