Self-Awareness in Leadership Archives – Page 14 of 20

Self-Awareness and How to Start a Dialogue on Diversity

February 14, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Many leaders and organizations that lack self-awareness find themselves struggling with diversity not because they don’t care about the subject but, rather, because they haven’t really talked about what it means to their company. For anyone looking for a way to start a frank dialogue I frequently recommend simply doing it. The following questions will help you start a conversation.

What does diversity mean to us?
How can diversity help our company?
In what ways do we already celebrate diversity?
How does diversity fit in with our company values?
What can we do to bring everyone to the table?
Is our company ready to include everyone at the table?
How can we use diverse points of view to succeed?

Leaders who lack self-awareness sometimes hesitate about starting diversity initiatives because they haven’t noticed what a gold mine they are sitting on. When we harness the power of all our staff, our organizations become stronger and we can draw on a much larger pool of talents and ideas. The more we talk about how diversity can benefit our company the less we worry about it.

Focusing on using diversity as an asset is a fundamental shift that many companies use to their advantage, but it requires having the self-awareness to realize that work needs to be done. The people in these organizations likely all started by asking themselves questions about what diversity means to their company and how they can use it to become stronger.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and start a dialogue about diversity in your organization?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Understand That Behavior Only Changes over Time

February 14, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-aware leaders understand that behavior only changes over time, so they invest the energy and resources necessary to implement programs that will generate long-lasting, positive change in their organization.

I talk with a lot of well-meaning leaders and professionals who want to provide leadership, effective communication or team building workshops for their employees. They tell me what their workplaces are like, share a laundry list of difficult challenges and situations and then expect to fix everything in a two-hour workshop. What they don’t realize is that behavior only changes over time, here are some reasons why:

People get used to doing things a certain way.
People fall into habits.
People like order and predictability.
People will endure almost anything as long as it’s familiar.
People are uncomfortable with change.

Leaders who practice self-awareness understand that their thoughts and actions can encourage behavioral change in the workplace or stifle it. Change requires deliberate and continuous effort as well as a move from short-term thinking to long-term education. A single workshop might inspire someone to briefly adjust the way they do things but, for the most part, they’ll revert back to their old behaviors if ongoing support isn’t provided.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and change behavior over time?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Know It’s Okay to Be Wrong

February 12, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-aware people know it’s okay to be wrong because it presents an opportunity for self-reflection, learning, and growth. Sadly, most individuals think it’s the end of the world if they’re incorrect about something. They’ll go through all kinds of contortions to not admit a mistake, even going as far as covering things up, blaming someone else or denying that it ever happened. The amazing thing is that being wrong is liberating. It gives you a chance to stop, be more self-aware, reevaluate, and move in a more beneficial direction.

Perhaps you avoid looking like you’re wrong because you don’t want to feel shame, weakness or inferiority. The key to getting better results in life is to have the self-awareness to understand that being wrong offers a unique opportunity to learn and grow, which helps you:

Get new information.
Learn new things.
Consider different ideas and points of view.
Be flexible and open to changing your mind.
Get different results.
Stop repeating patterns that don’t work.
Set a positive example of being able to grow.
Understanding yourself better.
Find areas for improvement.
Act like a grownup.
Live a happier life.

The ability to be wrong is a significant part of self-awareness because it indicates that you’re mature and healthy enough to admit a mistake, learn from it and move on. It’s the difference between an individual who stays stuck repeating the same error over and over because he never fixes the underlying cause and the person who is able to move past it. You get to choose whether being wrong holds you back or helps you grow and succeed.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and admit you’re wrong more often?

Cheers,

Guy

Communication Mistakes of Leaders Who Lack Self-Awareness

February 12, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

I rarely meet leaders who think they are poor communicators. Quite frequently one of these leaders will confide in me that his or her employees just aren’t getting it or that they have to repeat things a million times. The missing element in these heartfelt confessions is the role of the leader himself or herself, most of whom lack self-awareness and, by extension, communication skills.

Practicing effective communication begins with you. You decide whether you build a foundation for excellent communication or whether you keep getting the results you’ve always experienced. Many people honestly believe that they communicate well because they tell people what to do and then those people do it and seem happy. Others are certain that everything is going wonderfully because nobody ever speaks up or contradicts what they’re saying. Perhaps you’ve worked for someone who is proud of his (or her) ability to get his point across clearly and concisely and then prattles on at meetings until people fall asleep.

