“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
Based on my inter-disciplinary work in leadership development, social and cognitive psychology, coaching, and my own experience as a leader and a coach, I have designed a model for leadership development that can prepare leaders to handle this VUCA world in a more deliberate, self-assured, and successful manner. I call it the CARES Model of Leadership.
I talked about leadership credibility and being adaptive in the previous two blogs and in this blog post, I will talk about being resolute.
The dictionary meaning of ‘Resolute’ is ‘being admirably purposeful, determined, and unwavering’. A resolute person has the courage to act with conviction in the face of uncertainty and risk.
In this VUCA world where there is constant change in the environment that we operate in, there can be many distractions, disruptions and disappointments. You may start the year with a well thought out plan but something could derail it completely – like the current pandemic for instance. How do you respond to that as a leader? What gives you direction? What keeps you going? These are some questions to ponder over to understand your style of thinking, decision-making and the strength of your resolve.
Leaders who are hesitant about doing the hard, but right, things will often fall short of getting the organizational results they desire. They may get pulled in different directions at different times and end up giving confusing signals to their employees. By not making the hard choices, they may even encourage their teams to stay within their comfort zone.
For instance, if a leader finds it uncomfortable to have difficult conversations with key employees who have a huge bearing on the performance of the organization, it is but natural that the outcomes will be compromised.
Another instance could be when a leader recognizes the need to develop new offerings to meet the changing needs of the market but finds himself or herself not ready to take important decisions about the allocation of precious resources to it, then the organization will find itself losing out in the medium term.
Being resolute is essentially having the courage to do the hard things day after day because the end results matter. In the environment that we operate in, if you as a leader are not resolute, your organization may not be able to take the necessary steps to stay relevant over the medium to long term. Is that something you want? I’m sure the answer is no.
I believe that being clear about your purpose and the purpose of your organization is the essential starting point for dealing with changes in the VUCA world. There are many paths to take to get to your destination but unless the destination is clear, you are unlikely to get there.
The second aspect of being resolute is to be sharply focused on your destination at all times while remaining flexible in your ability to respond to changes. Many things will compete for your time and attention as a leader. Not getting distracted by things on the margin will require discipline and focus on what matters. This is what will keep your organization on track and moving towards its destination.
The third aspect of being resolute is to remain steadfast and unwavering, which means that when faced with challenges and hard knocks, you as a leader, don’t give up on your destination. You stay resilient and determined to move towards your destination.
Basically, you need to work on three areas:
When I talk of purpose, I am talking at two different levels – one is your purpose as a person and as a leader and the second is the purpose of your organization. Having clarity at both levels can really boost your ability to live your purpose and achieve success. Let’s talk about your purpose as a person – What gives your life meaning? What gives you a sense of fulfilment? What brings out the best in you? What makes you feel engaged and challenged meaningfully that while doing it you lose track of time? To figure out your purpose as an individual, it is important to know your values, motivators and your strengths.
What are values? Your values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work. When you don’t know what your values are, then you’re essentially taking on other people’s values and living other people’s priorities instead of your own. Let’s take an example. If you value transparency and open communication but work in an environment where people don’t share openly, you will feel really uncomfortable. If you value integrity but believe that to succeed in your business you need to adopt unethical ways, then you will find yourself not being able to work towards success. You will experience a sense of dissonance. Becoming aware of your core life values can help you make decisions that are aligned with your values. This will make it easier for you to make choices in life and at work. So take some time to reflect on what your core values are.
Next, to figure out what motivates you, explore why do you do what you do? What kind of activities inspire you the most? What kind of things are you willing to struggle for? What makes you feel alive? For different people, different things motivate them. For example, some people are motivated by a sense of achievement when they overcome challenges, others are motivated by how people around them perceive them, and yet others are motivated by a sense of power or control over their own destiny or over others.
If you enjoy solving technical challenges but find yourself spending all your time and energy on managing others, you may feel drained and lacking in motivation. If you value being appreciated but your organization prefers to only reward you financially, you will feel demotivated despite doing well financially. Finding out what motivates you can help you choose to focus on what energizes you. So, figure out what motivates you.
Finally, your strengths are things that come naturally to you. Because they come easily to you, sometimes it can be difficult to identify and you might take it for granted. You might have strengths that you don't even realize are strengths, such as empathy, a can do attitude, or the ability to learn things quickly. The best way to figure out your strengths is to reflect on your successes and identify what within you helped you be successful. You can also ask your colleagues, friends and family about what they think your strengths are.
Once you know your values, motivators and strengths, see the overlaps between them. This can help you figure out your purpose. Your purpose is basically what you want to do with your time that is important for you and that you’re really good at. Articulating your purpose and finding the courage to live it is the single most important developmental task you can undertake as a leader. It is the key to accelerating your growth and deepening your impact as a leader.
