Circa 1996, I was appointed as the first HR Director at a multinational subsidiary in India, when it set up its shop in Bangalore. It soon grew to become a company with 1,500 top-notch engineers, building embedded software for its parent company that had a presence in virtually every product made in the medical, consumer electronics, industrial electronics and semi-conductors domain.
We had an expat CEO, an Indian who did his higher studies in Netherlands, and joined this great company right after his studies at the headquarters. He picked a leadership team that brought complementary strengths to work and avoided looking for clones. His energy and enthusiasm were very contagious. The five years he spent at the helm of affairs was the proverbial golden period for the company.
It set audacious goals and achieved them.
A year rolled by and the annual appraisal feedback session was round the corner. He was extremely good at doing the review sessions with style, sophistication and Socratic-depth. You earned an executive MBA every time he reviewed your performance.
Question hour
But, this story is not so much about the appraisal or organisation building he did. It is about how he chose to improve himself. After the review discussions were over and the documentation completed, he would ask you to stay back for 15 minutes more. And he would start his pitch somewhat like this: “Look, we discussed a lot about your performance and improvement; now is the time for my improvement and I need your time and inputs. Then, he will throw the following two questions and ask for honest inputs:
>> Tell me three things I do well that greatly facilitate your performance?
>> Tell me three things I do now that I must stop or change to facilitate your performance?
Now, it is relatively easy to respond to the first question. Most of us are comfortable sharing our inputs on the first one. However, as we can all imagine, the second one is difficult. You do not know how your boss would take your feedback on the second question and you would have serious concerns on how the feedback would be used – for his improvement or used against you!
When I first experienced this, I went through similar feelings – to say or not to say. Sensing my hesitation, he said, “ You think through this tonight and I will see you tomorrow morning and take your inputs.”
He, perhaps, went off to bed and had a good sleep, but as you can well imagine, I did not. I did some reflecting and came out courageously with what I thought were possible improvement areas, for my boss!
Next morning, at sharp 9.30 am, he came into my cabin asking for my inputs on the second question. And as I was prepared, both with suggestions and consequences, I paraded my points of view. He listened intently and even took notes, thanked me profusely and left my cabin for his office.
Improving oneself is key
The next 3 to 6 months, I experienced something wonderful. He really worked on the inputs I gave and demonstrated change. And as HR head, I knew that my CEO did this with all those who directly reported to, not just with me. This is at a time, when our company did not have a formal 360-degree feedback loop or system. He designed his own simple approach to improving himself. And in the process, he demonstrated that no matter how big our titles are, we all can improve.
For many of his direct reports, like me, it was both educative and illustrative. Since then, asking these two questions became my approach to self-improvement.
More often than not, people we work with experience us differently than we think we are. Asking these simple questions, thanking them for sincere and helpful feedback and most importantly working on them to enable our team’s performance is very powerful. There cannot perhaps be a simpler approach to getting better and smarter.
To read more from the From the Coach section, click here .