To Become Your Best Self, Study Your Successes
Nearly fifteen years ago, in 2005, we published a Harvard Business Review article with our colleagues which introduced a new approach to personal and professional development: the idea that receiving affirmation is a powerful way for us to grow, particularly when it comes in the form of stories describing moments when we are at our best. In this article we introduced the Reflected Best Self Exercise (RBSE), a tool based on our academic research which is now used by thousands of people globally in corporate trainings, team building, executive leadership programs, and in graduate and undergraduate courses in a variety of disciplines.
Research stemming from this work shows that people benefit significantly from positive feedback about their strengths and contributions. It fosters healthy emotions, builds personal agency and resourcefulness, and helps to strengthen the quality of our relationships with colleagues, friends and family members. Sharing information about our reflected best selves with new colleagues as a part of onboarding processes also increases job satisfaction and reduces employee turnover.
Going through the full Reflected Best Self Exercise itself provides concentrated, if infrequent, dose of positive feedback. But there are organic ways that you can learn about and activate your best self at work every day as well. We’ve seen this more continual approach help people find new opportunities to develop parts of themselves that get lost in the daily demands of work, notice new ways of crafting their jobs, or take new steps towards longed-for callings. This article highlights five practices for noticing and capitalizing on everyday opportunities for development based on your best self.
Notice Positive Feedback
Most people are well-attuned to critical feedback; it is jarring, threatening, and emotional, and as a result, quite memorable. In contrast, it is often easy to let positive reflections on our actions subtly slip us by. Lingering in the glow of praise can also feel uncomfortably immodest. It therefore takes practice to savor moments of positivity and to hold them in your memory.
To capture these moments, create a space (digital or physical) where you save any positive feedback that you receive. This could include thank-you notes, comments written in your formal evaluations, or references to your work in email threads. And don’t limit this collection to your professional life: feedback about your personal life can be equally powerful.
When you get mixed feedback, tease apart the positive and negative aspects. Doing so will create mental space for you to focus exclusively on the positive feedback for a concentrated period of time and to use it to build an understanding of what you should keep doing. For example, professors who receive course evaluations from hundreds of students could form a peer- coaching partnership with a trusted colleague. You would each be responsible for pulling out the positive comments from your respective course evaluations and placing them into your Kudos file.
Once you have a stash of positive feedback, set a time in your calendar to review and revisit it regularly, giving yourself the opportunity to look at it with fresh eyes. Ask yourself: What patterns or themes can I identify? What opportunities can I find to express more of my best self? What more can I learn about these strengths, and who might provide that perspective? While some people may prefer to do this on their own, it’s also great to partner with a trusted friend or coach. For example, the professors in the story above could make twice-yearly early dates with a trusted colleague to share positive feedback stories and help each other interpret them and think creatively about how to incorporate what they learn into their courses.
Ask Questions
Don’t just accept positive feedback; inquire into it so that you can better understand exactly how you made an impact. The key is doing this in a way that doesn’t seem egotistical, allowing others to see that you are not only receptive to but grateful for their feedback.
For example, follow up on praise. We often brush off compliments, because we aren’t comfortable receiving them. But they are actually an opportunity for learning—though only if they are specific and storied. Try to unpack generic labels and vague comments; seek to understand what worked well for you and for others in specific situations. Say: “Thank you for noticing X; your feedback made my day! Could you tell me what about my actions seemed to have a specific impact on you? I am trying to figure out what my strengths are so I can continue to make a positive impact at work.”
During formal performance evaluations, ask for one detailed example of the strengths your manager identified. Ask too if there are any other opportunities they know of where those strengths could be used. For example, after getting feedback that “team meetings seem to go better when you are there,” one professional we know asked her boss if there were other meetings where her calm presence and facilitation skills could be used to improve group conversations. Her boss realized that she could be useful at an upcoming customer forum, and a new outlet to display her strengths was born.
