No Feedback No Goals

Receiving feedback is essential and this phenomenon also guides us to the direction where we decide to head to. Without any feedback for your performance, people usually begin to lose their confidence and energy towards their goals. It is just like taking a math exam. When you realize that your teacher (leader) decides to keep the score secretly, you would have some sort of disappointments because you cannot get information about your performance and soon your energy will be drained and depleted. The same principle can be applied to our daily lives. As I working to achieve something great for personal or company, I always seek feedbacks, suggestions, and encouragements from my supervisor so that I can refuel my spirit and energy to step out of my comfort zone and make great things happen. Honest feedback help me understand myself more about the situation and it not only clears out my doubts but also points out the problems I should adjust before I move on. People need feedbacks to reevaluate their performance. Without feedback, we are likely to commit mistakes and fail our goals.

Time for a little self-reflection

There were definitely a few things that surprised me in the feedback. It is really important to recognize how others view you, mostly I think because you do things and repeat certain behaviors you are not always aware of. For example, I always consider myself to be in control of my emotions; however I scored lower on the average ratings of others across the board for emotional intelligence. This really surprised me because I thought this would be one of my strengths. I will have to reevalute myself in this area. I am grateful for the information because I value emotional intelligence, and now that I realize I am not as strong in this category as I thought I know this is an area I can target for improvement. I will definitely work on identifying emotions in others, and also regulating my own emotions. I have been trying to “self-monitor” the last few days to see how I am behaving and paying closer attention to the reactions of others.

In my every day life I would say I actually receive a lot of feedback from a few sources: my sister for one is constantly pointing out things about me and things that I do when I don’t realize. She always starts with “maybe you don’t realize this but….” And then proceeds to tell me her opinions about me and my behavior, what I say and how I say it. This is actually helpful because family knows you best and also doesn’t usually care if the truth hurts your feelings or not. I also get a lot of feedback about my performance at work. Everything I do is reviewed by 2 managers, so my work is constantly being handed back to make changes which is annoying but getting used to your work being criticized can make you more open and less defensive over time.

I think honest feedback is really hard for just about everyone, especially if you are a person who has or at one point had low self-esteem. If you already feel badly about yourself it can be really difficult to get feedback from other people, especially if you have tried to overcome years of low self-esteem.

Blog Topic 11: Seeing ourselves as other see us

Last week, you received feedback on how other people see you in a leadership roles. Was anything surprising to you? You've had a few days to digest the feedback, how can the information you received move you towards your leadership goals? How frequently do you receive authentic feedback in your everyday life? How can acquiring honest feedback help you achieve your goals?

Two points on the TED talk

As I was listening to Mihaly Csikszentmihaly talk, two points were interesting to me. One is that lack of basic resources leads to unhappiness, but increasing the amount of resources doesn’t result in more happiness either. So as long as human’s basic needs are met, the amount of income or moving from a three to four bedroom house does not necessarily make them happier. In other words, people with higher incomes and bigger homes may live more comfortably, but they’re not necessarily happier. The important point is that every person’s basic needs are different from others. In my own experience, when I was living away from my family, I wasn’t very happy. Now that I live close to them, although my material resources haven’t changed much, I’m much happier. So would it be correct if I conclude being close to family is one of my basic needs?!

Another point is the concept of flow. When I looked at the definition of Flow which is “the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity”, I realized there is nothing in life that gives me the state of flow. The closest feeling I can recall is speed running tournaments in my junior high years. It was such a great feeling when I was on the tracks. I just wanted to run forever. I’m curious to know how many people that I know experience the feeling of flow and in what way.

Motivation

Depending on the situation, I feel that there are a lot of things that motivate me. When I think of what motivates me at my job, I would have to say it's mostly money. I work as a server at a restaurant, so my main goal is to make good tips. This, coincidentally, means that I have to provide better service to earn them so it works for both the company and I. When I worked my full time sales job, I was motivated to push the company forward. Making money was great and all, but since it was a small start-up company, I felt personally invested and motivated to see it succeed. I like the feeling of being motivated by something I like better than money. Being personally invested in something and caring about the outcome is the easiest way to have someone do their best job at their task.

