Self Reflection - Day 16
In 2016 I was the manager of a CrossFit gym and a little in over my head, which I didn’t think was true at the time. Looking back at the age of 25 I feel like I could have been more prepared to manage people and help run an organization. That being said one of my responsibilities was to give quarterly evaluations of the coaching staff. This was meant to be a less formal review to keep the staff running as a well oiled machine by making any adjustments more frequently than once a year. And one of the tools I found invaluable was starting these 1-on-1 meetings with a “self-evaluation” conducted by the coach.
I’ve learned a lot 6 years later in regards to giving feedback and criticism in a way that is both beneficial and so that the recipient is receptive. The self evaluation is extremely valuable because more often than not the person going through the eval would call out there shortcomings before I even had to. It made the following conversations easier because they were pointing out there own weaknesses rather than feeling attacked by me.
Additionally this created much more buy-in on making positive changes and improving for the next quarter. It was such a powerful tool and took a lot of stress out of my job. I was thinking about this today and realized how rarely I do self-evaluations on myself. And that’s a problem.
I noticed this recently because there was a group of friends behaving in a way I didn’t like. I was running the story through my head and was frustrated because I would never act that way, and would be more considerate of other people’s feelings. As I was breaking down this experience in my head I stopped and thought: are they the problem or am I?
And the answer could even be that we are both the problem. However by taking this simple steps and considering my role in this situation has been a game changer. Even when people wrong us or treat us in ways we don’t like, it often had to do with our shadow side. Deep down there is a piece of that behavior that we exhibit in ourselves. And for me I came to the conclusion that yes thing could have been handled better by my friends; also it really wasn’t that big of a deal and I shouldn’t react so emotionally. Different strokes for different folks.
The biggest lesson of all was utilizing this same self evaluation I gave to my coaches on myself. I’ve started implementing it on a regular basis to ask myself two things:
What am I doing well?
What could I be doing better?
This allows me to take more ownership of my life and show up as a better version of myself. It’s simple, but I promise you it’s not easy. Facing yourself in the mirror can be tough, but it will change you in the best kind of way.
