“Remember, your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness,” said Ekhart Tolle, a spiritual teacher, and bestselling author.
There is immense truth in this simple statement. You become what you imagine yourself to be. But, if you don’t know who you are, you cannot control the direction your life takes.
The ability to monitor and manage yourself is one of the most important traits you can have as a leader. Understanding yourself – your drivers, triggers, likes and dislikes, and values – is critical for you to put your best foot forward and defines how you interact with the people you lead.
Without a degree of emotional self-awareness, you could react unknowingly and uncontrollably to situations – which can, of course, become detrimental for the organization and erode your authority in the long-run.
Simply defined, self-awareness refers to having a deep understanding of your inner norms, drivers, motivations, beliefs, and preferences, or intuitions. You understand what is happening in your mind in each situation. You can analyse, monitor, or control your reaction to situations and external stimuli.
Daniel Goleman, author, and psychologist, classified self-awareness as one of the four fundamental capabilities of emotional intelligence and advocated mindfulness to become more aware. Goleman stated, “Self-awareness means the ability to monitor our inner world – our thoughts and feelings.
Mindfulness is one method for enhancing this essential capacity – it trains our attention to notice subtle, but important signals, and to see thoughts as they arise rather than just being swept away by them.”
James Kouzes and Barry Posner, co-authors of The Leadership Challenge, researched the impact of that self-awareness and self-management in leaders and found it to be essential for authentic leadership. In fact, they went so far as to caution organizations against hiring individuals based solely on professional excellence, without prioritising personal and social skills. According to them, one sure way to enhance EQ was to become self-aware.
Ultimately, being more self-aware will give you the ability to express yourself in the best possible manner during any situation. You will act consciously, instead of reacting uncontrollably.
Our self-image is a combination of how we see ourselves and how others perceive us and interact with us. Relying on only our own image of ourselves can lead to challenges in terms of blind spots and hidden aspects about ourselves.
For leaders, it is important to work on understanding both sides of their self-image. Understanding our inner self makes us happier, and less stressed at work while being aware of the external view of our personality allows us to have a closer and more responsive relationship with our team and other stakeholders. Knowing what our team members think of us can help us cultivate a more open relationship with them.
Knowing yourself allows you to bring a heightened sense of confidence to your leadership. It will enable you to make professional decisions with complete confidence. No more second-guessing your abilities or your reactions in a particular situation; being self-aware will help you analyse your professional options and make decisions based on knowledge rather than gut feel.
Self-awareness leads to enhancing your emotional intelligence. When you have the ability to be in touch with your emotions, it will automatically make you more aware of and empathetic towards the feelings of others. This amplified EQ will help you achieve success in your role as a leader.
Self-awareness is a continuous process.
When we engage in self-evaluation, we can give some thought to whether we are thinking and feeling and acting as we “should” or following our standards and values.
Introspecting constructively about your behaviour in different situations and with different people can provide you with useful inputs. Look for patterns, which could throw some light on why you react or behave in a certain way in certain situations and with certain kinds of people. The main objective is to identify drivers and triggers and then based on that, decide on what is it that you really want to be seen as or want to be like.
Self-evaluation will help you choose your reaction or response more deliberately in the future in a way that is aligned to who you are and how you want to be perceived. It will also give you areas that you might want to explore further and see how you could change for the better – for better outcomes for you and your organisation.
One way to know yourself better is to ask people you trust for their opinion. You can initiate a structured feedback system or ask trusted colleagues for an honest insight into your personality.
You could also use a tool like 360-degree feedback to find out what your peers, subordinates, and other stakeholders think of you and whether it aligns with what you think of yourself. Incongruence in this can help you identify that areas that you could work on to build greater self-awareness and also better relationships with your team and other stakeholders.
Low self-awareness tends to breed a certain degree of blindness towards your weaknesses, and feedback is a great way to uncover aspects that could be improved.
When you have so much on your plate, and experience gives you heightened clarity and overview of situations, it becomes hard to listen patiently and give others a chance. This impatience may keep you boxed inside your own ideas and processes.
