self-awareness

Being Self-Aware Is Critical For Leaders, Both For Professional Success And Personal Satisfaction

“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.

Here’s What Some Experts Say About Self Awareness: 

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.

Heightened self-awareness brings you Confidence and Emotional Intelligence

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. 

Some Ways to cultivate Self-awareness  

Self-Evaluation

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. 

Seek Constructive Feedback 

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.

Keep An Open Mind

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.

Hire a Coach

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. 

self-awareness for leaders

Importance of Self-Awareness for Leaders

Conversations with business leaders – How aware are you of your deep-set beliefs and behaviour patterns? How are you influencing the behaviours of others? These are some self-awareness questions. In this video, I talk about self-awareness and how important it is for leaders and how they can develop an advanced level of self-awareness to deal with crisis situations like the one we are in currently.

Conversations-with-Leaders-1-What-Do-You-Want-to-Work-On

What Do You Want to Work On?

Conversations with business leaders – Starting this series on “Conversations with Leaders”, that is with you business leaders – about how we lead ourselves and lead others. In this video, we explore a little bit about ourselves – because self-awareness is one of the hallmarks of a great leader. So please join the conversation with your thoughts and ideas.

self-awareness-soaring-eagles

Being Self-aware Makes You Confident

Have you ever felt completely at odds with your job or your organization?

Have you felt unsure of your abilities and place in the office? Maybe your personality, values, or likes and dislikes don’t really fit with what your job demands? However, most of us are not able to articulate what the problem is or even that there is a problem!

That is because

a) most of us expect to be uncomfortable at work (after all, why would someone pay you if it was easy!) and

b) we don’t really have a clear enough understanding of ourselves to pinpoint the misalignment or put the finger on the root cause of our discomfort.

What is self-awareness?

Simply defined, it means 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 analyze, monitor, or control your reaction to situations and external stimuli.

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.

It will also help you make the most of your abilities. When you know who you are, you will use that knowledge to place yourself in situations that align with your innermost being and remove yourself from circumstances that don’t.

At Soaring Eagles, we firmly believe that EVERY single change (no matter how small or insignificant) must be authored by you yourself! And that is only possible when you know who you are to start with. Only when you know your starting point can you then fix a goal for transformation.

Can being self-aware help you grab the right opportunities and steer your career in the right direction?

Clarity

Imagine knowing exactly what type of work, professional environment, or process suits your personality! All that time spent bouncing from one unsatisfactory job to another can be completely cut down. With an awareness of your nature, beliefs, and key drivers, you can tailor your job search – and your entire career – to maximize your core strengths.

Confidence

Knowing your self allows you to bring a heightened sense of confidence to your career. It will enable you to make career choices with complete confidence. No more second-guessing your abilities or your interest in a particular area; being self-aware will help you analyse your professional options and make decisions based on knowledge rather than gut feel.

Emotional Intelligence

Self-awareness leads to developing 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 all phases of your career – from your first internship to your last leadership role.

Longevity

When you work at what you like, or in an atmosphere that aligns with your core beliefs  – you are already on the way to long-term success. Understanding yourself allows you to find work that you enjoy and are good at – this, in turn, ensures you do well at it! 

It’s clear …

That you could land a job that is the envy of your peers or get nominated for a role that puts you in the big league, but if it doesn’t match your core temperament or your belief system then you will not be able to sustain yourself in it in the long-run and more importantly, you will not be happy in it.

Are you looking to jumpstart your plateauing career? Or maybe you are looking to bring some clarity into your career plans? Then do consider one of SoaringEagles’ training sessions. We have several that focus on building skills useful for different stages of your career. Do call us to find out what fits your needs.