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Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Five Minutes Podcast. Today I like to talk about Why Self-knowledge Improves the results of your project. And I know that every time people listen, the word self-knowledge, there is a very strong correlation with self-help. And it's not my intention here to talk about self-help here. I want really to talk about how knowing yourself, your strengths, your weakness can improve the results of the work you were doing, and why I'm telling you this.
And why I'm telling you this? Because most of the time, people overestimate their skills and people underestimate their weaknesses. I'm talking in the project environment. And when you go with this perception that you know, everything, or that you are prepared for everything, you may take a path in your project, or you may take a decision in your project that will spark the challenges of not knowing something.
Why I'm saying this? Because for example, if you know where your weaknesses are, you can frame the project to avoid that path. Or you can propose that someone else in your team with a better knowledge of that technology or that approach to lead that piece. So by doing that, you are improving the final results of your project. It's like what I'm saying recently in several podcasts about stewardship, this is your duty of being responsible for the overall results of your project and not what is good just for you.
And this self-knowledge is not easy because most of the time we love to receive compliments. We are not so keen to receive criticism. So we love people to say, for example, and this is my first deep get feedback. We love to provide feedback. We love to talk to someone. You are good on days. You are not so good, but when it's our turn to receive feedback, we are usually not so receptive to that. Even more. What needs criticism?
Even more, we need criticism, because I would say compliments, honestly, they are not feedback. Of course, technically they are feedback, but they are just something that we receive to massage our egos to say, oh, you are great. You are doing this perfectly. Everything is wonderful. It's like, for example, when I saw in many organizations, this concept of performance review where, you know, it's like an agreement, I will say good things about you. You say good things about me. Everybody says good things about everybody, and at the end, we give a hug and everybody's happy even knowing that what I truly want to say to you, or I truly want to receive that would be helpful for my improvement is not there. So look for feedback, go and say, where are the points I need to improve? How do I improve? What I can do better? Where are my blind spots? And every single one of us, we all have many blind spots, many things that we are not so good at.
And this is natural. So we are not superheroes. And it's important to understand this, because many times the first reaction, when you receive feedback that goes against your self-image and not yourself knowledge, the first reaction, then the natural reaction is what it's to deny to say, no, I disagree. I'm not thinking like that. I'm not doing like that. I'm doing in a different way. You are not understanding. It's always pushed back and it's not good.
And this is not good because this does not help us to know who we really are. The second tip is to question your decisions using, I use a technique called five weeks. Every time, if you can do this week, I will be very happy. Every time you make a decision, if it's an approach to the delivery of your project, or if it's in a testing environment of your new software, or it's that decision regarding where you should go on your holidays, ask why and ask why five times. Why then the why of the, why then the why of the why of the why, you know, and try and say, I'm deciding to buy from this supplier for this project. And then you say, why? Oh, because it's cheaper. Why cheaper is a key feature? Oh, because my budget is very limited. Why your budget is very limited. Maybe at the end, you will understand that maybe the reason you are buying the cheaper one, it's because you don't want to pick a fight with your procurement area to select a different supplier.
But it's very easy for you to hide the reality in the face of all. This is the rule, the rule is there. So it's very important that you question your decision because you need to question the obvious decisions you are making every single day in your project because these will allow you to have disruptive thinking. You think differently think out of the box and maybe find a different approach, or maybe find a different way of delivering your project that will benefit more and will improve the results of your project.
So this rejection of the obvious and the third one it's, you should look for divergent thinking and foster diversity. You need to look and say, okay, I want to put someone to test this idea and you need to expose this idea, not to those who think exactly like you, but to those that do not think like you, it's a great opportunity for you to understand weak spots of your metabolic, the weak spots of your approach.
And this is a way of improving your self-knowledge, the knowledge of what brings you comfort the knowledge that what allows you to not get into the trap of an emotional hijack, where you lose control of the situation. And you get angry in such an uncontrolled way that you put everything at risk, how you know that you are becoming upset. How do you know that you are becoming, I would say, anxious or depressive and buying, knowing that you can act before and you need to stimulate also your colleagues, your team members, to develop this self-knowledge.
Of course, over time, it's natural that you start knowing yourself better or knowing your boss better, or knowing someone that works with you better. But most of the time, we do not have the luxury of waiting 10 years to know someone or waiting five years to know we have a team. So you need to create a psychologically safe environment for people to discover who they really are and what they really care about.
And if what they care about or their skills do not match your project, help them to find the best way that will drive their passion, that will drive their desire for something better. So always think about that. So Self knowledge Improves the Results of the project. It's not just a fancy word that people use to say that they are nice and that they take care of the human side. No, it's above and beyond that.
Think about this and see you next week with another five minutes Podcast.
