Feedback: Perception and Interpretation

I was in a meeting in which a project manager brought up a topic that had been discussed in two previous meetings. I didn’t want to take the time to discuss the topic in this specific meeting, as a result, I closed down the conversation by stating that we were not going to be covering that topic, that it had been discussed previously and a decision had been reached, shared the decision, and asked that we move forward onto the reason for the meeting. There was silence and so we moved forward. I received a phone call the next day from the project manager informing me that the interaction in that meeting had made them feel diminished, that I had come across as dismissive. Does their statement make it their perception true? Of course not, that simply meant it was true for them. My perception was quite different. Are either of us right or wrong? No, there is no right or wrong in this situation. It is a matter of perception and interpretation.

Last week you gathered a list of habits that you have developed over time. You marked each habit with a W (working) or a DW (doesn’t work). The list includes things we do (like brushing our teeth) and reactions we have to people, places and things (like honking when someone pulls out in front of us), what I call life circumstances. The purpose for writing down these habits and reactions is to cultivate awareness of your current habits and habitual reactions. Awareness can be compared to knowing your current location on a map. Knowing where you are and having a vision for where you choose to go allows you the opportunity to map a course, to choose a path. Awareness allows you to build your tomorrow through practicing new ways of doing things, new behaviors, and new responses to your circumstances.

Personal assessment of what works and what doesn’t work is important. It provides you an opportunity to see how true your evaluation is through asking others their perception. Like asking someone where you are on a map. Without validation/verification from sources outside of yourself you may be off with where you are on a map which could result in directions that lead you away from where you want to go. Awareness will come when you receive feedback from others. Discussing your list with a trusted individual to gain awareness of how others perceive you is a critical component to growth. Feedback of what is working and what isn’t working is a gift. When your perception doesn’t align with how you are perceived in the world then your growth will take you in a direction that may not gain the results you are seeking. Have someone who knows you go through your list and mark each habit with a W or a DW to confirm what you perceive and how you interpret your reactions or responses to circumstances. Gathering feedback from multiple sources will provide additional clarity which is like triangulating your position on a map. The more sources, the clearer your position.

How could I have handled the feedback I received from the project manager? I could reach out to others in the meeting and ask for their experience of what worked or didn’t work. Hearing feedback from others as a part of other meetings would also support me in understanding if I have a tendency to come across as dismissive. Hearing it once from one person without hearing it from others would indicate that it may have been their experience but others don’t share the same view. The more feedback I can obtain the clearer the information on how others experience me in meetings. If I only hear it from one person it may not be me. If I hear it from multiple sources it may mean I get to look at my reaction and find a different way to handle similar situations.

There are a couple of sayings I’ve heard over the years that feed into this idea of feedback and behaviors. First, if I hear I’m an ass from one person it may not mean anything, if I hear it from multiple people I may want to get a saddle. Second, the way I do one thing is the way I do everything meaning, if I show up as dismissive in a meeting, then I may show up dismissive in other relationships which is a very good reason to look at that behavior or habitual response.

Why all this energy on interpretation and perception? One of the things that has become clear to me is that everything we say we state as if it is THE truth. We tend to forget to notice that what we are really saying is OUR truth. My description of my hand when I’m looking at the back of my hand is different than my description of the front of my hand and yet both are descriptions of my hand. The difference is perspective. Both descriptions are my truth in that moment. It isn’t right or wrong, it is my truth in that moment. Perspective and interpretation belong to the person doing the perceiving and interpreting. So when I receive feedback it isn’t true. It is one persons truth in one moment. The importance of this is immense. Feedback is neutral, we have the opportunity to examine it and try it on and determine whether it is true for us or not. If the same feedback comes from multiple sources, we probably ought to spend some time on determining whether a different habit, behavior or response is needed. One other thought, just because a majority find something that you are saying, doing or being is not normal and needs to fit a specific mold doesn’t mean you should change in anyway. If Galileo, Newton, Copernicus or other outrageous thinkers had changed their belief or what they were stating in their lifetime, our world would be quite different.

Now that we have a healthy list and multiple points of feedback, how do we decide where to start in taking a look at the habits and behaviors we have built up over the years? Where do we start in finding the ways of behaving and healthy habits that elevate our performance, our career and our personal relationships? What work is the most important to start on to make a difference? What do other authors and teachers suggest? Two things are clear, start small and don’t do it alone. 