If instead, you make an effort to be open, curious, and patient with other people and their different viewpoints, not only will you come up with better solutions, you will also find it easier to keep in touch with everyone around you, and that will allow you to learn more about yourself.
Finally, a sure shot way to dial up your self-awareness quotient is to put yourself in the hands of an executive coach. There are several well-known and researched-backed emotional intelligence assessment tools that can uncover your core traits and bottlenecks. EQ-I 2.0 is one such powerful and scientifically valid and reliable assessment that is popular the world over. Understanding your assessment results with a professional coach can give you a good start on your self-awareness journey.
Coaching be invaluable in helping you discover yourself, especially when you are in a senior role and have limited people you can share your thoughts with openly. A professional coach can bring in a lot of value in terms of being a sounding board and thinking partner for you. So, this is something I urge you to consider in your personal growth journey as a leader. Of course, I am here to help.
If you want to understand more about emotional self-awareness and how coaching can help, then do schedule a 15 minutes consultation call by clicking on the link above.
By admin
2020 is coming to an end and what a year it’s been! The global pandemic has really challenged us in so many ways and it’s been hard for many of us to feel in control as the crisis just drags on. Our businesses have taken a hit but we know that there are many around us who have been hit even harder.
It’s natural then for many business leaders to feel guilty about the hard decisions they’ve had to take in terms of layoffs, closures and disruptions in service. A client of mine had to let go of a senior employee in the US and he knew this meant that the employee had to go back to his home country and his entire life would get disrupted. He was also worried that the employee would no longer have health cover to take care of the special needs of his child. A friend who is the CHRO of a large organisation was distraught when a young employee passed away due to COVID and he felt he couldn’t do anything to save her.
Guilt is an unsettling emotion to deal with. But it’s also a sign that you’re a conscientious leader. While there are many things that are out of your control, one way of dealing with this guilt when it hits you is to re-evaluate and improve the way you approach your employees and company, and demonstrate compassionate leadership in difficult circumstances.
Here are 5 ways in which you can do this:
If you have a small team, it’s possible for you to do so yourself. If you have a large employees base, put together small cross-functional teams to spread out and listen to the wider group. This will help you plan your initiatives better.
When you have no choice but to implement furloughs, reduced hours, or pay cuts, don’t delegate sharing the news to HR - it feels demoralizing, disrespectful, and lacks empathy. If you are responsible for the decision, it is you who should be sharing it. This sends a clear message to not just the people who are impacted but also the others around them and support the morale of the team.
If some of your decisions have gone wrong and negatively affected others, take remedial action as soon as you know or can and do it as publicly as possible. Acknowledge your mistake and then communicate new developments frequently and consistently. Decisions can go either r way based on the limited information that we operate on – you are not expected to be right all the time. But how you own up and make amends is what your team and customers are looking at.
Try and see what benefits can be retained even when someone goes on a furlough or pay cut. Help the ones who’ve been laid off to find new jobs. Provide career transition support wherever possible.
People respond to that. They connect with you and they trust you when you’re being the best version of you. Talk about how you balance your own personal and work commitments. Talk about your own challenges and encourage sharing of tips and resources for managing workload, scheduling and so on. You don’t have to have a stoic mask all the time. Let people know that you also struggle sometimes and that’s okay. That’s being human.
So, to sum it up, it’s understandable if you as a leader are struggling with guilty feelings as you see the disruptions and struggles that the Covid-19 crisis is causing your employees and colleagues, sometimes specifically as a result of your own actions. But if you reframe your feelings of guilt as an opportunity to consciously and thoughtfully make the best decisions possible, communicate clearly, and behave with compassion and concern for both your employees and yourself, then you can help steer their teams and organizations toward better times.
If you want to talk about this, just click on Request Consultation and pick a convenient time for discussion or send me a WhatsApp message using the button above.
Many times, when I bring up coaching with business leaders and owners, they react by saying that I’m doing well. I don’t think I need a coach.
To my mind, there are two possible reasons for this reaction – one, they are not aware about what real coaching is and its benefits, and two, they are not ready to have a hard look at themselves and see what’s not working. They may be afraid of what they might uncover and are happier just coasting along till they are forced to confront these issues.
