A recent Brainzooming article on changing your personal backstory recommended ensuring how you think about, describe, and conduct yourself maximizes the positive sentiments you generate among others. One input to revise your personal backstory is to ask how others see you. This suggestions prompted a question on what you should ask others (and how you should ask them) to get the best input for reshaping your backstory.
Ask people in a format that allows them to respond anonymously. You want to increase the likelihood they are going to share unvarnished sentiments with you. The easiest way to accomplish that is likely through some type of online survey.
7 Questions to Ask Others about Your Personal Backstory
Here are specific questions based off of those we use when developing personality-based brands. The input you will receive can help you decide what to add to and erase from your personal backstory:
- In a few sentences, what are your perceptions of who I am?
- What are words you associate with me?
- What are negative things you associate with me?
- What are positive things you associate with me?
- If you were introducing me to someone else, what would you say to them?
- In what capacity do you know me - professional, personal, or both?
- What's our level of contact - used to be greater than it is now, it's greater now than it used to be, or it's been fairly consistent over time?
It would be great to be a bit more specific on the last two questions. You don't want to be so specific about relationship questions, however, that people feel as if their answers will tip off who they are.
Across even five to ten people you should have a richer set of input than if you tried to revise your personal backstory based on your own thinking. - Mike Brown
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.