Research shows that managers avoid giving specific, actionable praise, so it may be up to you to make the first move in asking about the things that are going well in your job, and then probing deeply enough to get a concrete answer. For example, in a one-on-one meeting with your manager, say: “I am trying to learn more about how I contribute at work, so that I can continue to build upon and leverage these contributions. As my manager, you are likely to have the best perspective on when, where and how I make a difference in this organization. Could you give me a specific example of a time when you think I was at my best and added value to your team?”
Consider setting up a meeting with a mentor or coach to discuss only your strengths and how you can develop and leverage them for greater impact. Set up a separate discussion to talk about your developmental opportunities in your areas of weakness. Because bad feedback has a stronger hold over us than good, it is nearly impossible for you to focus on both strengths and weaknesses in the same meeting. If you provide feedback to others, consider using this practice to help your employees grow and thrive.
Study Your Successes
Conduct after-action reviews of your own work to set benchmarks and identify best practices for future work. Use the example of sports teams: review the “tape” to identify what went well, and to develop future “plays” based on what you find.
If you receive positive feedback in person, take some time after leaving that interaction to write reflectively about the experience, creating a short narrative about what you did and the impact it had. Journaling is a powerful practice, and can help you see ways in which you can bring out your best self. For example, an intellectual property director we know took up journaling to try to boost his personal and professional development. Reflecting on his entries allowed him to notice that he was best able to manage his demanding clients when he had an informal dinner with them the night before where he often got some hints about the client’s interests and concerns. This client preview boosted his confidence and put him at ease and allowed him to be fully present in the more formal meetings. Once he understood this, he began holding these informal dinners more regularly—allowing his best self to come forward more consistently. This resulted in stronger relationships with clients, and ultimately a promotion.
Also take time to reflect on your strengths more generally. For example, how can your strengths complement your weaknesses? And consider the shadow side of your strengths: how can your weaknesses overpower or lead you to misapply your strengths, and how can you avoid this occurrence?
Once you make a practice of analyzing your best self by noticing positive feedback, asking questions, and studying your successes, you will develop a more holistic and cohesive understanding of the contents of your best self and the contextual factors that allow you to bring this best self into your work. The next steps help prepare you to bring this best self to life in two ways: practicing and paying it forward.
Practice Enacting Your Best Self
In particularly toxic environments, it can be hard to get any affirmation at all. Finding ways to enact your best self in these contexts can be personally empowering, especially during low points in your workweek, work year, or career. Here are some options:
Bring aspects of your best self from another domain into the workplace. Find some outlet or channel where you receive affirmation for your valued contributions. This may require you to think more broadly about your best self, going beyond the walls of your immediate work environment, and then bring what you have learned from being a valued contributor elsewhere back into your work. For example, if you are part of a religious community, alumni club, or community organization, or an organizer of neighborhood potlucks, mine these different roles for positive feedback about your strengths and contributions and import them into your work role. For example, if your family describes you as a joyful tinkerer, fixer of all broken tools and technology, consider how you might bring that to work. One of our clients received best- self feedback about organizing several large-scale events that brought different members of the community together; this helped her to see how she might use this same approach to bring together her professional stakeholders in leading a major internal change initiative.
Create space in your job for your best self to show up. If you can, craft your job so that at least one aspect of your role brings out your best self. If your job is truly difficult, find even a narrow set of tasks in which you can draw on your best self to offset the less gratifying aspects while you consider the long-term viability of your tenure. We often feel most valuable at work when we can see the impact we have on others. Therefore, finding roles and outlets that allow you to give to others at work or in your professional community is likely to be an important way to create space for your best self to show up.
When you receive negative feedback, try considering it alongside of the positive feedback stories you have in your file. Reminding yourself of how you create value will reduce your defensiveness and provide you with the self- confidence and agency you need to carefully consider opportunities to use that negative feedback for growth. Identify the aspects of your best self that will help you rise to the challenge of incorporating the wisdom within negative feedback, and discern how to progress without losing your sense of self.