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What Habits Have You Created?

Why take a look at the habits you have? More than likely you have created habits that work and more than likely habits that don’t work. Taking a look at our habits, which includes the things we do, the way we behave, the things we say, the things we don’t say, the looks we give, and basically any energy that we put into the world. We don’t practice our habits, they are our automatic pilot. We have our “go to” ways of doing things, our “go to” ways of being, our “go to” behaviors. We become predictable.

In order to improve anything we must become aware of where we are. Beginner or expert, doesn’t really matter, there is always something to learn and without knowing where we are, we cannot improve or alter our innate responses. Let’s take a look at life and the stages we go through. In these stages we learn different ways of behaving, different ways of getting what we believe we need to survive. We may learn them differently due to our circumstances and certainly some things we learn can serve us for a period of time. Once they no longer serve us we get to let them go, morph, shift, put them down, or let them fall away. For example, when we are a baby we cry when we are hungry, we cry when we want to be changed, we cry when we are tired. That works for a baby, not so much for a 10 year old. We still feel hunger, need to go to the bathroom and require sleep but we’ve learned different behaviors for getting what we need.

Awareness of where you are running on automatic pilot is an important step in learning what requires practice. This can be created by looking at the habits that you have today. Not yesterdays habits, not what you think your habits are, not what you’d like to your habits to be but capturing what your habits are in reality. Making a list of habits, as many as can be captured. Write down reactions and activities for one week. For example, in the morning, I set my alarm for 5 am. Some mornings I wake up at 5 am and some mornings I turn off my alarm and allow myself to sleep a bit longer. I drink a cup of coffee and check a few things on my phone while drinking my coffee. I walk my dog and listen to a book on my walk. You get the idea of capturing activities. What are also important to capture are reactions to circumstances and people. For example, I feel annoyed when I sleep longer than I’d like, I feel frustrated when I’m late to a meeting, I am distracted when I have something that I’ve forgotten to do.

Capturing those things for 1 week will give you a sense of the habits in your life. Those things that are automatic. You will identify those that work (getting up when my alarm sounds) and those that don’t work (not getting up when my alarm sounds). Seems like a lot of work capturing that information for a week? It isn’t about being perfect about capturing everything every day. Capture the information when it happens so that it is fresh. Be an observer of what is occurring. The purpose is to get a clear understanding of what some of your habits are and begin to become mindful of the things that you’ve wired into your reactions.

This activity is a judgement free activity. It isn’t about picking the good or the bad, the right or the wrong. It is purposefully about looking at how you respond to circumstances and people and capturing what you do during your day. It will show you patterns and will give you a roadmap to explore. The objective is to discover what may be most beneficial to practice to improve your performance.

When I was memorizing a piece to perform I practice the entire piece from beginning to end. I only did this after dividing the piece into sections and practicing those and I could do this only after practicing the building blocks of all music. We have habits ingrained in our building blocks, some of which work, some of which don’t work. Knowing what those habits are will teach us what we get to practice to shift ourselves to become great at what we choose to become.

Explore what habits you have for one week, write them and mark them with a W for what worked and DW for what didn’t work. Having an image of where you want to go is a must. Knowing where you are on the path will allow you to create your journey. One way to be solid about what is working and what isn’t is to ask your coach, mentor or a trusted friend or confidant. They can support you in discovering where you are today

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Choice - What are you Practicing?

The past few posts have been focused on establishing your vision, your why, your reasons for being a project manager to provide an anchor for practicing. Now that there is a clear purpose to you growing your project management capability you will be able to draw on that motivation when you are faced with a choice and you will be faced with choices throughout your day, your career, and your life. Whenever you find yourself making a choice, use your anchor, your why, to guide your path.

