The day I lost my father to cancer, I asked him for one last piece of advice. He smiled at me with his eyes, and without skipping a beat he said, "just be yourself. Always." At the time, I brushed it off as something everyone says - nothing unique. When we were called to complete the "Reflected Best Self Exercise," as a part of our coursework at Northwestern, it made me uncomfortable. The thought of asking my friends, family and colleagues to write a story about me at my best felt boastful, even embarrassing. The reading begins with, " being extraordinary does not necessarily mean obtaining a position of honor or glory or even of becoming successful in other people's eyes. It means being true to self. It means pursuing our full potential" (Roberts, Dutton, Spreitzer, Heaphy, & Quinn 2005).
In talent management, we often focus on "areas of opportunity" - what skills, knowledge, or ability we lack. Due to cognitive biases (confirmation bias, Pygmalion effect), we quickly start seeing these "deficiencies" everywhere, leading to potential impact on performance (Heath & Heath, 2013). Just as we naturally have "blind spots" or "immunity" to negative behaviors we need to change, the Reflected Best Self portrait allows us to see the "blind spots" of where we are at our best. Because these blind spots more easily fit into the schema of what we believe to be true about ourselves, they are more easily leveraged for performance.
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