Pay It Forward
The best way to remember to focus on your best self is to intentionally share rich feedback with others about theirs. This practice can invoke a norm of reciprocity, whereby this form of feedback exchange becomes customary. At the close of a project, for example, share an observation of how each member of your team made a really meaningful contribution to the team. Closing festivities are a natural place to share best-self feedback, but you can also share your thoughts through written emails or letters, or one-on-one, if your time and schedule allow.
Dale Carnegie and John Maxwell likened the process of developing people to mining for gold: you must move tons of dirt in the process, but you go in looking for the gold, not the dirt. Similarly, people who recognize and affirm others’ contributions can bring out the best in themselves and others more consistently. Remember, becoming your best self and bringing out the best in others is a life-long journey. With courage, curiosity and commitment, you can use best-self development to positively transform yourself, your relationships, and your organizations.
Laura Morgan Roberts is a professor of management at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and the co-founder of RPAQ Solutions, Inc., a leadership research and consulting firm.
Emily Heaphy is an Assistant Professor of Management at the Isenberg School of Management at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Brianna Barker Caza is the Richard Morantz & Sheree Walder Morantz Associate Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business.
为成就最好的自己，请研究自己的成功。
译者：mgc111
大约15年前，也就是2005年，我们和同事一起发表了一篇《哈佛商业评论》的文章，文章介绍了一种个人和职业发展的新方法: 获得肯定可以有力促进我们成长，特别是用故事来描述我们的巅峰时刻这种方式。 在这篇文章中，我们介绍了映射最佳自我练习法(RBSE) ，一种基于我们学术研究的工具，现在被全球成千上万的人用于公司培训，团队建设，行政领导力计划，以及研究生和本科生各个学科的课程。