Once you have clarity about your own purpose, articulate the purpose of your organization. The purpose of an organization can be distilled in its mission – why the organization exists – what problem does it solve for whom and how. However, having a mission statement that exists only on paper and not in the mind and hearts of the employees is of no use. Try to articulate the purpose of the organization in simple, personal language that anyone can understand and that employees can relate to and take pride in.
For instance, look at Google’s mission - To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Another example is that of TED Talks – it’s as simple as – spread ideas. Yet another example is Kickstarter - To help bring creative projects to life. Such a simple and yet powerful organizational purpose can align employees and help you as a leader focus on your destination. While strategies and organizational structures keep changing in response to market changes, the purpose of the organization tends to be enduring and can keep organizations on the right track. So, that’s all about getting clarity of purpose.
Directing attention toward where it needs to go is a key role of leadership. Leadership talent lies in the ability to shift attention to the right place at the right time, sensing trends, emerging realities, and opportunities. As a leader, your field of attention—that is, the particular issues and goals you focus on—guides the attention of those who follow you, whether or not you explicitly articulate it. People around you make their choices about where to focus based on their perception of what matters to you as a leader.
This ripple effect puts an extra load of responsibility on you as a leader. You are guiding not just your own attention but, to a large extent, everyone else’s as well. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, after having been ousted in 1984, he found that the company had a plethora of products— computers, peripheral products for computers, twelve different types of Macintosh. The company was floundering. His strategy was simple: focus. He decided that instead of dozens of products, they would concentrate on just four: one computer and one laptop each for two markets, consumer and professional. He saw that deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. And the rest is history.
Being able to focus on what is important is the hallmark of a resolute leader. So, take time to reflect on where your attention is and how it’s impacting your organization. Choose to focus your attention on the organizational purpose and you will see everything fall in place.
Every leader faces adversity. The test of your leadership is not whether you will face challenges but in how you will respond to them and how quickly you can put them behind you. Your strength is not developed in adversity but rather it is revealed in adversity. The strength that gets you through adversity is developed over time and is a kind of maturity factor of your leadership. As a leader who is resolute, you will not back down in adversity but will see it as just another milestone in your growth as a leader.
So how can you build this kind of resilience? In this VUCA world when crisis, industry volatility, societal shifts, or workplace pressures result in stress, it’s time to think about how to increase your resilience: the ability to bounce back from obstacles and setbacks. As a first step, it’s helpful to identify those situations in which you feel overly pressured. What triggers those feelings? Once you figure out what situations trigger stress, you can examine your thoughts about the situation.
Reframing the situation is a great way to deal with stress effectively. Reframing requires examining a situation from a different perspective and asking what else could be going on. For example, if a valued staff member resigns, you might focus on the loss, or you can choose to reframe it as a chance to hire new talent. There are some basic questions you can ask yourself: “What are the benefits of this situation?” and “What might my interpretation of the situation be missing?”
It is also important to get enough rest so that you’re physically in a good condition and feel energetic. If you’re not physically fit, your body and mind are already not in a position to cope with stress. Adequate sleep can result in enhanced attention and creativity — 2 capacities needed in positions of leadership. If this is not something that is possible for you to follow, you could also explore activities like walking, mediation and mindfulness.
Learning to focus on the positive aspects of any situation can also help build resilience. Researchers have found that when people are in positive states of mind, they think more broadly than when they’re in negative states of mind. Positive emotions can build sources of resilience that you can have in reserve when facing adversity at work. You need resilience not just at work, but also in your personal life. Having this sort of inner strength is helpful for all that life can throw at you
So, there you have it – why it’s important for you as a leader to be resolute and how you can become more resolute by working on getting clarity of purpose, focusing your attention on what matters and building your resilience.
Resolute leaders know how to navigate through adversity, have the discipline to lead themselves and others, built relationships with people around them, and have a clear view of where they want to go. When your values are aligned with your vision you can proceed with confidence in knowing that today can be good and tomorrow can be even better.
In this VUCA world, with constant change in the environment, there can be many distractions, disruptions, and disappointments. How do you respond to that as a leader? What keeps you going?
To experience a complimentary coaching session to explore how you can develop adaptive thinking, click on the Request Consultation button above.
Your team is the same but has had to suddenly get used to working remotely due to COVID. Many of you may never have thought that one day you will be leading your entire team virtually – not just for a few days but for months at a stretch with no clear end in sight.
So how have you flexed your leadership style to suit this now virtual team? Or should I ask, have you flexed your style?
