Are You Bringing Your Best Self To Work?

QUESTION 1: Do I have control over my Inner World (or am I at its mercy)? The best thinkers, learners, collaborators, and listeners have learned how to manage their ego, mind, body, and emotions. If this describes you, you have a Quiet Ego and are open-minded and good at “not knowing.” You don’t reflexively defend, deny, or deflect when someone challenges you. You are willing to change your position when you get better evidence. When talking to others, you have a Quiet Mind and are fully present and focused totally on listening and understanding.

Red Flags: A person who can’t “manage self” must always be right. Others may describe you as defensive, arrogant, judgmental, or super-opinionated. You may interrupt or multi-task while listening to others…or behave in disrespectful ways…or be unable to control your emotions.

QUESTION 2: Do I have an “Otherness” focus (or am I all about me)? These days, success is highly dependent upon your ability to build caring, trusting relationships that enable the highest levels of thinking and learning for everyone. Otherness is a mindset—a belief that you need the help of others to see what you don’t see because of the human tendency to seek confirmation of what you believe. It’s also a behavior—behaving in ways that show you to respect the human dignity of others. In the Digital Age, a competitive, survival-of-the-fittest mindset will be the quickest pathway to failure.

Red Flags: You rarely ask for help. You believe you are better than most people. You view each conversation as a win-lose, zero-sum game. You won’t prevent someone from doing something wrong because you want them to fail. You may be viewed as a know-it-all or a braggart.

QUESTION 3: Do I lift up the energy of others or toss a wet blanket over them? Positive emotions enable better learning; better decision-making; and more willingness to explore, create, and innovate. They liberate people to be fully engaged without the limitations of worries, insecurities, and fears. This opens the door to high-quality conversations, team flow, and “wow” results. When you bring positive emotions to the conversation, you slow down to be fully in the moment. You express positivity by smiling, by your tone and the words you choose, and by your calmness. You behave in respectful ways to others even if you disagree with what is being said.

Red Flags: You are rude and ungrateful. You use body language that says, I am not really listening to you or I am dominant. You put others down. You are closed-minded or not engaged. You are constantly interrupting, raising your voice, or getting ready to attack verbally.

QUESTION 4: Do I enable collaboration (or intimidate and dominate)? This begins with leaders setting an example. You know how to set up meetings so people feel “safe” to join in. You create an environment in which people care about each other and trust that no one will do them harm. During meetings, your people are fully present, attentive, and connected to each other. Everyone gets to speak. People challenge the status quo and seek the best possible idea, regardless of the status or position of who suggested it. (It’s a collaboration, not a competition!)

Red Flags: You dominate and aggressively push your views. Meetings are not genuine open discussions—the answer is predetermined, and your real goal is consent and compliance. Some of your people don’t speak up at all. Too often, your critiques get personal.

QUESTION 5: Do I practice reflective listening, or do I steamroll over the other person? If you’re a good reflective listener, you allow others to talk. You reframe what you think the other person is saying, to make sure you understand. You ask clarifying questions before telling, advocating, or disagreeing. When you do disagree, you critique the idea, not the person.

Red Flags: You don’t make eye contact. You interrupt and multi-task. You are a great “teller,” not a great listener. Your ego is wrapped up in proving you are the smartest person in the room.

QUESTION 6: Do I have the courage to try…or am I a play-it-safer? In the Digital Age, everyone will have to excel at going into the unknown and figuring things out. When you have courage, you are willing to experiment, even though you know you might fail. You also understand that most learning comes from having conversations with people who have different views from you. You don’t mind having respectful difficult conversations. You volunteer for new projects, openly share your views, and ask for lots of feedback.

Red Flags: You are unwilling to take risks. You appear guarded and closed-lipped. Because you fear making mistakes or looking bad, you rarely step out of your comfort zone.

QUESTION 7: Do I make decisions based on EVIDENCE or EGO? You are not married to your ideas. You are open-minded. You never assume. You are always seeking data, even if it will disconfirm your theory or even force a return to the drawing board. You seem to get the statement “I am not my ideas” on a deep level.

Red Flags: You defend your ideas even when there’s no data to support them. You rarely ask for the input of others (and if it’s given, you don’t listen to it). You are invested in being “right.”

If you didn’t like your answers, don’t fret: Becoming your best self is a never-ending journey. There are many things you can do to accelerate your growth, from meditating to practicing gratitude to setting daily intentions.

The good news is that you can always change your behaviors when they are not serving you or your organization. It takes a lot of intentional work. But as is always true, the first step is admitting you have a problem—and the second is realizing the upside of changing outweighs the downside of not changing.

Author Bio

Edward D. Hess is professor of business administration, Batten Fellow, and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the Darden School of Business and the author of Hyper-Learning: How to Adapt to the Speed of Change. Professor Hess spent 20 years in the business world as a senior executive and has spent the last 18 years in academia. He is the author of 13 books, over 140 articles, and 60 Darden case studies. His recent books and research have focused on Human Excellence in the Digital Age: A New Way of Being; A New Way of Working; Humanizing the Workplace; and Hyper-Learning.  Visit https://www.edhess.org/  Connect Edward D. Hess Follow @HessEdward