So what can you do to build self-awareness and enjoy great communication in your workplace rather than pretending it’s happening? It starts with looking at where you might need to make some small adjustments. Here are ten of the most common, and avoidable, communication mistakes that occur in workplaces worldwide:

One-way communication where the leader says something and it can’t be questioned.
Absence of listening to what employees have to say.
Interrupting what other people say or cutting them off in some way.
Inserting your “helpful” questions or opinions into what someone is saying.
Reacting immediately and negatively to what people say.
Pretending there’s an open door of communication.
Correcting what people say instead of valuing their ideas.
Assuming you know what the other person means.
Multitasking while someone is trying to talk with you.
Lack of deeper communication and interpersonal connections.

Imagine a workplace where all these ten things occur habitually and you’ve probably described most workplaces that currently exist. Everyone says they value communication but few actually have the self-awareness to practice it in a way that encourages people to share meaningfully. Luckily, you can change this pattern at any time by doing the opposite of each one. If you don’t listen often, do it a little more. If you don’t really have an open door, start inviting people to talk with you at a time of their choosing and simply listen to what they have to say with no interruptions or repercussions.

It’s these small steps that eventually help leaders build workplaces where effective communication is highly prized and practiced. What will you do to develop self-awareness and promote healthier communication in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Reduce Workplace Conflict

February 12, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-awareness helps you reduce workplace conflict because, when people from leadership on down understand how their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors affect themselves and others, they are able to build healthy workplaces that don’t suffer from endless strife.

We have a great deal of influence over how our workplace conflicts play out but we seldom do anything about them because we don’t know how. We aren’t given a manual on how to resolve workplace conflict or promote positive interactions, so we kind of improvise, mostly using what we learned in our family or social circle to try to fix all our challenges.

Since we haven’t been trained in how to actually defuse a situation, we frequently become part of the problem in interpersonal interactions rather than helping devise a solution. This happens because we lack self-awareness, essential conflict resolution skills, or we lose perspective and let the other person draw us into the situation. Think about the following scenarios and see if you can spot the difference between being part of the problem and not.

1. The other person gets angry and you immediately retaliate and/or defend yourself.

2. The other person gets angry and you ask them to tell you about it and you listen.

As I’m sure you can tell, example number two is the more desirable behavior and will get you far better results. There is a myth that we have to fight to the death for our point of view and deny others theirs but, in practical terms, this only perpetuates a communication style that continues the conflict because it never resolves the underlying issues that feed the situation. People who lack self-awareness stumble from conflict to conflict hoping they’ll go away or looking forward to the next one but never actually fixing the situation. I much prefer a scenario where we actually make the conflict go away by resolving it. This is possible by practicing some common-sense skills that too often get lost in the midst of all the shouting.

One of the best ways to reduce confrontation is to have the self-awareness to simply listen. The world is not going to end if you don’t retaliate or fight. In reality, you actually connect more with the other person if you just listen to them. You also benefit from not having to fight and you get to relax more. When you listen it doesn’t mean that you agree with the other person, it just indicates that you are willing to consider the other person’s point of view. Listening is a powerful skill for defusing conflict because it makes the other person feel important. People tend to explode or talk with great urgency because they are used to people cutting them off. When we don’t cut them off they can tell us what’s bothering them and then we can work together to actually find a solution.

The next skill is to have the self-awareness to not become defensive. Many people think that the only way to deal with workplace conflict is to retaliate. This approach rarely fixes anything and often worsens the situation. If your goal is to actually resolve things then it is helpful to rein yourself in and not go on the offensive. The reason we react defensively is that we feel attacked when others are in conflict with us, we take it personally. In actuality, people get upset for any number of reasons and it is usually about things that are going on inside them. Next time you are in a conflict try a different approach. Take some time to consciously listening to the other person or calm yourself down by breathing or counting. When we remain composed, we don’t add fuel to the fire and our interactions tend to go in a more positive direction. Even in the face of active conflict, if we simply take a breath and let the other person process what’s going on inside them we greatly increase the chances that they will calm down. In general, people aren’t furious at us, they are simply working on their own issues and we happen to be in the vicinity.

People like to be valued and listened to and they are much more likely to work with us to resolve problems if they see we are not going to trample all over them or become defensive. The next time you feel a clash coming on, try listening to the other person without commenting, editorializing, offering your opinion or going into defensive mode. By practicing these foundation-building skills, you will be setting the foundation for improved interactions in the future.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and reduce conflict in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Consulting Produces Long-Term Results

February 11, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Many leaders hire a self-awareness consultant for a session or two only to find that they produce little or no long-term results. Most leaders and their employees are highly motivated and conscientious professionals who genuinely want their training programs to succeed but who habitually focus on short-term patches instead of long-term programs that benefit their organizations over time.

