For many graphic designers, your day-to-day will involve collaborating with cross-functional teams like engineering, product, and marketing. As a graphic designer, feedback is paramount. Whether it’s from a client or your team, regular feedback helps you iterate on your ideas and grow as a professional.
While you have your own perspective, the reality is that self-evaluation isn’t the best way to go about improving your soft skills. To become a better cross-functional partner, understanding the gaps in your soft skills are crucial to your growth.
Once individuals start moving away from a fixed mindset where they believe talent is static and qualities like intelligence and empathy can’t be improved, they will start seeing themselves as constant learners. Asking questions, offering ideas, and giving and receiving feedback all become normalized. Collaboration and communication improve and lead to new ideas and better performance.
With a growth mindset, team members will see themselves as an important part of a team and take responsibility for their own growth while doing everything they can to help their teammates do the same. When challenges, setbacks, and shortcomings arise, these experiences are seen as opportunities to grow rather than a failure. Failure isn’t something that has to be feared and doesn’t produce the mental anxiety that can keep someone from trying new ideas.
Feedback is no longer something to be dreaded. Instead, it’s an opportunity for growth. Challenges are no longer something to be avoided, but embraced. Resilience in the face of obstacles replaces the tendency to just give up.
Have you ever questioned the effectiveness of the standard performance review process? What good does it do to hear about your performance from only one perspective? While your boss, manager, or team leader always sees the final results of your efforts, he or she may not always be there in the trenches with you on a day-to-day basis. That means you’re ultimately being evaluated on whether or not you met a goal or achieve a specific result and nothing more.
You already know, walking into that kind of performance review, how well you did. You also know that the feedback you’re getting is really coming too late (and too rarely) to actually allow you to make changes in real-time. While you may appreciate the insights you gain from that kind of performance review, it just isn’t enough to help you understand how to make the kinds of small improvements that will help you make your work experience better and improve your relationship with your peers and clients.
Matter’s 360-degree feedback platform turns the standard review process inside-out and upside-down. Instead of getting feedback only once a project is over or a couple of times each year, you get continuous, actionable feedback that you can use to make constant improvements to your abilities.
Instead of getting feedback from only one or two sources (usually somewhat removed from your actual work process), Matter allows you to gather feedback from all around you — everyone you interact with — including your manager, your team lead, your peers, and your clients. You’re able to finally find out how others perceive you and learn what might be holding you back from your long-term goals.
Standard reviews are also focused solely on what matters to your manager, Matter allows you to decide what strengths and abilities you want to train. Natural talent and a degree can only take you so far — but relying on those alone creates a static mindset and limits your potential. When you embrace a growth mindset, you quickly realize that you can develop and hone those mysterious “soft skills” that you never learned in school.
Matter shows you how to break through the blind spots that are holding you back and achieve the best, most rewarding work of your life.
Matter helps you measure your performance against the goals that are important to you in your role as a graphic designer. Matter’s continuous, 360-degree feedback system is a unique way of gathering information from your trusted peers. You can use that information in real-time to shatter any personal or professional barriers that are holding you back.
Learn how to develop a genuine “growth mindset” that will enable you to constantly improve and meet your career goals — both now and in the future! Unlock your full potential today and embrace your aspirations with Matter.
