Self-Awareness in Leadership Archives – The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-Awareness, Leadership, and Reducing Stress at Work

December 31, 2024 - The Self-Awareness Guy - Leave a Comment

Leaders who possess self-awareness are able to reduce stress at work because they understand how their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors can lead to a more calm, positive mindset.

Many leaders run around in a perpetual state of stress but did you know you can do some basic things to interrupt this pattern? Being stressed is a natural reaction if you’re being chased by a lion but can cause all kinds of problems if you are feeling it all the time in your workplace. Think of the following ideas to reduce your stress at work.

Do things you love for a living. This will help you avoid the stress from doing a job you hate.
Surround yourself with supportive people. Make sure that you interact with people who respect you for who you are.
Limit the overwhelm. You don’t have to take on everything at once. Do one thing well and move on to the next.
Take time to take care of yourself. Take time each day to take a walk or talk with a supportive friend.
Focus on the positive. Don’t worry so much about the stuff you can’t control or that goes wrong. Think about the things that are going well.

Try these ideas to help balance your work life. You’ll be thankful you started thinking this way when you feel more relaxed and less stressed out. What will you do to use your self-awareness to reduce the stress you feel at work?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Practice Effective Communication

December 31, 2024 - The Self-Awareness Guy - Leave a Comment

Self-aware leaders practice effective communication because they’re aware of how their emotions, thoughts, and actions affect their ability to interact with others.

Your communication style tells other people a lot about your professionalism and what they can expect when they deal with you. A theme that frequently arises when I train leaders is how to communicate in a manner that invites your employees to collaborate with you and work for you. The following tips will help you put your best foot forward and communicate confidently.

Listen actively. It’s amazing what you learn when you are not talking.
Say it briefly. Go with the approach that less is more in communication.
Keep it professional. Effective communication is not the appropriate time to vent about personal problems or delve into people’s private lives.
Keep your temper in check. If you fly off the handle it not only shuts down communication but also reduces the likelihood that the other company will give you an opportunity in the future.
Don’t get defensive. Remind yourself that communication glitches aren’t a personal slight against you, they are just part of regular interactions.
Practice excellent conflict resolution skills. Brainstorm with the other person to get some ideas on how to deal with the issue at hand and agree on a solution that works for both of you.
Plan ahead. Develop a communication strategy and follow it to eliminate guesswork.

Your employees and colleagues evaluate you much in the same way your clients do. How you communicate says a lot to the outside world about your level of self-awareness and the way you do things. Keep these tips in mind as you interact with other people and you’ll be on your way to increasing your success exponentially. What will you do to develop your self-awareness and be a self-aware leader who practices effective communication?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Leadership, and Positive Thinking

December 21, 2024 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-awareness, leadership, and successful thinking are interlinked because leaders who understand their strengths and areas for improvement are better able to lead effectively.

Ever work for a leader who always sees the glass as half empty? What was it like? As a leader, how you wake up in the morning can make a big difference on how successful your day, your week or your entire work life is. Think about how your work day will go if you think thoughts like these:

Another day another dollar.
I hate my work.
I don’t want to get out of bed.
I hate my job.
I don’t feel like doing anything new.
I lost my slippers.
I wish those birds would shut up.
I can’t deal with my employees.
I won’t get any clients.

You might be better off staying in bed if you think these thoughts because they are going to lead you toward stagnation or lack of motivation and will do the same for your workplace. Think about what kind of results you might get if you increased your self-awareness and consciously thought the following:

I’m going to make my work meaningful.
I’m looking forward to the people I’ll meet today.
I’ve designed work activities I enjoy.
It’s going to be a great day.
I love the sound of birds chirping.
Nothing can stop me today.
My workplace is full of opportunities.
I love the work I do.

It may feel a little different at first, but thinking in a positive way actually leads you in a positive direction. If you think you’re going to fail, you will, if you envision success you’re more likely to create those results. How you think about your workplace will deeply affect the way your career unfolds.

How will you develop self-awareness and practice successful thinking?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Healing Your Workplace

November 11, 2024 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-awareness, team building, and healing are strongly linked in the workplace because teams can’t function well if everyone is walking around carrying personal grudges and hurts. It often falls on the team leader to help everyone function effectively but it’s nearly impossible if he or she is carrying around a lot of negative energy.

There are many negative workplace experiences that affected people negatively. Individuals sometimes hold on to these feelings for a long time even when they realize intellectually that they would be better off letting them go. I consult with leaders and employees about how they can end this cycle of negative feelings and thoughts and build stronger teams and it almost always begins with healing.

Healing your workplace is one of the most important concepts for you and your employees’ well-being and it begins with having the self-awareness to heal yourself. If you think about it, you deal with people very differently when you are healthy rather than hurt. If you want to create a work environment that is free of hurts from the past, then think about the following questions.

1. What do I need to heal?

This question will help you define what it is that you need to look at. There is no right or wrong answer, you get to decide what part of you or your workplace is hurt and then you get to heal it. No issue is to small or trivial, if you need to heal it it is a valid starting point. You can have several issues but try to pick one to start on.

2. How will I heal myself?

There are many avenues you can take to heal yourself and they almost always involve getting help from an outside person who can help you get a clear perspective. You benefit from realizing that you need help and then reaching out to someone who can partner with you to make it happen. There is no right or wrong approach to healing, look for an approach that works for you. Some people talk to a friend, others a therapist and others HR.

3. How will I know that I am healed?

The goal of healing is to come to terms and feel at peace with the issues you face. You will know you are healed when an issue no longer stirs negative feelings inside you. You will also see improvements in your day to day work life because that issue won’t be affecting you in the same way. Healing can take time so be patient and keep working on taking care of yourself. Take it easy on yourself and only work on healing one thing at a time. Once you feel better about one thing then you are then ready to move on to the next issue.

