Mistakes, feedback, mission statements — Weeknotes 17–15 Mar 2021
Incredibly, home-schooling is over and already it feels like a distant memory. While I’ve joyfully snapped straight back into the old routine, my kids have found it tough. There have been many tantrums — loud displays of anger, frustration, anxiety, fear, tiredness, and attempts to assert control. All extremely understandable, but wearing. The exhaustion continues…
My general theme of the last 2 weeks has been seeing how my kids (5 and 7) are wrestling with pretty much the exact same things as I am (39 today!).
Making mistakes
Making mistakes is hard. I made a couple last week. It’s hard not to stew on them. Out of blue they pop into your head again and you think ‘argh, I can’t believe I did that. What was I thinking?’. My daughter too comes home from school, stewing over the fact she got some questions wrong in a test. I can empathise, and no amount of ‘rationalising’ helps take away the bad feelings. So, we just get the feelings out there, let them be and commiserate together.
At some point, the lines get spoken that everyone makes mistakes, mistakes are just learning opportunities, they don’t make us bad people, we are wonderfully unique, loved and accepted just the way we are, etc. Sometimes that sinks in, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Working hard to achieve goals whilst loving yourself regardless of whether you achieve them or not, regardless of getting things right or wrong— that’s hard and something I still struggle with. It takes time and practice.
I’ve felt very aware of my inadequacies in the last few days. After a while of feeling sad, then feeling contempt for myself, I eventually accept my limitations. It’s in that moment of letting go that I feel the most peaceful (generally, in life). In that moment I stop fighting, stop chastising myself, stop trying to be better. I remember that everyone is a bit broken. The mistakes, the errors of judgment, the good I’ve failed to do — I can forgive it all. And it’s only from that place of humility and acceptance that we can fully grow. I just wish I could hold on to it for longer.
‘When I am weak, then I am strong.’
Learning to embrace constructive feedback
Related to making mistakes, is receiving constructive feedback, or correction. In the words of my daughter, ‘Mr W put green pen all over my work.’ and the words that follow… ‘I’m rubbish. I can’t do it.’
This week I read a chapter of Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet. The chapter was called ‘We have a problem’. David talks about how they started to ‘embrace the inspectors’:
“Concerning areas where we were doing things poorly and needed help, we viewed them as sources of information and solutions. This created an atmosphere of learning and curiosity among the crew, as opposed to an attitude of defensiveness.”
“Whenever an inspection team was on board, I would hear crew members saying things like ‘I’ve been having a problem with this. What have you seen other ships do to solve it?’
This perspective is so important for developing humility, which creates space for growth. We need other people to help us learn, grow and deliver the best. This is something I’ve learnt to embrace during my time as a content designer.
Content design is a discipline in which we regularly get constructive or correctional feedback from others on our work. For each content piece we work on, at GDS our decisions are scrutinised no fewer than 4 times, often by 4 different people, sometimes more. This makes us used to constructive feedback. We learn to value this scrutiny as the best way to make sure the end-user gets the clearest and simplest content. We learn to get our egos out of the way and see the process as collaborative. We learn to see it as a learning and refining exercise. This doesn’t mean it’s always easy!
I’m now thinking about how I can help my kids to develop this perspective on receiving feedback and correction… hmm….
Asking for feedback
It’s important to ask people directly for feedback. I spotted a Head of… at work had a feedback form in their email signature, which I thought was nice — it communicates a certain openness and willingness to listen.
At GDS it’s the time of year where people are preparing for their end of year performance reviews. So there are a lot of emails going around asking for feedback. I think this is great! Something I’m really aware of in myself though is the temptation to ask for feedback from people who I know may be more likely to say positive things. And avoid asking for feedback from people I think might have something constructive or correctional to say. We have to be open to all of it — and willing to seek out the tough lessons.
I also think we all need to get better at constructive feedback — giving it as well as receiving it. Positive feedback is wonderful and encouraging. But we need the converse too so we know where to focus our development.
Calling out unkindness
I think the more we can normalise the giving and receiving of feedback, the more we can create a culture in which we can more naturally ‘call out’ behaviour that’s unacceptable. I went to some ‘Active Bystander’ training 2 weeks back. It was brilliant — really practical. We learnt some different methods and techniques for ‘calling out’ inappropriate, discriminatory, harmful behaviour at work. It’s something I want to get better at.
In the same week, my 7 year old had a school lesson that was looking at exactly the same thing. The teacher was taking the kids through scenarios at school and they had to say whether the behaviour was kind or unkind and what they would do if they were there.
So it doesn’t matter whether you’re 7 or 39, you’re still learning the same basic life lessons. Do we spend our whole lives learning and re-learning the same things over and over?!
‘Begin with the end in mind’
This last week I’ve been reading Habit 2 of Stephen Covey’s ‘7 Habits of highly effective people’.
Covey encourages us to:
- Figure out our personal values and principles
- Write a mission statement
- Identify goals
Doing these helps us to:
- Achieve our goals
- Make authentic decisions
- Be proactive — not a victim of circumstances or other people’s actions
- Re-write the scripts that determine our behaviour
“The personal power that comes from principle-centred living is the power of a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviours and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people”
“Writing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behaviour with your beliefs.’
While Covey is writing about personal leadership, I think these things matter in teams too. Having a shared sense of values, behaviours, mission and goals help teams to move forward together in a proactive, decisive, purposeful, transparent and authentic way.
Highlights from the last 2 weeks
- The last week of ‘home-schooling’ with my kids — we ditched a few lessons and did some fun things instead
- Coaching for managers training — this was great and made me realise coaching is harder than it looks!
- Giving feedback — I spent a while filling in feedback forms for colleagues — a real privilege and joy to be able to do that!
- Content designing, managing our backlog of work, prioritising, triaging, pushing back, enquiring, interrogating, discussing, reviewing
- Supporting team members with content work and wellbeing
- A lovely catch up with Natalie
- Seeing all the blossom coming out on the trees
- Starting to dig up some garden to plant wildflowers
- Watching birds (and squirrels) on our feeders
- Making a decision as a family to GET A DOG!!! (very excited)