这项研究的结果表明，人从对自身优势和贡献的正面反馈中获益匪浅。 它能培养健康情绪，激发主观能动性和个人应变能力，并能帮我们加强及改善与同事、朋友和家庭成员的关系。 作为入职过程的一部分，与新同事分享最好的自我也可以提高工作满意度，减少员工离职率。
进行完整的映射最佳自我练习本身也可以提供少量专注的正面反馈。但也有一些有机的方法可以让你每天在工作中了解并激活最好的自己。 我们已经看到这种更为持续的方法帮助人们找到新的机会来开发在日常工作需求中逐渐迷失的部分自我，留意新的工作方式，或者朝着渴望已久的职业迈出新一步。 本文重点介绍了五种实践方式，它们可以帮助你察觉最佳自我并利用日常机会开发最佳自我。
注意正面的反馈
大多数人都能很好地理解批评性的反馈; 它很刺耳、具有威胁性，情绪化，正因如此，非常令人难忘。 相比之下，我们很容易让正面的反馈悄悄溜走。 在赞美的光辉里徘徊也会让人感到不自在的不谦虚。 因此，享受积极的时刻并把它们刻在记忆中是需要练习的。
为了捕捉这些瞬间，你需要创造一个空间(数字的或物理的) 用以保存收到的所有积极反馈。 包括那些感谢信，正式评估里的评语，或有关工作的邮件。 不要把这些收藏局限于你的工作领域: 关于个人生活的反馈同样有力。
当你得到的反馈混杂在一起，梳理出积极和消极的方面。 这样做可以为你创造精神空间让你在一段时间内专注于积极的反馈，并用它来理解你应该坚持做什么。 例如，接受数百名学生课程评估的教授们可以与信任的同事进行合作训练。 每个人都有责任从相应的课程评估中找出积极的评价，并把它们放到各自的荣誉档案中。
一旦你得到了积极的反馈，在你的日历上设定一个时间来回顾并定期重访，给自己一个用全新的眼光来看待它的机会。 试问自己: 我能识别什么样的模式或主题？ 我能找到什么样的机会来表达我最好的自我？ 关于这些优势，我还能学到什么? 谁可能提供这种观点？ 虽然有些人可能更喜欢自己做这件事，但是和一个值得信赖的朋友或教练合作也是很好的。 例如，上述事例中的教授可以每年两次提前与一个值得信赖的同事相约，分享积极的反馈故事，帮助彼此理解这些故事，并创造性地思考如何将他们学到的东西融入课程。
问问题
不要只是接受积极的反馈，要深入了解它，这样你才能更好地理解如何对你产生影响的。 关键是要以一种不那么自我的方式去做，让别人看到你不仅接受他们的反馈，而且对他们的反馈心存感激。
例如，对他人的赞美深入了解。 我们经常拒绝赞美，因为赞美让我们感觉不适。 但是，它实际上是一个学习的机会ーー尽管只有当它很具体且有事例时。 试着抛开通用的标签和模糊的评论; 试着去理解在特定情况下什么对你或他人都有效。 说:"谢谢你注意到 x，你的反馈让我今天很开心!"！ 你能告诉我我的行为对你有什么特别的影响吗？ 我正在努力找出自己的优势所在，以便继续在工作中产生积极影响。"
在正式的绩效评估中，要求你的经理举出一个详细的例子，说明他发觉到的你的优点。 问问他们是否还有其他机会可以利用这些优势。 例如，在得到"当你在那里时，团队会议似乎会进行得更好"的反馈后，我们认识的一位专业人士问她的老板，是否还有其他会议可以利用她的冷静表现和促进技能来改善团队对话。 她的老板意识到她可以在即将到来的客户论坛上发挥作用，于是一个展示她优点的新渠道诞生了。
研究表明，管理者会避免给出具体的、可以有所行动的表扬，所以你可能需要主动询问工作中进展顺利的事情，然后进行足够深入的探索以得到一个具体的答案。 例如，在与你的经理一对一的会谈中，你可以说:"我正在努力学习更多关于我如何在工作中做出贡献的知识，这样我就可以继续利用这些贡献。 作为我的经理，你可能对我在什么时候、在什么地方以及如何在这个组织中发挥作用有着最好的看法。 你能给我举一个具体的例子，说明你认为我处于最佳状态并为团队增添价值时刻吗?"
考虑与导师或教练开个会，只讨论你的长处，以及如何发展和利用它们来获得更大的影响力。 再单独另立讨论，谈论你在弱点领域的发展机会。 因为糟糕的反馈比好的反馈对我们的影响更大，所以你几乎不可能在同一次会议上同时关注优点和缺点。 如果你给别人提供反馈，可以考虑使用这种方法来帮助你的员工成长和发展。
研究你的成功
对自己的工作进行事后评估，以设定基准来辨别将来工作中的最佳表现。 以运动队为例: 回看“视频”来确定在什么地方做的好，并根据你所发现的制定未来的“打法”。