Do some careful thinking about these three questions and you will begin the process of building self-awareness and discovering what hurts and how to heal it. The idea is not to reopen terrible wounds and relive those moments, it’s to acknowledge that you have an issue and work on it. Once you heal yourself you’ll be in a great position to help your team do the same. The result is a workplace where people aren’t working out their personal stuff on each other.

How will you increase your self-awareness and start healing your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

How Self-Aware Business People Communicate

September 12, 2024 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Your communication style tells other businesses a lot about your level of self-awareness, your professionalism and what they can expect when they deal with you. A theme that frequently arises when I consult for leaders is how to communicate in a manner that invites other companies to want to do business with us. The following tips will help you put your best foot forward and communicate confidently:

Listen actively. It’s amazing what you learn when you’re not talking.
Say it briefly. Go with the approach that less is more in communication.
Keep it professional. Business communication is not the appropriate time to vent about personal problems or delve into people’s private lives.
Keep your temper in check. If you fly off the handle it not only shuts down communication but also reduces the likelihood that the other company will give you an opportunity in the future.
Remind yourself that communication glitches aren’t a personal slight against you, they are just part of doing business.
Practice excellent conflict resolution skills. Brainstorm with the other person to get some ideas on how to deal with the issue at hand and agree on a solution that works for both of you.
Train everyone, starting with top leadership, on how to communicate effectively.

Other businesses judge us in much the same way our clients do. How we communicate says a lot to the outside world about the way we conduct business. Keep these tips in mind as you interact with other companies and you’ll be on your way to increasing your success exponentially.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and communicate positively?

Regards,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Building Better Workplace Relationships

September 2, 2024 - The Self-Awareness Guy

You can’t build great teams if you don’t possess self-awareness and the knowledge to promote successful relationships. Even some of the most well-intentioned leaders who really care for their employees have difficulty building great workplace relationships because they don’t know how.

I’m a big supporter of clarity in workplace relationships, where everyone involved understands what’s going on in the relationship. It does away with assumptions, secrets, guesses, misunderstandings and frustration because every person is on the same page.

How do you increase clarity? You work on increasing your self-awareness and gathering more information. The next time you encounter conflict in any workplace relationship practice the following ideas to really understand what’s going on:

1. Each person talks without interruptions about how they see the situation.

2. Each person listens carefully without judging, rebutting or giving advice.

3. Each person asks open-ended questions to clarify what is going on.

4. The people work together and develop a plan to proceed.

Dialogue is very important to achieving clarity. Make sure to practice listening skills and ask questions that allow people to share their perspectives in a safe environment. Open ended questions are questions that don’t lead to a yes or no answer and allow each person to meaningfully explain their point of view.

This is a style of interaction that doesn’t require confrontation, it focuses on people listening to each other and sharing their points of view. Try it sometime to gain clarity on what’s going on in your workplace relationships. What will you do to improve your self-awareness, team building, and workplace relationships?

Cheers,

Guy

Are You a Competitive or Self-Aware, Collaborative Leader?

August 13, 2024 - The Self-Awareness Guy

There are many well-meaning, talented and skilled leaders who feel like only they have the answers. They don’t ask for help and their competitive instinct kicks in whenever someone offers assistance or suggests working on a project together. There’s nothing horrible about wanting to excel on your own but it can limit your organization’s ability to grow and make valuable connections. You get to decide what kind of leadership style you practice, and that will predict what kind of results you get. To see what might work best, let’s look at some examples of competitive and self-aware, collaborative leadership and how you might benefit from practicing the latter approach.

Signs You’re a Competitive Leader

Always strive to be the best, above all others.
You’re a pioneer and enjoy doing things on your own.
Hesitant to share information or resources with other organizations.
Decline receiving help when another organization offers.
Miss or don’t seek opportunities for collaboration.
Feel threatened when another organization offers the same services.
Working with other organizations isn’t generally on your radar.
You think twice before referring a client to another organization.
You dominate any collaboration with another organization.

Many strong and successful organizations function on this model and do great things. What they may not yet realize is that they can add one component to become even more successful, collaboration. Here are some of the qualities of collaborative leadership.

Signs You’re a Self-Aware, Collaborative Leader

You call on other organizations to help you.
You look for opportunities to work with others.
You don’t hesitate to refer people to other organizations.
You don’t feel threatened when someone else offers similar services, you look for ways to compliment each other.
You build mutually beneficial relationships with other organizations.
You want all organizations, including your own, to succeed.
You build a network to improve service delivery to clients.
You’re able to grow and address larger problems because you have other organizations backing you up.

Think about which approach most closely matches your leadership style. Being competitive can help you strive for excellence and build a strong organization. Being collaborative helps you join with other organizations to increase your ability to serve people. When you merge the two you become a collaborative leader, which helps you in the following ways.

Benefits of Being a Self-Aware, Collaborative Leader

Positive relationships with other organizations.
Pooling of resources.
Greater capacity to serve clients because of expanded network.
You don’t have to do everything on your own.
You have access to the brain power and insights of many more people.
Reduced duplication of services.
Other professionals seek you out because they know you’re a person who brings people together.
You create a sense of community.

The shift from a competitive to a self-aware, collaborative approach is a big one for many people, often because they haven’t had a lot of experience connecting with other entities. Leaders can make the shift anytime they want, all it takes is a desire to leave the castle walls and be open to working with others. The effect of collaboration is profound. It helps organizations move from being a single player to being part of a larger team working together to make a difference. What will you do to encourage self-aware, collaborative leadership in your organization?

Cheers,

Guy