I always make an effort to explain what real coaching is and how it’s different from having a mentor or guide or just reading self-help books. I also make it a point to share that coaching is not about solving problems. It is about unblocking the realisation of your potential. You can do and achieve much more than what you are doing currently just by getting out of your own way. A coach helps you get out of your own way and go after those big hairy audacious goals.
Ask yourself this
Having a coach is not a sign of weakness – it’s a sign of ambition, it’s a sign of hunger for bigger impact, it’s a sign of courage to work on oneself.
Go ahead, tell me you don’t need a coach…
Let’s talk!
Click on the Request Consultation button above for a discovery call.
To be truly listened to is an amazing experience, partly because it is so rare! When another person is totally with you – leaning in, interested in every word, eager to empathize – you feel seen and understood. When people feel that they are really being listened to, they open up more as they feel safe and secure and the trust between the parties grows.
Unfortunately, most people do not listen at a very deep level as they are preoccupied with the challenges of their fast-paced life. As a result, most conversations tend to skim on the surface.
The absence of real listening is especially prevalent at work. Under pressure to get the job done, we listen for the minimum of what we need to know so that we can move on to the next fire that needs fighting. So, what’s the consequence of this? Everyone is talking, no on is listening. As a result, employee engagement has become a serious issue in organisations today.
This is becoming a bigger problem in this COVID scenario as employees are dispersed and the conversations are very transactional and brief. Leaders seem to have become busier and more distracted in recent times.
How often are you as a leader distracted in a conversation or a meeting with your team? How often are you as a leader not psychologically present when you are virtually with your team? How often do you cancel, interrupt or shorten meetings with your people in favour of some other stakeholder, priority or task? How often do you make your people wait, ask, or even hope for your leadership? Ironically, now more than ever, leaders need to be deeply and continuously connected with their teams.
What your team needs right now is authentic and unequivocal leadership presence. So, turn off the noise in your head. Turn off the noise from your technology. Focus your mind and your time on the people you lead and they, in turn, will follow and support your leadership efforts.
Now, more than ever, it’s important to take the time to connect, to show that you care about your employees as people. Listening deeply will also help you understand what their challenges and expectations, and gives you a chance to share what your intentions and goals in a way that everyone can be aligned.
Listening is a skill that you can gain from training and practice. And who better to learn if from than coaches. Effective coaches tend to be gifted listeners and they hone their listening skills to reach a high level of proficiency. This enables us coaches to reach the inner recesses of your mind and help you get those deep insights.
In the book, Co-Active Coaching, Henry and Karen Kimsey-House explain the three levels of listening and how the art of listening can be cultivated.
Level 1 listening is an interaction where the primary focus of you as the listener is on your own thoughts, opinions, judgments, and feelings. You relate the words you hear to your own experiences or needs. For example, if we are buying a car, we will be listening at Level 1 to the salesperson to see how the car features will fit our needs and budget.
Level 2 listening takes the communication one step further. It involves paying attention to the tone of voice, body language and facial expressions. As you filter out your internal chatter and distractions from the environment, you are able to tune in to the meaning of the words, choose a way to respond, and assess the effect of the response on the speaker.
Level 3 listening brings an entirely new state of awareness to the conversation. It involves doing everything at Level 2, plus using your intuition and being open to receiving more information in any form that it presents itself. If you get a hunch, for example, while listening to someone, you could bring it up without being attached to it. Without insisting on being right, observe the effect it has on the speaker and be aware of where the conversation goes next.
For instance, you may say: “I understand that you are happy with the results, but I have a feeling that you have something else on your mind.” The response may be, “No, not really,” or “Yes, actually, I wanted to tell you about this issue that came up with our project.” It is irrelevant if you are right or wrong; what is important is the effect on the conversation.
So, there you have it – why it is important for you as a leader to hone your listening skills and how you can enhance your depth of listening. The art of listening takes time to develop, but it can be practiced daily. It builds trust and understanding and contributes significantly to your effectiveness as a leader.
If you want to discuss further, just schedule a complimentary consultation by clicking this link above.
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