111 Other People's opinion of you

Other people’s opinions can feel like the truth when you haven’t defined success for yourself. Liz Jolley shows how to hear feedback without collapsing, shapeshifting, or surrendering your own view.

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00:00:05
Welcome back, my friends. I'm Liz Jolley, and this is the Great Leader Great Mom Podcast, episode 111.

00:00:35
And today I want to talk about other people's opinions, especially when it comes to feedback, because I don't think many of us realize how much of our lives we spend trying to control what other people think about us.

00:00:35
All of us really want other people to think that we're smart, to see that we're capable, that we're really good leadership material, that we're a good mom, a good spouse, a good friend, a good person.

00:00:35
We want their good opinion of us. And this isn't wrong. This is literally how we were raised. We are wired to connect with other people, and we feel like if they have a good opinion of us, then we belong.

00:00:54
And so of course we want to know, “Am I doing a good job? Do you like me? Do you have a good opinion of me?”

00:00:54
But here's the thing. I want you to start noticing how much of our day we spend asking these little questions, like, “Are they going to like my outfit? Will this impress them? Are they going to think I'm strategic enough when I bring this up? If I say this, I don't want them to think I'm difficult. Is my boss going to worry about if I can actually handle this job?”

00:01:15
“What does my mother think? Does she think I'm doing a good job as a good mom, as a good daughter, as a good spouse?”

00:01:15
We care so much about what other people think. And here's what's challenging about this: we start trying to guess what it is they approve of, what it is they like, and then we try to become that.

00:01:34
We morph and shapeshift into this version of ourselves that we hope will earn their approval.

00:01:34
And there are two challenges with that. The first is it's really exhausting if you find yourself constantly trying to read other people's minds and then act or change into that version.

00:02:00
The second thing is that we can't actually control other people's opinions of us, and so it's never going to really work. It may work for a little bit, but we often think, “If I say it perfectly, if I dress the right way, if I parent the right way, if I lead the right way, or if I do the perfect thing, then people are going to think good thoughts about me. They're going to have a high opinion of me.”

00:02:27
But other people's opinions come from their own brains, and they have all kinds of things going on in their brains, like you have going on in yours.

00:02:27
Different value systems, different definitions of success, different definitions of what good looks like. And most of the time, we don't know the context of what's on their mind. We really don't.

00:02:47
It's just one sentence in their brain that they may happen to share with us, like a comment, or a question, or a statement that we take and make mean all kinds of things. It could be feedback in your mid-year review from your boss.

00:03:09
And my goal for you today is not to walk around and think, “I don't care about anybody's opinion.” I don't want you to become a person who's dismissive, or arrogant, or closed off to feedback. Not at all.

00:03:09
My goal for you is to live a more authentic life and stop wasting this energy trying to manage everybody else's opinion of you, because that creates so much suffering. And look, it's really not your authentic self.

00:03:33
So let's connect all of this with feedback, because at work we often call other people's opinions feedback. And we're taught that feedback is something we really want, that we all really need. We need to ask for it. We need to be open to it no matter how it comes.

00:03:33
And I do agree, feedback really is often super useful.

00:03:56
Why? Because it helps us grow. It helps us see if we're missing something. It helps us understand how our work, or leadership, or communication is being experienced by somebody else.

00:03:56
But here's where we get into trouble with all this.

00:03:56
We most of the time look to other people's opinions of us before we've ever defined our own opinion of ourselves.

00:04:31
We don't define what good looks like for me as a good leader, as a good mom, as a good spouse.

00:04:31
I don't want you to look at what other people tell you about who you are and what you're capable of and think that that's the only answer.

00:04:31
I want us to give ourselves feedback first, before you go out into the world and ask everybody for feedback and their opinion of you and how you're doing.

00:04:31
I want you to ask yourself, “In this area of my life, whether it's as a mom, or a leader, or a technical expert, what does success look like for me?”

00:05:04
And that first question helps you define success. This is all from my Power Question Framework.

00:05:04
The second question is, we’ve got to get specific. And so if you ask, “How am I going to know I'm making progress toward success?” it's so helpful because then you know specifically if you're going toward your goal of success or away from your goal of success.

00:05:04
If we don't know our own definition of success, someone else's opinion will become our definition, and we may not even agree with it, or like it, or know why they think that's it.

00:05:28
So let me give you an example. I have a client and a friend who's had a boss for years who really valued her work. He saw the impact her team was making all across the globe. He understood why her work mattered. He asked super thoughtful questions and really supported her.

00:05:28
No matter what project they were working on or what challenge they encountered, he helped open doors so the team could make a difference.

00:05:53
And then things changed. She got a new manager, and this new manager had a completely different opinion about her team and the work that they did.

00:05:53
And his view of the world was that they weren't making an impact. He didn't seem to understand why their work mattered, and he would tell her this as feedback. He almost treated it like the team didn't even need to exist, which can be thought of as really harsh, right?

00:06:11
Same team, same work, same circumstance, completely different opinions.

00:06:11
And that's why this is so fascinating. One leader looked at the work and saw clear impact, and the other leader looked at the same work but questioned the value.

00:06:11
And I can hear you all saying, “But Liz, she needs to care what her boss thinks.” Yeah, of course. I think that's true.

