What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?
Is that a trick question?
For you or for me?
You’ve got to admit that depending on what you’re doing right now, and how long it took to answer the question when you first heard it, there could be a lot of stuff behind your answer. For example:
How good are you at what you are doing?
Could you be better?
How much of your talent is being applied?
If you looked internally some more, do you have more talent that you could apply?
Are you proud of what you are doing?
What aspect of what you do are you most proud of? (Does not require being “expert”.)
Do you find satisfaction in your work?
Could you improve in any areas of your work?
Do you need anyone’s permission to improve or “strive” more?
What improvement in what technical or hard skills would benefit you the most?
What improvement in a soft skill area would benefit you the most?
If the respect of others around brings a sense of “feel-good”, would “raising your game” bring even more feel-good?
New question: Since I’m writing this newsletter, I can add questions. So, just asking…if you decided to apply effort to any of the 12 questions above, who would benefit?
Are you even a little intrigued by your answers? What if you engaged each of your direct reports, inviting them to consider exploring these questions with you as someone interested in their growth?
Now, as for me. What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?
I’d be doing this. IKR