I spent the day with my team at work today. We had an event where the theme was storytelling. I witnessed something interesting, which really caused me to reflect personally about a key aspect of self improvement that I think is not highlighted enough. Today, many of the team had to tell a story to their colleagues. What was interesting was that in many cases, they chose to speak on personally revealing things and by that very nature disclose challenges in front of others. I think it is one thing to speak in front of a group of strangers, or like minded friends or an audience but it is probably an entirely different experience to speak in front of a group of peers. The feeling is that you could and probably are being judged in some way or being compared to a standard. When you are talking to a group of people that experience the same things that you do all the time, you understand that it is impossible for you to hide much of anything about what you discuss. We have all been there can be comforting, but also intimidating.
When you are in a position of responsibility, like I find myself in, you are absolutely constantly aware of the fact that people are comparing you to other leaders, other people they have known. You are judged for what you say and especially what you do not say. That has made me slightly numb to the nervous apprehension that you experience with in that type of circumstances. I still struggle, however, because I find that my words do not flow as well as they might in a different circumstance. For example, if I was teaching a class or presenting in front of an audience I would be less likely to be self conscious over every word, but in the peer-evaluation circumstance that dynamic causes you mind to second guess what you said or did not say and you find the words less easy to come by as you normally would.
Having said all of that, I was really impressed and in fact in awe that many of my colleagues chose to be self revealing rather than braggadocios in their approach. They seemed to lean toward being more self deprecating then to conceal or hide the challenges and problems that they were really facing. This caused me to really ponder that taking personal risk, or extending yourself out to others is the only real way that you gain reciprocity from your relationships. If you want value to be returned to you from a relationship, then one of the key investments you make is in taking personal risks. This may not be comfortable, you might not get the response you want, you may learn the difficult truth from the effort but the result is real, sometimes raw, but a concrete basis on which to build a strong and lasting interpersonal relationship.
I am becoming more of an open book as I have gained experience with working with people over the years. Honestly and clarity of intent has more often than not benefited me in the long run. True, the short term will sometimes suffer, but over the course of a long and prosperous relationship truthful dialog has netted greater benefit. This absolutely requires personal risk. You have to be willing to set yourself up for disappointment, ridicule, embarrassment, and even out right attack in order to grow, improve and extend value in your relationships with others. Today, my experiment with leaning toward open and self revealing communication rather than canned, well prepared and even scripted communications proved this point.
This encouraged me. Helps me to believe that self disclosure and personal risk is a necessary and powerful element to self improvement and growth as a human and member of a collective society. If you have not already, you may want to take stock of where you are at in your willingness to take personal risk.
Guy Reams