00:06:40
I'm not saying ignore your boss's feedback. I'm saying that feedback, you have to examine it and question it with yourself.

00:06:40
“Wait a minute. This new opinion might mean that they just don't understand what it is we do. Maybe it's a communication opportunity. Maybe I need to sit down with them and go through, here's the work we do, and here's what people say, and here's how we know we're being successful.”

00:06:40
Because often, their version of success looks different. And if we go to them with our version, then we can ask them great, clear questions about what their version of success is to have an even richer discussion on where the expectations don't line up.

00:07:03
So when I asked my client, “Tell me what good looks like in your team and how would you know?” she said, “We know we're making an impact across the globe because they call us. They reach out. They ask for us to come work with them. They want us to be involved in their projects. They're sending us information. We have so much demand that we don't even have the people to support all the work.”

00:07:23
And I said, okay, notice that as data. And so you can take that to your boss and say, “Here's how I define success for my team, and here's how I know we're progressing in this way. How do you see it differently?”

00:07:23
It's a completely different conversation than just being angry that they don't like your work, and they're telling you to change, and going in and trying to shift into their version of success when they may not even understand what you're doing now.

00:07:49
So then, if you go in from this place of curiosity and groundedness, knowing what your definition of success is, you won't get defensive.

00:07:49
Honestly, you can help him see, help him understand where you're coming from. He may not change his mind. Of course he's allowed to have his opinion, but you don't have to surrender your opinion immediately.

00:08:12
You get to show up in the conversation and start marketing your version of success and see if you can make progress there. Or you can learn and shift based on what his version is.

00:08:12
Your opinion matters.

00:08:12
And here's the thing. This applies to every area of your life.

00:08:27
What does it mean to you to be a good mom? What does it mean to you to be a good spouse, a good friend? What are your goals for the year? Have you defined those clearly? Do you know how you know you're being successful? Have you gotten specific about it?

00:08:51
Have that conversation with yourself.

00:08:51
And when we get feedback from other people in our life, no matter what area, we often don't know what to do with it. We either collapse, or we assume that they're right and we're wrong, and we get really upset.

00:08:51
And so once you understand clearly what your version of success is, then you can hold their feedback up and think, “Do I want to keep this? If I assume that everything they think makes perfect sense to them, do I see why they believe this view of the world? Is it something I want to go talk about with them, or is it something I just want to lay down and step over?”

00:09:15
This brings all your power back to yourself, and you give yourself the best feedback ever, because you're the only one that knows all the things you actually do and why it matters.

00:09:15
And sometimes you can use that to just go have a different conversation and help bring them along.

00:09:35
One more example. I remember being a supervisor and defining for myself, what does it mean for me to be a good leader?

00:09:35
And what meant a lot to me was helping create an environment where people could speak up and challenge ideas and feel safe enough to tell me the truth.

00:09:55
And then I asked myself, how will I know that I'm succeeding at this? It was so clear because I remember thinking, “Well, people will challenge me. They won't just take everything I say and go forth and do whatever. They will stop and say, ‘Wait a minute, I don't agree.’”

00:09:55
And I can remember this specific moment where one of my employees named Mark came up to me and said, “Okay, Liz, I don't agree with you.”

00:10:23
And I smiled because I thought, “This is it. This is success.”

00:10:23
It sounds funny, I know, but really it meant he is safe enough and comfortable enough to disagree with me as the boss. I think this is amazing. This is the culture that I want to create. He trusted me enough to have that conversation.

00:10:23
We had this fantastic discussion, and out of it I did shift and agree with his view of what we should do going forward. And I'm so grateful he brought it up.

00:10:40
Now, is this something that I would put on a one-pager at the end of my year? No, because it'd be kind of hard to explain.

00:10:40
But what I do know is creating this culture that had this type of environment where people are willing to speak up also led to incredible results on the bottom line. And that was evident. And that was easy to put on a one-pager.

00:11:01
So for all of you, when you get feedback, when you hear other people's opinion of you, you can listen to it without collapsing.

00:11:01
You can consider their perspective without surrendering your own view of the world.

00:11:01
But I want you to define what success looks like for me first and foremost. Let me check in with that. You can hear them out, but then go back and define this for yourself, because this is the work that really matters.

00:11:26
This creates self-trust instead of farming it out to everybody else.

00:11:26
And this is a magical way to show up at work and communicate across teams, with your boss, across your peers, and different groups where there are loaded conversations, where people are really emotional about their opinion.

00:11:46
If you can go in and assume, “I know my own definition of success, and whatever they think makes perfect sense to them. I'm going to find out why,” you show up totally differently and the conversations become grounded.

00:11:46
If you want more support with feedback or tough conversations, or just learning how to show up in the room when other people have their opinions, I would love to have you in one of my Grounded Conversations workshops. Totally free.

00:12:06
You can go to LizJolley.com/grounded to sign up for the next one, because I want to help you create the culture where tough conversations happen, but they don't feel so tough. Where feedback doesn't send us into this crazy spiral where we're like, “I got triggered today.”

00:12:06
I want all of our environments to be one where we define success for ourselves and where we can be our authentic self, instead of trying to shapeshift into controlling other people's opinions of us.

00:12:23
With that, I hope you all have an amazing week, and I'll see you next time.