Virtual teams have been around for a while and there has been a lot of research as to how effective virtual teams are vis-à-vis collocated teams. Researchers have found that there is no difference in terms of productivity, quality and successful outcomes between co-located teams and virtual teams provided that there are 4 factors in play. These are:
Team size matters whether or not co-located – smaller teams work better than larger teams on various dimensions such as trust, productivity, and knowledge sharing.
Management style matters – if teams are to be dispersed or virtual then you need to select team members for their ability to build relationships over distance and for managing working well alone. Leaders of virtual teams need to have the ability to build trust, respect and empower others. So 'good' management is more important in virtual teams than co-located ones.
Social and community spirit matters – whether dispersed or co-located teams that have a sense of team identity, trust each other and get on well socially perform better than teams without any one of these. In part this is factor is related to management style.
Technology matters – where communication is facilitated through various forms of technology – collaborative platforms, webchats, SMS, phone, etc then the virtual team members must have excellent skills in using it and the technology needs to be effective and reliable. Face to face is easiest for communication as you are picking up nuanced non-verbal signals among other things.
What the research shows is that for virtual teams to work well there has to be a conscious and ongoing intentionality to make them work well.
It is easy for team members to feel isolated and anxious and so as a leader you need to actively address this challenge. The leadership skills required to succeed remain the same in a virtual scenario but they have to be executed differently in a virtual environment. You need to continue being authentic, connecting with others, promoting inclusiveness, networking, and build relationships and trust as always, but the actions associated with these skills must be deliberate and intentional. You as a leader at a distance need to work harder at relating to your team members’ needs and aspirations to have the same level of positive impact that you would have had in a collocated scenario.
This may require you to check in more frequently with the team. I am not talking about work reviews. I’m talking about the casual conversations that you would have had in meetings, in the corridors, at the coffee station or even the parking lot. These personal connections build trust and relationships - but these do not just happen. You need to deliberately put a system in place for you to be able to do it consistently. The challenges for you is to create a sense of connectedness in a distributed work environment. The good thing is, as you do more of it, it becomes easier over time.
Some key areas for you to focus on are:
How well do you use technological tools to communicate and also the frequency of your communication? Also, how well do you listen? Your team follows your lead so if you want the team to listen to each other, you need to listen deeply and ask questions to increase understanding, given the lack of visual information.
An understanding of virtual team dynamics is critical for leaders and team members to be effective. As a leader, you need to be listening hard to identify signs of low trust in virtual environments. Successful leaders use strategies like regularly scheduled celebrations, fun, and creative reconnecting activities as part of scheduled meetings.
The goal of any team is the work product, not the time spent at the desk working on a project. Leaders who are more adept at keeping teams focused on business goals generally demonstrate a higher level of success. It also means that clear metrics, roles and responsibilities, and feedback are critical to producing high-quality deliverables.
So there you have it – what’s needed for you to succeed with virtual teams. We didn’t plan for it but it has happened and now that some months have gone by, it would help for you to reflect on how you’ve been approaching this and how you might want to approach it better. If you want to discuss further, just schedule a complimentary consultation by clicking this link above.
Do you have days when you feel that your thoughts are rushing in many different directions and you’re not able to focus on anything? Does it feel like you have to pull the entire weight of the business on your shoulders alone? Our work lives have become increasingly demanding, with many complex challenges thrown at us at a relentless pace. Add in personal or family needs, and it’s easy to feel constantly overwhelmed.
Some of my coaching clients come with the complaint that their days get caught up in routine activities rather than focusing on strategic ideas and initiatives. They try to make up for this by adding extra time may be early in the morning or late at night when they can get some quiet time. But despite all this, they still feel that they are not on top of things.
This feeling of perpetual overwhelm leads to a racing mind with impaired ability to problem solve. It leads to mental slowness, forgetfulness, confusion, difficulty concentrating or thinking logically. Any of these effects, alone, can make us less effective and leave us feeling even more overwhelmed.
So how can you snap out of this vicious cycle? The most important thing is to reflect on and identify patterns of behaviour which might be exacerbating the problem.
For example, one of the business leaders I was coaching found himself constantly stepping in to resolve conflicts between his team members. This was not only an unproductive use of his time; it was also encouraging the team members to run to him with all their problems. Once he recognized this, he was able to create some breathing space for himself to focus on his own priorities with fewer distractions.
Some other reasons for experiencing overwhelm are things like wanting everything to be perfect, or wanting to stay in control and not delegate. It’s important to identify the main stressors which might actually be contributing to 80% of the overwhelm. Identifying and resolving these can help you feel more in control of your time and your life.
I help my clients de-clutter their minds and focus on what’s important for them. This helps them get to their goals faster. Want to explore more, just click on the Request Consultation button above for a complimentary session. Talk soon!
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