We have learned in past lectures that it is important to reflect on action and inaction in order to continue to develop your career. So it's specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals. SMART goals. [COUGH] Excuse me, I have a little cold. And it's really easy to fall behind, to forget to, for example, refresh a digital artifact to reflect current accomplishments. Sometimes though, you'll find yourself in moments of transition, where your career takes a turn, either expected or not. Could be due to job loss, maybe changes in your work environment. Geographic changes necessitate sort of move. Or it might be just a desire to shift career path to better suit interests and your aptitude. So reflecting on where you've been, where you are, and where you wish to go, can really help smooth some of these transitions and keep you moving towards both short and long-term goals. As we learned in course three, Donald Trump's work encourages you to reflect both on action and inaction, and in terms of your career development Wall Street Journal blog encourages all of us to ask questions that help frame how to get at these goals. And you should probably endeavour to create time to ask these questions when you're not in moments of transition. We know change often brings an urgency that sometimes isn't really conducive to the deeper kinds of reflection about which we're sort of speaking today. So here's some examples of questions you could ask yourself. What are your personal values? How do you prioritize those values? What environment or culture do you enjoy working in? And what's your desired lifestyle balance? If you remember, these questions echo some of our lessons in course one when we discussed how personal values often drive career choices. These questions get at some of that. We've also discussed self-assessment and how to find tools to help you self assess. But we emphasized that self-assessment is often a little inaccurate. Perspective employees often overestimate their knowledge, skills and abilities and alignment with a particular position or industry. So a crucial piece of the puzzle is actually peer assessment, and both self assessment and peer assessment, bring a more complete picture of you, your skills, attributes, competencies, abilities, and perhaps most importantly, those areas for improvement. So the first part of the equation is how to give good feedback to your peers, subordinates and supervisors. We talked about the 360 review. So to review a bit, remember that feedback should be constructive. Maybe we've all been on the receiving end of feedback that is either harshly delivered or just doesn't seem to have good content or be constructively framed. So we don't actually learn anything about ourselves, from the feedback. We want to avoid that, and instead work to give feedback that is direct. So instead of telling a colleague, for example, that she's not a good communicator, say that delays in replying to email can hold up workflow. She also express concern that communicate has sense of importance. So for example, I've noticed that you arrived to meetings late, you often arrived to meetings late. I'm concerned that this will negatively influence your supervisor's review, you share a supervisor. Our supervisor's review. So you're not just criticizing someone. You're putting a little bit of context around it. You can also express appreciation. And add some strengths in right. These things are constructive criticism, shifts strengths and gaps for improvement. For example, I appreciate that you're always the first to volunteer to work on a new project. It underscores a colleague's sense of initiative or a sense of being entrepreneurial in your organization. And remember, too, make sure it isn't personal. Address the issue not the person. So don't say, for example, that a colleague is mean. But rather suggest that maybe adopting a more neutral or professional tone could be beneficial to their career. So your feedback should be caring, clear, and focused on improvement. And all the previous suggestions are, in fact, caring, clear and focused on improvement. Keep that in mind as you give feedback to your colleagues. So how can you ensure that you receive feedback in the most effective or efficient way? So if you're a supervisor, for example, you might set up an anonymous online survey or questionnaire, or a questionnaire of sorts. And if you're being supervised, you might ask your manager or supervisor to introduce this practice or a similar practice if in fact it's not built in to your organizational culture. And you can also ask for feedback on your own, sort of independent of formal surveys, or annual reviews, or any performance planning you might do. For example, prior to or right after a large project is completed. That might be a good time to ask for feedback. And notice how specific that feedback is. Here are five questions that you can actually ask a supervisor or a manager to get maybe what you need to better develop your career and so forth. For example, what specifically can I do to better support our team's mission? If your boss were to give me piece of advice, what would that be? So what something specific that I could do? Who should I be working with more closely? Your supervisor might have a sense of some projects that you could jump in on about what you might not be aware, and which parts of my style concern you the most? Lastly, specifically what do I need to do to work on to be ready for and then insert the job or assignment you're most interested in here. So for example, there's a big project coming up, what do I need to do to be ready for that big project? And then, once you have assessments from colleagues and others in your working environment, look for patterns, see if these comments are sort of those one-off comments, or are they repeated over and over again in different ways? And then, from there, can you make some generalizations about your behavior or about how others perceive you? For example, if you receive feedback that you're constantly late for meetings, guilty. Is this pattern repeated in other aspects of your work behaviors? Do you not, for example, maybe answer emails in a timely fashion? Have you ever missed a deadline at work? If you're on a team-based project, are you consistently the last person to contribute? So what does that say about how you prioritize your work obligations? Do you take on too much, and you can't make the deadlines? Or are you generally unresponsive to the concept of time? I've had colleagues who are. And so, they need to think about what that means, particularly if they're working in collaborative environments. And then, after you reflect on the feedback, and frequently appearing items, those patterns, decide what you will change, and also decide how. So have a plan. The goal is to routinely seek feedback. It'll feel less uncomfortable, you'll have more potential to receive more constructive feedback, and develop ongoing plans for improvement. And or, capitalize unidentified skills. So this is not so great part. You also have to be prepared to hear criticism and not respond poorly. So being prepared for that, maybe asking some clarifying questions can help. So maybe something like, thank you for that feedback, can you give me an example of when my communication was less than adequate? And don't forget, too, to keep track of positive feedback, as well. It can help frame and sharpen your own personal brand, give you a list of potential references or people to endorse your skills on social media, for example. It's really an organic way to grow your network and connect with people who are interested in supporting your career. I want to talk to you about how I incorporated the feedback from my colleague about my LinkedIn profile. In the feedback to my original profile, she suggested I increase the sense of my brand by talking more about me and less about the institutions for which I work. She also suggested I consider adding some of the optional sections to my profile to better showcase my accomplishments. She didn't get a strong sense of my personal brand from the first version of this profile. So based on her feedback, I actually did quite a bit. So I added some contact information, I added my research interests, I added causes I care about. I'm very interested in animal welfare class for example, I wrote about that. I wrote about organizations I support. I added some honors and rewards. And I also wrote a short post and linked to an article of interest that's connected to higher of the industry in which I currently work. But most importantly I reworded my work experience section, actually all of them. To reflect my actual experiences and not the history of the institutions for which I worked. And it was really a good exercise for me to do and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to do it here with you. And you can check out my profile for more details if you want to. It's up on LinkedIn. So in this next peer review assignment, it's actually your turn to reflect on the role of feedback. The exercise is intended to help you discover the potential of giving and receiving feedback when planning your career development trajectory or career plan. Actually review the feedback you've received from your peers and feedback you've given. So both sides of that coin, and then connect the information you've been given to your action plan. More specific instructions again can be found in the field experience reflection peer review, part A. Good luck with that, have fun.
