Self-Awareness in Leadership Archives – Page 18 of 20

Using Self-Awareness to Communicate More Effectively

January 30, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

You can use self-awareness to communicate more effectively because, when you understand and can positively manage your and others’ emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, you’re more adept at chatting with people.

We all are capable of communicating effectively, we just haven’t learned how to actually do it. Here are some basic tips on how to get started.

1. Set up an atmosphere for communicating. Everyone gets to say what they want, nobody is punished, everyone is safe to say what they want with no fear of retribution.

2. Everyone agrees to listen and only person talks at a time. When someone speaks other people simply listen. There should be no advice giving, rebuttals or contradicting. Everyone gets a chance to say what they want.

3. Everyone agrees that there is no such thing as a wrong comment or dumb question.

4. Everyone agrees to talk about the same amount of time. No one person monopolizes the conversation. No one person is more important than another.

5. We agree to communicate with each other respectfully, with a calm tone of voice, without harsh language and with no derogatory comments.

6. We agree that any information that is communicated will not be used against someone or to make them feel bad.

7. Keep it simple. Say what you mean, say it briefly and constructively.

8. Leave any personal agendas out of the meeting.

9. Keep it positive. Communication ideally builds a positive atmosphere that promotes solutions rather than only gripe sessions.

Once you follow all of these ideas, you will be on your way to communicating effectively. Each one takes practice and commitment from all parties involved. Practice each one (one at a time) until you master it. When you have mastered all of them you will experience the peace of mind that comes from communicating in a healthy way.

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

Cheers,

Guy

Business Consulting That Builds Self-Awareness

January 30, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Business consulting based on self-awareness can help you improve yourself and your business by helping you focus your energy and talent on things that will help you take your business to the next level. I help executives, managers and companies develop self-awareness, improve staff morale, increase productivity, build stronger teams and practice excellent workplace communications. I help managers to help them delegate more effectively and give their staff the opportunity to grow and excel. I help business owners focus their vision and take action on their goals.

Successful business owners know that when their employees feel their skills and abilities are being recognized and utilized the business benefits from a more productive workforce. Skilled managers understand that a happy workforce reduces turnover and hiring costs. I enjoy working with businesses to help them identify their employees strengths and use their talents.

The consulting services I provide include:

Self-Awareness Consulting for Individuals: Targeted support for leaders and staff to help improve specific situations. Helping individuals clarify what is happening in the situation and develop strategies to meet the challenge. Individuals build on their own strengths and devise their own plans of action with the support and encouragement of a coach.

Self-Awareness Consulting for Groups: Working intensively with staff to build a shared culture and purpose. Building stronger interpersonal connections through ongoing skill building. Monitoring participant progress and promoting accountability by encouraging participants to meet their goals and plan for the present and future.

Self-Awareness Consulting to Increase Success: Supportive partnering to identify areas of interest, barriers to achievement and areas of strength. Building clearer goals and devising specific strategies to reach those goals. Developing a clearer vision of where you are going and how you will get there.

Businesses benefit from having an impartial outside person help leaders and staff individually and in small groups to build skills and achieve goals. My self-awareness consulting services are an ongoing process that helps the individual clarify what she wants to accomplish and helps her achieve it through strategic support and accountability. My consulting is individualized and focuses on promoting successful behaviors that create change over time.

What will you do to increase self-awareness in your organization?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Deeper Communication Skills

January 24, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

This two-part series on self-awareness and deeper communication skills is designed to help you build a workplace environment where people interact positively and get more done with less effort.

Many workplace conflicts arise because of disparate values, goals, objectives, strategies, levels of self-awareness, and points of view. Well-meaning, intelligent leaders and employees can genuinely want to get along but not know how to communicate meaningfully and productively. When I consult with groups in active conflict, I often help the participants learn and practice skills to help them connect on a deeper level, interact positively and generate positive results in the workplace.

We sometimes forget to build relationships before jumping into problem-solving and we don’t consistently create environments where people are encouraged to be self-aware and work together to find solutions. The most common communication model is people talking at each other instead of with each other. I’ve found that individuals have an amazing capability to work collaboratively when they take the time to build a strong foundation first. Here is a practical approach to help you create a workplace environment where people are self-aware and reach mutually beneficial solutions. This process works best with groups of twenty people or less.

