“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” It’s a thought that’s been attributed to Greek philosophers, Indian yogis and modern day life coaches.
Before you book yourself into a yoga retreat, turn on your out-of-office message and wave a cheery goodbye on your journey to find yourself, I should mention that true wisdom goes far beyond this. However, the reason that so many thinkers have sought to appropriate these words of wisdom is quite simply because they ring true.
All of us want to make better choices. After all, better choices lead directly to better outcomes. And whether it’s within our relationships or in the workplace, we all want to believe that our experiences are helping us to improve. But how many of us really focus on knowing ourselves, and using that knowledge to drive our continual growth and development?
One of the ways that I like to do this is to think about my treasures, my trumps and my trash. This begins with understanding my greatest strengths – my treasures. These are the unique attributes, abilities or skills that set me apart.
The next is an understanding of how I apply these strengths to create amazing outcomes for me, for my friends and family or for IBM. These are my trumps (not to be confused with Donald J. or that well-loved family card game). And the final focus area is my capacity to learn from those times when I’ve not been at my best. This is the trash.
Let me share a few examples to illustrate my thinking. And I’d be deeply honoured if some of you would share yours below, as well.
Let’s begin with my treasures. First and foremost, I’m blessed with enormous energy that I nurture by eating respectfully. For me this means that I’ve not REALLY eaten meat for 20 years, and in the last several months have moved to a totally plant based diet – basically anything without a face or a mother. I don’t preach this to others, it just happens to be something that is working for me.
I also have a well-developed instinct when it comes to assessing people’s strengths and special abilities that aren’t always immediately apparent. This has served me well throughout my career when it comes to building high performance teams. Having a good memory is another. And I fully recognise that for me, and perhaps you as well, these are genetic gifts that we’ve been given. But we do all have a responsibility to use what makes us special to best effect, always.
So how then do these treasures translate into trumps? In previous blogs I’ve spoken about my great passion for diversity. Since coming the Asia Pac region with IBM, we have made great progress in promoting many women into senior executive roles – our ASEAN, Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesian markets are now all led by women.
And for this progress, I must give significant credit to amazing group of male leaders that I work with in our region. They have committed passionately to supporting the sisterhood and making real progress in this important work. I like to believe that when making deliberate choices about the leaders with whom I would like to work, I recognised in many of my male colleagues a similar enthusiasm for diversity and a desire to make a difference.
Choosing to work for IBM was also another of my trumps – mostly because it engaged my passion for lifelong learning and challenging myself to absorb and understand how advances in augmented intelligence, cloud, security and blockchain are changing industries and clients’ organisations.
And finally, those experiences that we dispose of into the trash after having absorbed the life lesson that our mistakes often teach us. Most recently for me that came in the form of refusing to give into my impatience and edginess when confronted with a situation in Korea recently. It happened when one of my Korean colleagues was struggling to express himself clearly in English.
In frustration, I came very close to hurrying this gentleman along, but fortunately in the moment I realised that in doing so, I would be giving in to the inherent biases that I held. In taking a deep breath, and assuring him to take his time and say his piece, I was able to respect one of my colleagues and show him the same courtesy of which we are all deserving.
In this, I was able to keep the positive learning, while dispensing of the unworthy initial reaction into the trash where it belongs.
Taking time to reflect on your own treasure, trumps and trash helps you to know yourself better, and to constantly improve the way that you show up in all aspects of your life. It acknowledges that you’re not always perfect, but focuses on reshaping those imperfections into valuable life lessons, while continuing to take build on those things that make you amazing.
Please share a treasure, trump or trash story. I’d love to read yours.