Our lives are filled with choices, I know, nothing new about that statement, this is where I’d think to myself, duh – give me something new. Our brain is a problem-solving machine and it creates problems for us so that we can solve them. Yes, our brain actually generates problems so that it has something to focus upon. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s say I’m writing a book and in order to write the book I get to write every day. My brain will come up with so many other things that I have to do that makes writing every day impossible, voila – problem created. This can occur at work, at home, anywhere. Our brains have an immense ability to create a problem where there isn’t one except the ones that are generated by us. Is this a problem, well, not really, and, only if we make it one. Let’s say, trying to eliminate the mental hoop jumping is part of what practicing is all about. Practicing is about creating automatic behaviors which reduce the number of choices we have to consciously make throughout the day which frees our minds to focus on those things which require our attention. If we are practicing well, focused on those things that will make a difference in our careers and other areas of our lives, we will succeed at what matters most to us.

The question becomes, what do we practice so that we can automatically make choices which move us forward. Putting the building blocks in place will allow us to handle things smoothly when a project goes sideways. We will have the mental capacity and the capability to solve the opportunities we are facing. If all of our energy is being used for standard day to day tasks like brushing our teeth, taking a shower, eating, walking or other activities, we will have little energy or mental capacity to tackle the things we get to do throughout our day. What that means is we get to practice those things in our career and our lives that will allow us to move through our days with ease and grace as we look for opportunities to continue to grow.

The way we choose to do things and the way we behave, when done repeatedly, are considered our habits. As I’ve been writing these articles about practicing, I’ve also been reading a myriad of books focused on habits. Practicing skills and behaviors are what create our habits. This isn’t a new take on building habits since the number of books written about habits covers a number of perspectives. Instead of writing about habits and habit building, I’ll provide my insights from the books I’ve read in coming posts.

Before providing some insights from the books about habits, I think it is important to mention the difference I see between habits and practicing. Doing something repeatedly, the same way, is a habit. What is important to note is that habits are things we do like waking up at the same time every day or hitting the snooze button every day and ways we behave like snapping when someone cuts us off in traffic or saying thank you when someone gives us a gift. Habits become habits because we have practiced them, they’ve become ingrained until we do them without thinking about them, they are unconscious and sometimes very hidden from us. Practicing is very different than our habits. Practicing is doing something repeatedly consciously to improve our performance, our skill, or our behavior. Practicing involves pushing ourselves to improve in some way, recognizing when something isn’t working, trying something slightly different and continuously working toward a higher standard. Practicing requires thought and conscious effort. When we practice well, we create habits. A question you can ask yourself before the next post is “What am I practicing today?”

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Vision Reminders to Do the Work

Once you’ve taken the opportunity to uncover your why of project management (and potentially other areas of your life) it is time to bring your why into focus. Keeping it visible, tangible, and ever present allows it to continue to flourish. I find that a sticky note, a vision board, a reminder of some sort is extremely beneficial. There is a boost in energy when my eyes land on what is important to me. I find that seeing it reminds me to be it and being it creates the energy to take the actions needed to be my best at what I’m doing. The actions needed to be my best are what practicing is all about. Practicing, repeatedly pushing my limits, can at times be boring and can fall into mindlessness. The boost of energy to be what I am choosing to be and do it to the best of my ability in any given moment requires reminders. Your why is your reminder of the reasons you have chosen to BE a project manager.

Take 20 minutes to create a picture, a page, a 3x5 card or a big sticky that you can see on a regular basis as a reminder. Create it in a way that you will smile when your eyes land on it. Make it so that it is real for you, a way to shower yourself with the energy of what you want to create with your project management. Whether you recognize it or not, you are creating something in every moment of your day. You are generating something out of nothing with every breath. Just like your cells regenerating, you are evolving into your own creation by navigating the circumstances of your life. Each choice you make, either moving toward or away from your why, is something you are creating. Bringing your best self to what you are creating is what practicing is all about. Having your reminders in place will allow you to continue to practice when you may rather not and while motivation is not the only thing necessary to maintain a practice regimen, it is one of the components that will make a difference.

One thing before closing out this post and I may find myself coming back to it often. Abraham Hicks loves to say “Words do not teach” and I’ve heard other similar phrases. It is like getting caught in a web of books. Reading, studying, and listening to continue to improve whatever we are focused on improving without taking any action. Reading without applying what is being read does not work. Knowledge without action does not work. It is through experience, trial and error, and repeatedly shifting when something isn’t working (which is what practicing is) that we will learn. It is like reading a book with exercises and not doing the exercises or like being in a class, workshop or lecture without participating. It is through choosing to be present, putting ourselves on the line, doing something we’ve not done before, trying something that is uncomfortable and stretches our current mindset that creates an environment where growth can happen.