Short-term thinking permeates many of our workplaces. I’ve had more than a few leaders who lack self-awareness ask me to transform their workplaces and employees in a single, three-hour session, and they actually believe it can be done. It takes considerably more time and effort for consulting to take hold in any organization. As with any behavior, it takes time to shift our thinking and replace it with new actions. Here are ten ideas that will help you make the most of your work with a self-awareness consultant and create long-term results:

1. Self-awareness consulting works best when it’s ongoing. A one-time session might be mildly effective if you’re teaching people a specific workplace task but it doesn’t create long-term changes in thinking and behavior. Learning any new skill (such as how to communicate well, manage effectively or build teams) takes deliberate practice over time.

2. Help your employees keep practicing the new skills. Your staff members benefit from your support to keep the consulting going. Try to set people up for success by giving them opportunities to practice the material instead of expecting them to be perfect immediately after one or two sessions.

3. Self-awareness consulting starts with leadership. No initiative succeeds in an organization if leaders aren’t fully committed to participating actively in the program. If you’re not involved on an ongoing basis, then your staff members will think the program doesn’t really matter.

4. Don’t hire a self-awareness consultant on the cheap. You don’t have to spend excessive amounts on trendy experts just show your employees that you’re willing to invest in their growth and development. It’s more productive to pay more for an ongoing, quality consulting program than many inexpensive and ineffective ones.

5. Focus on specific workplace behaviors. You either practice positive behaviors in the workplace or go down some other path. Focus on hiring a self-awareness consultant that helps leaders and employees behave in positive ways and build a more productive work environment.

6. Don’t punish employees with a consultant. Your program will lose all credibility if you force employees to attend as a corrective measure or because you think they did something wrong. Self-awareness consulting is about ongoing educational opportunity and growth, not about disciplining employees.

7. Attendance is highly encouraged. No one is allowed to schedule meetings or be called out from sessions, especially leadership. Make time during the workday so that people can see that the consulting program is worth their time. Leadership attends consistently and sets the example for the rest of the staff.

8. Set specific goals and measure results as you go. Identify one or two areas you want your consulting program to affect and measure what’s happening before and after the training as well as at intervals in the future. Keep practicing what works and make modifications to strengthen areas that need extra attention.

9. Have the self-awareness consultant train you and your staff to keep things going. Design your consulting programs so that key employees gain the expertise necessary to train other staff members. When your staff can train itself you can keep the knowledge spreading indefinitely and continue making refinements.

10. Make the consulting program part of your culture. You decide how important the program is in your organization. If everyone from your leadership down is highly invested in and actively involved in the program, then it will become a natural element in your workplace.

Try these ideas and you’ll enjoy the benefits of self-awareness consulting that creates lasting change in your organization. All it takes is your commitment and the energy to keep it going. What will you do to develop self-awareness and promote long-term self-awareness consulting in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

Leadership, Self-Awareness, and Getting Rid of Workplace Hierarchy

February 11, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Leaders who possess self-awareness don’t support hierarchy because they understand that people function better and feel more valued when they’re not put in constricting boxes or compared to others based on arbitrary designations because of someone’s need for power and control.

Hierarchy is an inescapable reality in our workplaces even though it stifles creativity and independent thinking. It generally comes from what we saw in our families: One or two people who are in charge, write the law and don’t allow for any input or questioning because it’s against the order they’ve imposed. Leaders who lack self-awareness may not realize how the walls they build between people affect the functioning of their organizations. Authoritarian hierarchy creates many undesirable effects:

People don’t feel important.
People aren’t heard.
All rules are issued from above.
Creative thinking is discouraged.
Questioning is forbidden.
People are labelled and put in boxes.
Decision-making is based on rank or status.
Leadership enjoys additional perks.
People are afraid to think autonomously.
Everyone’s role is defined from the top.
Little tolerance for new ideas or approaches.

A large percentage of our workplaces are designed to manage and control employees rather than let them shine. The key to creating a self-aware, dynamic, fluid workplace is to get rid of the barriers between people and encourage them to interact freely and share ideas. Sure, there will be times when leadership has to make a final decision, but it will be less frequent because people are amazingly adept at thinking on their own when we let them.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and reduce the influence of hierarchy in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy