The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Promote Workplace Diversity

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Self-aware leaders promote workplace diversity because they are in touch with their own and others’ emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. They’re comfortable with themselves and don’t feel threatened by differences, which allows them to be open-minded and build healthy, inclusive workplaces.

I get a lot of questions from my clients about what are some practical things they can do promote diversity and inclusion in their organizations. We often focus on policies and procedures but there is an additional element that profoundly affects our workplace environment, our own behavior.

Think about the power you have to practice self-awareness and make your organization a welcoming and safe place. You set the agenda and the tone that guides your entire organization just by setting an example.  Some points to consider include:

1.  Treat everyone with respect regardless of their age, race, culture, physical ability, appearance, education or religious background and without setting them up for failure or ridicule.

2.  Have non-punitive policies in place to deal with conflicts that arise from people having different points of view and backgrounds.

3.  Establish and ongoing, open and respectful dialogue on diversity.

4.  Create a workplace that is a forum for people to share opinions without attacks, retribution or denigration.

5.  Practice a zero tolerance policy for any behavior that belittles people.

6.  Design a workplace that rewards people who work well with others.

7.  Discourage cliques or other exclusive groups.

8.  Build a workplace where people speak to each other respectfully and listen to other points of view.

9.  Provide ongoing training opportunities focusing on diversity and inclusion from the top down, everyone required to attend.

10.  Include diversity and inclusion in the values statement or mission of the company and, more importantly, practice behaviors that reflect your commitment to diversity.

These ten items are the building blocks of diversity and inclusion. They are not difficult in and of themselves if you value them in your organization and practice them on a daily basis. When leaders commit to following these principles they show their workforce that diversity is a high priority at the company, not a painful and sporadic activity they have to suffer through.

These ideas can be implemented without creating chaos in your workplace. They simply require buy-in from leadership and ongoing training and support to build in accountability. Think about yourself for a moment and how many of these points you practice daily. To create a genuinely diverse workplace you and your employees will behave this way most of the time and it will eventually become your company culture.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and promote diversity in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Reinventing Yourself after 50

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A lot of people reach a certain age in their lives and think that they can’t learn anything new or change in any way. In actuality, you can increase self-awareness and become the real you at any point in life. Being open to change can greatly help you follow a path that brings you joy and fulfillment.

Here are some ideas on how to build self-awareness and reinvent yourself after age fifty:

  1. Visualize who you want to be based on who you truly are deep down inside, the real you.
  2. Make a list of five things you can do to become the person you really are.
  3. Choose one item and take one action to make it a reality.
  4. Measure your progress frequently and, if what you’re doing isn’t working, then choose another item from your list.
  5. Keep taking action until you see positive results.
  6. Start the process again.
  7. Celebrate your accomplishments.

You don’t have to stay stuck at any age because you can always dream and decide to take action to change your life. Reinventing yourself after fifty is possible as long as you’re willing to embark on the journey and stick with it.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and reinvent yourself?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and the Horrible Neighbor

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If you’ve ever had a horrible neighbor you’re familiar with someone who lacks self-awareness. People who behave negatively don’t know what else to do so they work out the hurts from their past and present on everyone they encounter. Here are some of the characteristics of horrible neighbors:

  • Pursue self-gratification before thinking of others.
  • Don’t consider other people’s needs.
  • Lack empathy.
  • Poor boundaries.
  • Arbitrary rule setting, what’s OK for them to do is not tolerated from others.
  • Act like bullies.
  • Lack basic interpersonal skills like communication or problem solving.
  • Refuse to change behavior, don’t believe in change.
  • Think the world is a tough, hard place and that everyone is out to get them.
  • History of poor relationships.

The reason I’m writing about this topic is that it’s a powerful test of your ability to take care of yourself rather than getting sucked into another person’s negativity. For example, you have the ability to steer clear of your neighbor’s negative behavior by:

  • Realizing it’s not about you.
  • Learning how to manage your emotions.
  • Reminding yourself how great you are.
  • Healing your own hurts.
  • Deciding that you’re not going to react negatively.
  • Living your life positively.
  • Behaving with kindness and compassion.
  • Continuing to pursue your dreams.
  • Making plans to leave this mess behind.
  • Focusing on your own personal growth.

You have a lot of power to behave any way you want when you encounter people who try to make things difficult. What will you do to move past the horrible neighbor?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Listen More Than Talk

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A lot of people who lack self-awareness have been conditioned to believe that they need to talk a lot. We’ve all met a person who seems to be in love with the sound of their voice and rarely lets people into the conversation. What we sometimes forget is that communication is over 90% non-verbal which means that talking is just a small part of what we’re supposed to be doing.

Yet millions of people wake up every day ready to tell the world something rather than learning something from the world. We spend our time trying to tell our story rather than gaining more insight into others’ experiences. Think about your own style: Do you talk more or do you listen more? What would happen if you shifted your style just slightly. Self-aware people understand that getting their point across is often as much about understanding someone else’s point of view as it is putting one’s own opinion into the mix.

Here are some tips to help you add to your communication skills:

  1. Try to listen more than you talk.
  2. Ask open-ended questions.
  3. Try not to think of the next thing you’re going to say.
  4. Try not to think of the perfect rebuttal.
  5. Stay away from questions that lead the conversation in a certain direction.
  6. Let people say what they want and give them the space to do so.
  7. Listen.
  8. Did I mention listening?

The key skill we ignore in life is listening. It’s incredible what we learn when we take the time to really listen to someone. Suddenly we understand people better and can make decisions based on rich information. We avoid misunderstandings and we connect with people on a deeper level.

Perhaps the most powerful proof that listening helps improve our lives is that it allows us to breathe. We don’t have to fill up space, we don’t have to think of witty things to say and we get to learn all kinds of interesting things about others and relax more.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and listen more than talk?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Really Loving Yourself

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A lot of people who lack self-awareness loudly proclaim that they respect and love themselves and then get trampled mercilessly by every person who comes into their lives. They also go from one broken heart to another wondering why it keeps happening to them. They never seem to heal or resolve their inner issues. Many people who don’t possess self-awareness navigate the waters of relationships focusing almost entirely on other people’s needs. They invest huge amounts of time and energy into making someone else happy or worrying about how they’re doing while ignoring the most important person in the room, themselves.

Why is it we go through such elaborate efforts to mold our lives around someone else only to find ourselves losing our self-identity and wishing for better relationships?

Somewhere along the way we lose sight of the importance of caring for ourselves. Being self-aware enough to take care of ourselves first is a critically important step in creating fulfilling relationships in our lives but we don’t do it consistently. We benefit from tending to our own needs first so we can be in great shape to attract positive, vibrant people into our lives and share great relationships. So how do we do that? The good news is that there are many straightforward things we can do, starting today, to take care of ourselves and begin the process of respecting and loving ourselves.

You can consciously become healthy and happy by healing your inner hurts, practicing self-love, and behaving in positive ways. Loving yourself requires getting to know who you are deep down inside and understanding how to tend to your own needs and treat yourself well. Only after you’re genuinely healthy and enjoy your own company can you invite other people in.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and really love yourself?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Leadership Examples

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People frequently ask me to give them examples of self-aware leadership. A good way to demonstrate the difference between leaders who possess self-awareness and those who don’t is to describe how they behave during a training session. Imagine someone who behaves this way:

  • Doesn’t listen.
  • Interrupts.
  • Gets angry.
  • Confrontational.
  • Talks too long.
  • Tells others what to do.
  • Has an opinion on everything.
  • Seeks attention.
  • Uncooperative.

When someone practices these behaviors in a training setting you can pretty much guarantee what they’re like in the workplace. They likely are people who don’t listen, interrupt others, get angry, confront people, talk too long, tell others what to do etc. Very often these individuals don’t realize how they’re behaving because they’re so used to doing things a certain way.

This is why I emphasize self-awareness in my training programs. It’s the ability to take a look at your own behaviors so that you can keep what works well and modify what doesn’t. It’s the capacity to examine who you are and behave in different ways. It means that you understand how your behaviors affect both you and other people. The goal of self-awareness is to become a more effective person and leader. Effective leaders practice the following behaviors the majority of the time:

  • Listen.
  • Don’t Interrupt.
  • Moderate emotions.
  • Communicate instead of confront.
  • Listen more than they talk.
  • Encourage people to work independently.
  • Value other people’s opinions.
  • Give people attention.
  • Cooperate and collaborate with others.

Leadership is often about consciously setting an example of positive behaviors in the workplace. A leader who behaves based on the first list will get predictable results in the form of a dysfunctional workplace while one who practices the behaviors on the second list will move in a more productive direction. There’s no mystery to this process, positive behaviors lead to positive results. What do your behaviors say about you?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Are Deep

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Possessing self-awareness is synonymous with being a deep person, where all the meaningful parts of life reside, although most people prefer to stay in the shallow end. There’s nothing horrible about talking about the weather, sports, or cats, but I prefer to go where other people dare not: the inner workings of the mind in all its tumultuousness, ambiguity, insecurity, and pain.

I’ve always been someone who feels things very intensely, often to the point of discomfort, so it makes sense that my self-awareness work tends to reflect deeper emotions. Many people try to ignore these feelings and uncertainties, sometimes for an entire lifetime, but I figure we’re all wired to feel and we each get to choose whether we use our natural ability to emote. So many of the problems in the world could be resolved if people were willing to work out their inner turmoil before putting it on others.

Being a deep person allows you to experience life at its fullest, warts and all, but with the idea that you’ll be stronger and more balanced when you deal with your issues. When you acknowledge and feel pain, you can then do something positive to heal it.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and be a deep person?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy