Grading Yourself | The No BS Coaching Advice Podcast
This episode of The BS Coaching Advice Podcast is about grading yourself and how hard you may be on yourself. It is based upon an email exchange with a former coaching client.
Restraining the Voice in Your Head
Today’s show comes out of an exchange that I had with someone I coached who has finished a short course he’s been teaching in a university and he shared an article that one of his students wrote which was a lovely piece that was both complementary of him and what they learned and It was just a lovely article of self-awareness and determining what they needed to . . . Excuse me.
I’m not going to identify gender here . . . And it prompted an exchange between us where he told me that the student was going to be studying in Europe. Great decision.
The student is unsure about what they want to do with their life and has lived in a good-sized city in the US, but certainly has not seen much of the world. I have a bias toward people who have that kind of international experience. I know from my own background, it opened my eyes to so much by going traveling abroad. Most recently, a Singapore trip but, before that, any number of trips to Europe.
One of the challenges that students, one of the challenges that less experienced professionals have is that they have been indoctrinated by the school system about their grades. They are measured by the grades they get in school, and, in this particular case, the student, as he said, is lost and doesn’t know what they want to do.
This is a pretty common scenario with students . . . But why is that? Why is someone so unclear about what choice they want? And I think the answer is because the school systems really don’t prepare people to make their own decisions. It prepares people to regurgitate a bunch of stuff and feed it back to the professor or teacher to demonstrate that they were right.
So it becomes no wonder that students graduate wanting to have others give them the answer. After all, in school a question is asked. They know where to find the answers. But when they leave school, you know, it’s not quite as clear cut and they become afraid that they’re going to get “a failing grade.”
I know that there’s someone else I coach. He’s really rough on himself. He grades himself all the time and, in doing so, every time I hear him say, ” I did okay,” What grade would you give yourself? I will start having a fun conversation about how we grades himself and it comes back to that his Judgment of himself is much tougher than what other people see.
So, most recently we talked about a workshop that he presented at and his boss thought he did a great job. He gave himself a “B.”. I asked him, “Out of curiosity, would your boss have given you the same grade or would they have given you a B+ or an A-?” “A-” was the answer but, in his mind, it wasn’t worth the A-.
Folks get out of grading yourself. It’s a residue of the school system and, not only that, especially when you’re less experienced, risk failure. it’s okay to get an F in the course and that’s even in the job market.
You know, if you fail trying to do something that you really want to do, you learn something from it, don’t you? It’s not like it’s “no, I’m 22. I’ve screwed up. I’m never going to wind up ever getting a job again, let alone something I really wanted to do.” It doesn’t work that way.
Get yourself out there. Start talking to people. Try stuff outside of your comfort zone . . . Ooooooooh, “the comfort zone.” Feels so good in here, but if you stay in the comfort zone the world becomes very small.
So, get out and go exploring. Have some fun. Take some risk. I hope you reach out to me for coaching and, if you don’t, that’s okay, too. You’ll learn along the way, but if you do reach out, send me a note at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us. I’d love to work with you, and I’d love to help you on your journey.
Hope you have a great day. Take care
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. He is hired to provide No BS Career Advice globally. That can involve job search, hiring staff, management, leadership, career transition and advice about resolving workplace issues. Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2500 episodes.
I do a livestream on LinkedIn, and YouTube (on the JobSearchTV.com account) Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 PM Eastern. You can send your questions about job search, hiring better, management, leadership or to get advice about a workplace issue to me via messaging on LinkedIn or in chat during the approximately 30-minute show.
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