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Kamis, 27 Januari 2011

How Does That Work?

I am not a math major, but how does that work exactly? In my0 years in management that wasn't my experience. While I would have loved to work in companies bulging only with top performers, that scenario was not reality. What I found in lieu was the proverbial normal bell curve distribution. Most of us fall in the midst of that curve as "average" performers; a little percentage falls above and a little percentage below.

How would you reply to this query: "Are you of the top 10% of performers in your company?" This query posed in a Business Week survey found that overall 90% of surveyed executives, middle managers, and employees from both huge and little companies thought they were, indeed, in the top 10% of performers.

Why are they so inaccurate when assessing our own work performance? Professor Mark R. Leary calls it the "better than average" effect, noting in his book, The Curse of the Self, that most of us have a higher than average perception of ourselves, often blinding us to our shortcomings.

I doubt researchers would get the same results of skewed thinking if the questions had been about performance outside the workplace. What if you'd been asked: Are you in the top 10% of golfers or basketball players or meal preparers in your community? Or in the top 10% of individuals who are healthy or fit, or financially secure, or involved in great relationships? Where would you place yourself then?

When performance coaching, developmental suggestions, or well-intentioned critique falls on defensive ears, it is hard to recognize opportunities that generate personal growth and development. When they already "know" we are "great" it is much simpler to fault our teachers, parents, or bosses for our lack of success or disappointing pay raises than to look in the mirror. And when they compose and think our own positive internal press-releases, they can hijack our progress by stagnating our skills.

This tendency to judge ourselves better than they are might appear the ideal prescription to the adage of believing yourself to success or thinking yourself rich. But it is not. Believing you are better than you are is self-deception, not self-confidence. Believing you are a top performer when you are not may even delay your ability to become.

You see, individuals who are winning at working know not only what they are nice at and what they are not so nice at, but also what is simple for them to do and what is hard. They know what tasks or challenges are intriguing, fun, or fascinating to them and which of them they find uninteresting, tedious or cumbersome.

But individuals who are winning at working know a performance secret. They understand that correct self-knowledge is essential for "real" top performance.

For individuals who are winning at working, self-knowledge lets them hone their strengths and discover their unique talents, abilities, and personal success keys. Self-knowledge helps them surround themselves with individuals who excel in the areas they don't. And self-knowledge lets them become the "real" top performers in their workplaces and keeps them winning at working.

Need to be winning at working? Start with self-knowledge.

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