如果你本人收到了积极的反馈，那么在离开互动之后花一些时间来反思这次经历，对于你做了什么以及它带来的影响的进行简短叙述。 写日记是一个很有效的方法，可以帮助你找到最好的自己。 例如，我们认识的一位知识产权总监用写日志的方法试图促进自己的个人和职业发展。 回顾自己的经历，让他意识到，他能最好的应对要求苛刻的客户，得益于在提前与客户共进非正式晚餐时，能得到有关客户的兴趣和顾虑的信息。 对客户的预习提高了他的信心，让他更放松且在更正式的会议上掌控全局。 一旦他明白了这一点，他就更常举办这些非正式晚宴ーー让最好的自己更坚定地站出来。 与客户建立更紧密的关系，并最终得到了提升。
还要花时间更广泛地反思自己的优势。 例如，你的优点如何弥补你的缺点？ 考虑一下你优势的阴暗面: 你的弱点如何压倒或者导致你错误地运用你的优势，你怎样才能避免这种情况的发生？
一旦你通过观察积极的反馈-提出问题-研究你的成功来练习分析你最好的一面，你就会对最佳自我的内容和背景因素有一个更全面和深入的理解，这些因素使你能够把最好的自我融入到你的工作中。 接下来的步骤可以帮助你通过两种方式来把最好的自己带到生活中: 练习和付出。
实践展现最好的自己
在特别恶劣的环境中，很难得到任何肯定。 在这些情况下，实现最佳自我可以通过增强个人能力的方式，尤其是在你工作周、工作年或职业生涯的低谷时期。 以下是一些选择:
把你最好的自我从另一个领域带到工作场所。 找到一些出口或渠道，让你的宝贵贡献得到肯定。 这可能需要你更广泛地思考最好的自己，突破你现有工作环境的限制，然后把你在别的地方作为有价值的贡献者所学到的东西带回到你的工作中。 例如，如果你是宗教团体，校友俱乐部，或者社区组织的一员，又或是邻里聚餐的组织者，挖掘这些不同的角色来获得关于你的优势和贡献的积极反馈，并将它们引入到你的工作角色中。 例如，如果你的家人把你描述成一个快乐的修理匠，能修复所有破损工具和科技产品，那么考虑一下你如何能把它带到工作中。 我们的一个客户收到了关于组织几个大型活动的最佳自我反馈，这些活动将社区的不同成员聚集在一起; 这帮她明白如何能用同样的方法将她的专业利益相关者聚集在一起，主导一次重大的内部变革。
在你的工作中为最好的自己留出空间。 如果可以的话，精心经营工作，至少让你角色中的一个方面展现出你最好的自我。 如果你的工作真的很困难，那就找一个小范围的任务，在这些任务中，你可以利用自己最好的一面来抵消那些不那么令人满意的方面，同时考虑你任期的长期可行性。 当我们能看到自己对他人的影响时，我们通常会觉得在工作中最有价值。 因此，找到一个角色和出口，让你在工作中或在你的专业领域中给予他人，可能是一个重要的方式来创造空间，让你最好的自己显示出来。
当你收到负面反馈时，试着把它和你文件中的正面反馈故事放在一起考虑。 刻意提醒自己如何创造价值将减少你的防御性，并为你提供自信和动力，你需要仔细考虑利用这些负面反馈获得成长机会。 明确你最好的自我的哪些方面可以帮助你迎接挑战，将智慧融入到消极的反馈中，并洞悉如何在不丧失自我意识的情况下取得进步。
把爱传出去
记住专注于最好的自己的最佳方法就是有意识地与他人分享关于他们的大量反馈。 这种做法可以激发互惠互利原则，使这种形式的反馈交流成为习惯。 例如，在一个项目结束时，分享一下你的团队中的每个成员是如何对团队做出真正有意义的贡献的。 庆功活动是分享最佳自我反馈的自然场所，但你也可以通过书面邮件或信件分享你的想法，或者一对一地分享，如果你的时间和日程允许的话。
戴尔 · *耐基卡**和约翰 · 麦克斯韦把开发人们自身的过程比作开采黄金: 你必须在过程中移动成吨的泥土，但你是为了寻找黄金，而不是泥土。 同样地，认可和肯定他人贡献的人能够更持续地发挥自己和他人最好的一面。 记住，成为最好的自己，发掘他人最好的一面，是一生的旅程。 有了勇气、好奇心和承诺，你可以利用最好的自我发展来积极地改变你自己、你的人际关系和你的组织。
Laura Morgan Roberts 是乔治城大学麦克唐纳商学院的管理学教授，也是领导力研究和咨询公司 RPAQ Solutions 的联合创始人。
是马萨诸塞州立大学艾莫斯特分校 Isenberg 管理学院的管理学助理教授。
曼尼托巴大学商业伦理学副教授 Richard Morantz 和 Sheree Walder Morantz。