This Simple Challenge Could Change Your Life

Last week, I sat on a plane headed home to Salt Lake City. In the quick, 45-minute jaunt, my mind was in a state of serious reflection about my life and the choices I’d made up to that exact point. I was coming down off of a “design-high” after attending the Adobe MAX conference in Las Vegas. In my attempt to process the vast number of takeaways from the event, I felt most inspired and motivated by a particular one-hour breakout session.

Prefer to listen to the article rather than read it? Listen to it now on SoundCloud:

I’d been struggling recently at work to present my UX projects in front of our stakeholders and developers; I just didn’t feel I was engaging them enough.

So, to remedy that, I signed up for a session at Adobe MAX called, “Stepping into the Spotlight: Techniques to Step Up Your Presentation Game”, presented by Andrew Whelan, an accomplished career coach manager.

I was expecting your run-of-the-mill spiel about good posture, power-poses, breathing, warm-up techniques, etc. Regardless, I needed some direction, so I sat down, notepad in-hand, ready to listen.

It was then that Andrew, the presenter, threw me a curveball that I didn’t see coming.

In short, he told us that we’re going to have a tough time delivering any kind of message to anyone if we can’t connect with them on some personal level. In my career as a UX designer, much of this is tied to empathy, understanding, listening and caring about your users. All that made sense. Sweet. Got it—connect with people.

Here’s the thing, though. We constantly get feedback on our designs, but rarely do we get feedback on who we are as a person.

Then he threw the curveball.

He asked us how we expect to connect with individuals, and I mean truly connect with them, if we don’t first understand and connect with ourselves? If we don’t know our own strengths and weaknesses, how do we know what to work on and what inner skillset to pull from during a presentation?

He made us a challenge. I’ll share that challenge with you, tell you what it did for me when I did it, and make the same challenge to you. This challenge has literally been a game-changer in my personal life & career. I feel I have motivation, direction, and a newfound desire to connect with people.

Let me explain.

The Challenge

The challenge involves asking your friends, family, and coworkers (3) simple questions about yourself.

My personal twist to this challenge is I want you to do it in a way that they can respond anonymously. You can accomplish this by creating free online surveys through Google Forms, Survey Monkey, or a host of other free online survey tools. I used Google Forms and it worked beautifully.

Survey Question #1:

• What three adjectives would you use to describe me?

The first question is easy, right? Most people will respond quickly and effortlessly to this question and you’ll get some responses that make you feel pretty good about yourself! Encourage respondents to be genuine and honest in their feedback. You’ll likely get some quirky, silly jabs thrown in here too, but we’re hoping for legit responses.

Easy right? … sit tight, the next question might surprise you.

Survey Question #2:

• What three adjectives would you use to describe me… IF you were talking behind my back?

Whoah! This one caught me off guard! You have to ask yourself if you’re ready and prepared for the responses that come back. I’d never thought to ask this type of question, nor did I anticipate what people would say. I’ll share those responses with you and how they’ve made a profound effect on me.

Again, nothing silly here… we want true, genuine responses (remember, it’s anonymous).

Survey Question #3:

• If you didn’t know I was a [ insert your job title here ], what would you expect to see me doing in my career?

I love this question. I received a number of responses that have opened my eyes to things I’d never considered and careers I’d thought about but lacked the courage to pursue. This question is exciting, eye-opening, and thought-provoking. You may have something surface here that you’ve been telling yourself all along.

Your Turn… I Challenge You to Do It!

That’s it. Three questions, presented in survey form and sent out with the intent to receive responses anonymously from your friends, family, and peers. Go ahead, get your survey ready and give it a shot!

My Results from the Challenge

The Anonymous Survey

I created my survey using Google Forms. I liked this approach because I could then export the results to a Google spreadsheet and begin analyzing the data.

I disseminated the survey to my Facebook page and in a matter of a day I had received dozens of responses.

Yikes. Now it was time to look at them. I’d be lying if I said my heart wasn’t pounding a little bit when I opened the results.

Responses to Question #1

Ahhh… I felt pretty good about myself when I read these. Sincere. Smart. Lovable. Keep ’em coming! I’ve taken these responses to heart and I’ve started looking deeper within myself to make sure I truly live up to each one of these adjectives.

If people see me as a cheerful person, do I see myself in that same light? How could I leverage that attribute to my advantage and be a better employee, father, husband, son, and friend?

I created a word-cloud image to represent the data, the largest adjectives carrying more weight because they were mentioned multiple times in the survey.

Responses to Question #2

I’m having a really hard time sharing this openly and publicly.

But, I want this article to help someone, and I hope it does. These responses were brutal, piercing, and hard to read. They cut right to my core and proved to me that I have some things to work on… and I mean seriously work on!

It’s not to say that more good stuff wasn’t said about me, because it was. Thoughtful, personable, authentic, and quite a few other great adjectives surfaced, but it was the OTHER adjectives that moved me to consider the person I am today. I created another word-cloud, but this one was much harder to digest.

Here it goes… big deep breath…

See what I mean? Nobody wants to be called a doormat, a pushover, a party-pooper, or mediocre; that stuff just hurts.

Yet, here’s the beauty in this challenge. I have no idea who said those things.

Think about it.

If I knew the person who called me a DOORMAT and I knew their past and personality, I may just look at them and say, “Whatever man, you’re the doormat!” … but I can’t. I don’t know who said it and that’s what makes this challenge so powerful.

I’ve taken a hard look at my decisions and actually can see why people might think some of those things about me… and they’re right. I do feel like I let people walk all over me at times and I need to address it right away. If I’m being considered flaky, I truly want to change that. I can spend my time addressing the adjective and not the person who said it.

Beautiful. Lots of goals coming in 2018!

What will you do with your results?

Responses to Question #3

I felt I could relax a little once I started reading these results. I’m already pretty tech-savvy, and have been for about two decades, so it was no surprise that many people saw me in tech & management roles in my career.

However, the responses I gravitated to were the ones I had never considered:

• Landscape Designer; Firefighter; Teacher; Film Director; Public Speaker; Day Care; Ultimate Fighter (sweet!)

Why couldn’t I go after any one of those? What lives could I touch as a teacher? What could I create as a film director? Someone else believes I can do these things, so what’s holding me back?

What’s holding you back?

Key Takeaways

Alrighty, I’ll wrap this up. My hope is that something in here resonates with you and you take on this challenge.

Is it for everyone? No. Absolutely not. My wife explicitly told me she could never do it. Even if her responses came back anonymously, she’d battle within herself trying to figure out who said all those awful things about her —the emotional distress it would cause her would far outweigh any benefit she’d receive out of the survey.

So, dig deep to see if you want to know these things about yourself. I went into it wanting to become a better presenter at work, and now I have been set on a path that I truly believe will benefit me in all aspects of my life.

I promise you this challenge will cause you to look at your accomplishments, failures, and relationships in a new light.

Speaking of failures, Zig Ziglar has some superb advice:

“Failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night. Today is a brand new day, and it’s yours.”

Failure is an event, not a person. You have an opportunity here to find out some brutal truths about yourself and make decisions to change your current trajectory.

I challenge you to do so and write about your experience.

If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and share to help others find it!

If you’d like to learn more about Andrew Whelan, the presenter I learned from at Adobe MAX, please check out his LinkedIn profile to get in touch.