It’s Polite to Point: How to Figure Out Your Weak Points and Learn to Fix Them
I’m going to venture a guess: they didn’t devote a whole lot of your 5th grade schooling to teaching peer criticism?
Years later, you may wonder, how have you come to this ecosystem where self-identifying weaknesses is an unhealthy mindset? How has self-improvement become one of the most feared, anxiety-saddled moments in your adult life?
How do we properly teach one another to improve ourselves?
How many of you would like to refine your self-improvement methods?
Toddlers Ask Lots Of Questions
Entrepreneurs (and all inbound marketers) have:
- Lots of plans
- Lots of questions
- Lots to learn
It’s enough to summon imposter-syndrome in even the most confident person. However, there’s a dramatic difference between seeking advice and accepting advice.
Through no true fault of your own, few have mastered interpreting advice, even when solicited. Practicing productive self-help is an even rarer ability.
Make no mistake, SEEKING advice is something you learn from the moment you realize your vocal chords can be used for shrieking. Speaking of shrieking, I have a niece. At age two, she realized her Lego tower kept falling over when she tried to build it on the couch. The cushions were too soft. There was no foundational support. She took the Lego tower in her hand. She passed them to me.
She said, “Help.”
It’s a good word to know.
I answered, “Help?”
There was a lot of advice I could give this two year-old.
She had noticed something was wrong. Something was preventing her tower from standing, from succeeding.
I took the bricks she offered. I set them on the wood floor. The bricks stood stable. She noticed the bricks were no longer at eye-level with her. I don’t think she believed my practical magic. She crawled beside them to get a closer look. Testing the structure, she noticed she was on solid ground now. She could continue building her tower taller than ever.
Neither of us talked.
My niece has an older brother and a younger brother. She’s already tough as nails. That might explain why she didn’t thank her uncle for re-writing the laws of physics (as far as she knows) so her Lego tower wouldn’t collapse.
This girl would be sorted into Slytherin.
“It’s Impolite To Point”
If I’d taken my niece’s Lego tower off the couch without permission and put it on the solid floor, do you think she would have shrieked? Parents with toddlers, what do you think?
From a very young age, you learn that there’s a stigma around giving unsolicited advice.
This advice is a recommendation for change on the critic’s terms—an attack. That makes the recipient THE HUNTED.
Like most animals, humans don’t like being hunted. That’s why your heart rate spikes when you notice, like, anything out of the corner of your eye. It’s why we get easily distracted, as a species.
The same way a parent calmly lowers a child’s outstretched finger aimed at something unusual, I’m not sure there’s any society on earth where it’s polite to point at something that looks a touch outta place, as they say.
We don’t point out of respect. Pointing is a warning of something wrong.
To most kids, noticing wrongness is comedy. That’s why peek-a-boo is a laugh-riot. To most business owners, noticing wrongness is tragedy. It means you’ve got a unnoticed vulnerability. In your proto-man brain, you fear a saber-tooth tiger is about to gobble you up, bones and all.
We arrive, at last, at the crux of this piece.
Fighting The Fear of Pointing Out A Predator
You suffer in ignorance without the ability to self-critique. It’s self-destruction to self-critique, and in fear, you too often only look externally for the same. Even then, you and your businesses struggle to change.
Change is difficult. Change is cold, uncomfortable, and energy-draining. Know this: those vestigial anxieties are leftover genetic mind-garbage. You’re not a toddler. You’re not a neanderthal. There aren’t saber-tooth tigers stalking you.
It’s only your inability to point a finger at yourself, to self-assess and accept genuine improvement from personal experience. That’s an illness so severe you can no longer afford to ignore it.
Why do we realize this so late in life?
Conjecture: few of us were taught the self-criticism skill.
It IS Polite To Point
Remember when we talked about presenting to your 5th grade class earlier? Remember how much authority your teacher carried in those moments, commanding you to accept feedback?
The answer’s likely obvious: they had station over you. They likely also experienced just a little too much personal joy in exercising that station. That tic made you believe that only those up above may deign point below. Furthermore, if you critique an equal, it’s must only be to further your own station, yes?
The hurt from authority made you want to bolt from the room in defiance. Thus, feedback became intrinsically linked to criticism, linked to authority, linked to betterment, linked to ice-cold change, to self-unmaking.
How do we upend this stigma around self-improvement through peer-critique?
Considerable time is spent figuring out what you’re naturally good at. What talent makes you a special individual, or what talent makes you part of a special people’s club? You’ve always been taught to notice what you’re good at, even to amplify and strengthen that comfort zone.
How much time have you spent learning to strengthen your weaker skills though?
Nobody hired you for your weakness. Do it on your own time, buddy.
Comfort in noticing one’s weak points is not a beautiful game. It’s more of a game of thrones. In so many minds, still stuck getting feedback from your 5th grade class, revealing a weak point just shows the competition where to stick the knife.
But it should not be. Self-improvement ought not be a guarded, secret skill.
Joining The Beautiful Game
In my consulting years with HubSpot Agency Partners, I’ve found the best agencies are are:
- Self-critical
- Constructive
- Brave enough to change
Those that struggle shift the conversation to a topic that isn’t about HubSpot, software, or selling. It’s a different game now.
By the time the conversation shifts, the agency dodging their need for self-criticism is humanity’s beautiful game.
You’re so trained in hating yourself and others, yet you’ve never been taught how to respond positively to that notification. Because change is destruction.
Wrong. Change is not destruction. Change is transformation. Stillness is cowardly. Dodging your own needs is negligent and childish.
You must learn to make communication, and compassion, and delight in one another’s growth a respectful demonstration of shared betterment. Because it wasn’t fully baked into your heart as an adolescent, you must be prepared to learn and teach one another as adults. Hold that thought in your mind each time you offer advice.
It’d be impolite to disrespect a colleague and NOT identify a point of potential improvement. It’s as plain as that. And to yourself — demonstrate the same respect.
You’ve been ground down too far by ill-meaning pointing, and self-loathing, and othering, so in our era of transparency, you need to be brave enough, and open enough with yourself to act on our own feedback. If you have the conviction to transform yourselves and your businesses, you can help others across your industry and around the world.
Perhaps it’s just never settling for a first draft?
Perhaps it’s motivating your direct-reports to execute a project with total excellence? Perhaps it’s not accepting the same status quo for the business you founded and have run for twenty years?
Perhaps it’s providing outstanding customer service during a sale, or a desire to always be learning outside of your acting role, or seeking out collaboration when you know you need it? If you have the passion to educate yourself, and remain consistent in that growth, the right people will understand, and you can pass that learning forward.
Do not be afraid to speak, to point, to educate, to learn, to aid. Do it openly for others to see and learn. That is the totality of this beautiful game.
Has anyone ever pointed and helped you? Write a response and share your story with us.