Take the time, know why you’ve chosen to be a project manager, know what is important to you, get in touch with your reasons that you’ve picked this particular career. It may be the best gift you can give yourself to lighten your step and make the journey enjoyable. It takes time, energy and commitment to become good at something. Let yourself know your reasons so you can make the commitment, create consistency, embrace compassion, generate clarity, and grow your competence. It will give you insights into how you spend your time and what you want to contribute to your own growth. As I’ve been told, do the work, without doing the work, nothing will change.

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Finding your Why for Project Management

This week, we continue to explore practicing from the perspective of what motivates us to practice. We will do this by digging for and identifying the root cause of everything that we choose to practice in our lives. Last week, I suggested writing down all the reasons why you chose (and choose every day) to be a project manager, to practice project management. This week, I’d like you to spend some time with that list and dig into each a bit more. A method which has been supportive to me is similar to the 5 why’s used in Six Sigma, Kaizen and other methodologies to improve processes. Here is, in essence, how it works.

I’d just been let go from a job, I was devastated but also I was filled with fear of what was going to happen if I didn’t find another job. The question that came next surprised me, “Okay, what would happen if you didn’t find a job”. My answer was, I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills. Another question came, “And then what would happen”. My response, I’d have to get rid of x, y and z. Another question. “And if you still didn’t find a job?”. These questions or similar ones came until I had lost all my possessions, sold them and was living somewhere, like a friends, my sisters and at the time, my moms. In other words, we followed the “what would happen next” until I’d lost everything and had gotten to the root of my fear and realized, I’d be okay.

Finding the root of the reasons for you choosing to be a project manager may be supportive, powerful, and insightful if you use a similar method. Pick a reason from your list and ask the next logical question (such as why is that important to you or what would that accomplish for you or what do you mean by that) and if you cannot think of one, call, text, or write your friends, colleagues, coaches or mentors for support in getting to the root cause of your reasons. Getting to the root will allow you to get clear on what is important to you and discovering what is most important may provide insight into your practice.

What I’ve discovered about my reasons, my why’s around almost everything I’m choosing or not choosing to do, is that they all rise up in support of an overall vision for my life. Whether in the area of career, money, family and friends, love life, fun, or personal care which includes mind, body and spirit, every one of the reasons I spend time and energy on any of those areas is in support of my overall vision for the life I’m choosing to live. So as you begin to find the root of the reason for your why around project management, you may discover the root of many of the things you choose to do with your life. My choices are rooted in a vision that is kindness to all, creating a space of inclusion and acceptance for what each of us brings to this world and being of service to the greater good of this world. My vision is rooted in the sacredness of all of life. I know, pretty wu wu or out there or whatever you choose to call it. You may also wonder how project management fits into that realm. We get to explore further how each of the areas of our life, supports the other areas and builds into a rich and robust mosaic which includes being a project manager.

Here is a real-life example for those of you who are still curious about the possibilities, one of the myriad of reasons I can write down is that I am practicing project management today is for the money. When I dig into that reason and ask why that is important over and over, I land on the fact that it affords many of the other things in my life, such as generosity to others, care and comfort to the animals in my home, the house I live in, the yard I’ve cultivated, the family I’ve raised and the self-care I am able to provide myself. At the core, project management allows me the opportunity to create a space of inclusion, acceptance, and appreciation for those that I work with and the projects I work with are to provide healthcare for those who would otherwise not be covered. What I’m doing in project management aligns to my vision for my life which motivates me to practice being the best project manager possible.

You may wonder, are there other careers that would fulfill the vision for my life? Of course there are. There are always other possibilities. The follow-on question is, what else could I be doing that would allow me to fulfill my vision and bring joy to my heart? That would be the purpose behind this blog. Sharing what I’ve learned through my experiences in the world of project management, emotional intelligence and leadership as it relates to and elevates the practice of project management fulfills my desire to give back in a way that being a project manager doesn’t allow. Teaching, mentoring, and coaching are all practices that elevate my project management practice and are what is fueling this blog. More to come next week.

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