What kind of feedback are you soliciting?

How can you assess how well you're performing if your boss raises vagueness to new heights during performance appraisals (if he or she does them at all), your peers and subordinates are suspicious and tight-lipped when you ask for feedback, and your friends love you regardless? Most of us crave constructive criticism, but we get more heat than light. For example, a peer says, "You're so picky! Nobody cares about perfect grammar but you!" That's feedback, but is it helpful? Actually, it's a compliment, because being picky about grammar is a platinum attribute. It's not constructive, however, because nothing will make you fall off the grammar pedestal.

The feedback that's most beneficial isn't an opinion--even the CEO's, although it's important--because it's often the opposite of fact. You need standards against which to measure yourself that aren't tightly linked to your organization's culture. For example, physicians in your organization rely heavily on command style in working with the staff. Is that universal? Are there other styles that may work better? The answers are out there, but you have to search for them. Since standards are relative, you want the best you can find for measuring your performance, competence, social/people skills, and other skills important to getting superior results.

First you must define what you need most. What do you want to know? Even before you go to the library or make any telephone calls, you need a shopping list. More industry knowledge? Insider information? Better management technique? Negotiation skills? Here are methods for getting the information you need.

Benchmark

Who is your organization's most important competitor? You may find there are different competitors for different products/ services. For example, your consulting wing may be in competition with one group at Andersen Consulting, even though you work for a much smaller company. The division you're in may compete with a small part of a regional medical center. Absolute organization size doesn't matter. What's important is this: If you were asked to submit a bid for a contract for your services, who would be bidding against you? You will have to research your competitors in the trade press if your organization doesn't acknowledge any.

Once you can name your competitors, it's easy to network--even cross country by e-mail--with current and former employees of those organizations. Colleges do it all the time when they are trying to assess how high school seniors compare them with other institutions. What (other than a terminally weak ego) would keep you from interviewing competitors' employees about what they're doing and how? How do they resolve management problems? What have their experiences been with self-directed teams?

You can network easily at national or regional meetings of professional organizations if you make breakfast and lunch dates with your targets. People who attend these meetings tend to be more invested in their work than those who don't. They'll make good bench-markers for determining how state-of-the-art you are.

Find a mentor

You're never too old to be a protegee, especially when you want to improve people skills, political skills, or simply your facility with certain tasks. There are tricks and shortcuts in every business and the stars know them. A recruiter I know always begins an interview with a candidate by asking him or her to cite half a dozen tricks of the trade only an industry insider would be aware of. She's often baffled that some very impressive-on-paper candidates can't name a single one! They've never even thought about it. Ethnocentrism isn't a winning quality.

Why would anyone mentor? Most mentors say they learn as much as they teach. Others do it for fun or influence. If they can influence your mindset and style, they will make a difference, not just in your life but in the lives of those you work with. Think of it as socially approved cloning.

Your obligation is to be teachable and appreciative. Some people are neither. That is, they want to argue and compete, rather than absorb, experiment, cull, and incorporate. It's why few people mentor them and fewer still would be willing to try. They compete with, rather than openly appreciate, a mentor. If you must explain that you've already tried and rejected everything the mentor suggests, you've got the wrong mentor--or the wrong attitude. In this dance, the mentor always leads. Peer mentoring inside an organization is difficult, because it so often becomes competitive. That's another reason to look outside.

Some health care organizations have begun to impose mentoring as a management duty. The CEO and HR are sold on the idea that mentoring new employees makes the later more productive, more quickly. The idea that mentoring is an important retention strategy is gaining ground as well. Senior managers, especially those forced to participate in such programs, rarely question whether recruiting a mentor might rev up their careers.

Hang with your betters

Boswell's Life of Johnson would have been impossible if he had tried to study his target from afar. Move in close on people you want to use as role models. Be subtle, of course, but stay in contact with people who perform far above average. You can learn from them, even with minimal contact. The people you should be watching in meetings are the ones who are performing as you'd like to, and they're not necessarily bosses.

If you've read biographies of great musicians, writers, designers, athletes, or business superstars, the stories have a common thread. Each tried to learn from the acknowledged best in his or her field. Basketball great Michael Jordan, who was once cut from his high school team, says he reinvented himself by watching and learning from players much better than he (at the time). When managers say, "I can do it as well as anybody," they're not surrounded by the right people or looking at the right models.

Don't confuse personal and professional support

My clients scoff openly at the idea that being well liked is as important as great results, even though they've all had a brush with at least one peer who has been trading on his or her people skills for years. It's a sure sign you've given up on improving your performance when you confuse popularity with competence. Do you really see yourself as an organizational lapdog? Renewing yourself after 10, 20, or 30 years of work means getting very close to people who could help you improve your standards and redefine your taste. The best and the brightest are always searching for mentors and role models who will raise their sights and standards, not merely agree that their performance is acceptable or better than average.

The truest sign of aging is a "been there, done that" attitude. Of course, you were there and did that, then. What I love about economics, marketing, and demographics is that the answers change radically while the questions stay the same. You could apply the same principle to your performance.

Marilyn Moats Kennedy is Managing Partner, Career Strategies, Inc., Wilmette, Illinois, and a long-time member of the ACPE faculty. She can be reached at 1150 Wilmette Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091, 847/251-1661, or via fax at 847/251-5191.