Discuss the most difficult constructive criticism or feedback you have received. How did you address it? What have you learned from it?
The above question brings to memory my early years of employment with ABC where I had been inducted as a customer service agent. In the preceding years, I had been working in web-based support and as a process trainer in, more or less, start-up environments. Prior to these employments, I had been running a small-scale transport business with seven transport vans – a traditional retail business requiring “field level” skills. ABC in contrast with my earlier employers and work, was a much larger and well-established organization. I had transitioned to a knowledge-driven service industry with multiple hierarchies and an innate culture of diplomacy. My supervisors at ABC were quickly impressed with my work ethic, ability to learn quickly and intelligence.
It had been more than six months at ABC when I was summoned for a performance review. I was expecting a very positive session since I had received very good feedback so far. My supervisors initially turned out to be quite optimistic about my future prospects and my potential. They then went on to add that I needed to (a) be more tactful (b) patient. And then came more..
- I had been rated low on “likability” since I had been bit too direct in all my conversations. In this field of customer service, I had to be “tactful internally as well”.
- I was also asked to me more patient with the “slow learners” in my team and to be tolerant of the fact that different people would have different learning curves (by then I had grown, rather informally, to a product expert and thus informally “senior” to other team members)
The constructive feedback in the meeting marked a turning point in improving my soft skills. I now knew exactly what to focus on when it came to rallying support and growing as a leader.
I decided to challenge myself and achieve a turnaround in this area. Since then, I have consciously asked for greater responsibilities with all my employers and delivered results in leadership roles. I have also realized that patience and faith in people has worked wonders for the growth of everyone involved.
I thus owe much of my leadership growth to that meeting. And I have always maintained very regular, discreet feedback mechanisms in my teams to ensure that I know the group’s pulse!
