Two weeks ago, I received one of the best pieces of praise I’ve ever received. To set the stage, two weeks ago was our Quarterly Business Review. We had a couple team members fly in from New York and Austin to join us for a week of team meetings, quarterly reviews and planning.

We have meetings all day long and then we try to do a little team-building by going to dinner, drinks, a Giants game, etc. The last night the out-of-town team members were in San Francisco, we went out to dinner just the three of us.

The team is incredibly transparent with each other — that’s one of the many traits I love about the people I work with. There’s rarely any BS. We’re sharp-shooters, straight-to-the-point, not-messing-around kind of folks.

At the end of the meal, my colleague asked me: What’s the general perception of me?

We talked a little bit about perception and whether what people think really matters. I gave him some perceptions, some things he’s doing really well, some things he could improve upon. It was a really, really open conversation and I have the utmost respect for any person who can sincerely ask “what do people think of me” and be 100 percent okay with whatever the honest answer is.

I, of course, asked him the same question in return.

His raw response made me blush.

“You perform.”

He went on to talk about how there are a lot of people who are metaphorically in the audience, watching the performers on stage and talking about how “they could do it better” or how “that’s not the right way.” But, those people are in the audience talking and criticizing and planning and judging.

And I am performing.

It may not be an Oscar-winning performance, but I’m performing and I’m not sitting in a chair talking about what we should be doing. Instead, I’m doing.

Now, that is a solid compliment.

I don’t take compliments well, so it took me two weeks before I really accepted this as a compliment. Believe it or not, I don’t get a lot of real feedback at work. Yes, I am told I’m a good manager, I believe my team enjoys working for me, I believe other colleagues enjoy working with me. I’m told when I make mistakes or when I could have done something better (vaguely).

But there are so many times I feel like I’m creating a path in total darkness. Like I’m doing nothing more than following my intuition – firing off a dart into that darkness and hoping it lands somewhere near the bullseye.

It’s amazingly rewarding to know that someone — even if it’s just this one colleague — who sees what I’m doing as performing.

Photo by daskerst