I think that what motivates me isn't much different than what motivates others. Everyone is motivated to work towards a goal if it's something they care about. But sometimes, it isn't always that easy to get everyone to want the same final goal. This is when other motivation styles need to be put in place. It is important to take the individual or group that you are trying to motivate and analyze which style would be the most advantageous. Fear is good, but sometimes can cut ties with those you are scaring. All in all, I feel that inspiration is the best form of motivation. Scaring someone or getting angry can get the job done, but may have more negative effects than you would want. Inspiring someone to be motivated gets the job done and probably gets the best outcome.

Intrinsic Motivation

Motivation does play an important role in my daily life. To me, there is a difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. An extrinsic motivation, for example, is like that your manager raises your salary because you have been working hard. As for an intrinsic motivation, you often find out some truths about yourself like you’ve been enjoyed getting involved in what you are doing because you like the environment or because you can help others and make contributions to the world. No doubts, people are likely to be attracted to intrinsic motivations. I that way, when I lost the momentum to work, I can quickly get energy out of my intrinsic motivation repertoire and again become focused and concentrated on what I am working now.

Whenever I got lost under stressful working environment, I like to reframe things with my eyes closed, because sometimes what you see does not truly reflect truths, and mind opened.
Then, I will take a deep reflection on what’s meaningful to me and what should I do to continue pursuing the meaningful things. Luckily this strategy works very well on me and I enjoy doing it whenever I need a break from work and my busy life.

To motivate others, as according to textbook, you need to create an environment of trust and collaboration. Abusing power with negative attitudes towards your followers will bring you and your team with long term damages. As a leader, to know your followers internally is important. Just like you, others like to be lead with intrinsic motivations.

Too Salty

Too Much Salt
Excess sodium in the blood is very serious and can lead to organ failure and death. The condition is called hypernatremia. People who have kidney failure or who are not getting sufficient water will have it. Symptoms usually are noticeable when severe. Symptoms may include: severe sweating, hypothermia, dizziness and lethargy. Danger can occur with too much sodium so too can danger occur with an overzealous amount of motivation. It’s not that complex to get overly excited about a new goal, a new class, a new relationship or even a new project; you start burning the midnight oil and then completely puke out a week or month later. When I think about the number of positions that I have had in my life, 31, I have had to get motivated and then settle into coast mode for survival.
Think about those crazy, exotic, irrational crash diets that you start only to fail a week later. It’s easy to get really enthusiastic about a new goal. It is sort of like a Kid on Halloween who eats a bit too much candy, there can be such a thing as too much motivation. My entire life has been about starting a marathon by sprinting like a demon on drugs the first mile. Call it that competitive spirit, call it spiritual awakening, call it just stupid I call it burning the candle at both ends. Take a walk down the self-help aisle of Barns and Noble and thousands of books get you pumped, revved, gunned, accelerated and ready to go make enormous life altering changes. Although this is a nice idea, it can easily lead to motivation burnout. For me it’s been ready, get set, disappointment. I view motivation globally as achieving as close to possible your life goals. From day one out of the gate it has been about viewing my habits and making small but measurable changes. Sometimes change has been monumental and painful and other times it has been incremental and effortless.
Thinking about the excessive sodium I think about the excessive speed at which I have attacked life and living. My motivation has been almost drug induced at times; my personality and zest to do and conquer can almost take on a speed freakish nature. I have taken 21 academic units and worked full-time while raising three children. I have lost 100 pounds in less than 185days. I have finished a finance exam while in active labor. I have run a five mile race while in active labor. I have broken both my arms trying to lift weights greater than my ability. I think you get the point! At some point my need for speed and prove that I am motivated has caused burnout.
I have come to the understanding that fundamentally I need to have more value for what constitutes meaning for me! Working hard had not worked for me, now I need to work passionately. Essentially it means arriving at a clear understanding of my values and sacrificing, surrendering or forfeiting only for ‘that’ which meets those values and tenets. Clarifying my values will need to come from personal reflection and deep self-analysis. It shall come from deconstruction of my past so that I am able to construct my future. No longer shall I operate on the tenets of motivation for motivation sake but fundamentally I will only become motivated for those things I deem valuable and serviceable to the ecclesiastical of Asher.