Agree on a place and time to meet. Make it comfortable, interruption-free and conducive to conversation.
Have a skilled, welcoming, neutral facilitator run the meeting.
Have the facilitator welcome everyone and present the ground rules: One person talks at a time and, when that person is talking, everyone listens. All opinions and ideas are valid.
Have the facilitator pick a single topic of interest.
Have each person in the room talk about his or her perspective on the topic for up to two minutes. Encourage people to talk from the heart and not from the head. Also mention that they don’t have to talk about anything they don’t feel comfortable sharing.
Ask the group to listen to the person speaking without interruptions, comments, editorializing, rebuttals, reactions or any other kind of distraction. Ask people to simply listen and remind them that everyone else will do the same for them when it’s their turn.
When everyone is done speaking ask the participants to share their impressions of what just happened. Go around the room and allow each person up to a minute to share.
Take a break.
Have the neutral facilitator pick another topic of interest.
Repeat the process three times.

Once you’ve repeated this process three times the group will be ready to move on to the next phase which is working together. Stay tuned for part two of this series where we’ll talk about how to help people collaborate to solve problems.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and practice deeper communication skills in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

Leaders Who Lack Self-Awareness Don’t Succeed at Team Building

January 24, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Leaders who lack self-awareness don’t succeed at team building because they don’t know how to manage their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, let alone think about how to help others do it.

I get a lot of questions about team building revolving around how to bring people together, help employees work well in groups or encourage people to get along. The focus always seems to be on a group of people rather than individuals. Over many years of helping people build dynamic, productive teams I’ve found that an excellent place to start is with the I. Nothing happens without I and here are five reasons why.

You Don’t Believe Team Building Works

If you’re not into team building then no amount of cajoling or persuading is going to convince you that team building can help you build a more positive workplace. You’ll likely not participate fully or buy into team building activities or creating a workplace philosophy that encourages it.

You Believe that People are Solely Individual Achievers

This mindset creates motivated individuals who act alone as free agents rather than contributing to the well-being of the group. This includes instances of the “star salesman” or “go-to guy” who are enshrined because they do such a great individual job. What happens when we idolize individuals is that we create a culture where one person is more important than the other. Great teams are about people being equally valuable and important.

You Can’t Yet See the Long-Term Benefits of Team Building

Perhaps you’ve never worked in an organization where people worked together and got more done with less effort. Maybe all you’ve seen is people backstabbing and competing with each other so you’ve surmised that it has to be that way. Team building is part of a long-term strategy that helps you and your employees build a workplace where people are able to problem-solve and support each other.

You Think Other People Build Teams, Not You

Team building is fine to get the rabble working together but you’re above the fray. This leads in almost every instance to you not being part of the team. This perspective overlooks that you can actually benefit from actively participating and being part of a team.

You Try to Avoid Conflict

It’s hard to navigate the challenges or conflicts that arise when people work together. Most people stay stuck “agreeing to disagree” instead of learning skills to actually work together and build strong teams. It’s the act of working together to resolve conflicts that builds more effective workplaces.

The thread that runs through all these examples is that they all begin with you. You decide whether you create the conditions necessary to promote excellent team building in your workplace. You choose whether it’s a priority or a band aid when you’ve already reached meltdown.

The key to successful team building is to practice and promote the skills that will help you and your people work well together. What will you do to develop self-awareness and promote successful team building in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Being a Happy Leader

January 23, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Most of the consulting I do is with leaders who value self-awareness and are (or aspire to be) genuinely happy; not superficially jubilant or pretending to be joyful so as not to appear weak. Self-aware, happy leaders create positive workplaces where people feel great about themselves and the atmosphere is welcoming and supportive. They focus on encouraging and sharing joy.

Happy and leadership aren’t two words we see a lot in corporate culture. It’s almost heretical to suggest that someone who is deeply happy could do anything but sit around being all blissed out. So we settle for leaders who aren’t self-aware and don’t even like themselves, let alone their employees or workplaces, and it shows in countless organizations that hobble along dysfunctionally or produce robustly but unhappily.

The key is to merge happiness with effectiveness by building contented leaders who also get a lot done. One of the best ways to begin the process is by encouraging self-awareness, which is a deep understanding of who you are and how your thoughts and actions affect you and others. It guides how you treat yourself and others and what kind of leadership you practice. Let’s look at a real world example to illustrate this idea.

Leader A says he’s a happy-go-lucky person who always enjoys going to work. He has a lot of friends and describes himself as confident and an optimist. He has a work life that looks great to everyone around him but, if he’s forced to take a closer look, he’s only superficially happy. Just below the surface he carries unresolved issues that are so painful he does everything in his power to never look at them. He constantly struggles with voices inside his head that judge him and others and cast a negative shadow on everything he does. He constantly questions his self worth and doesn’t trust others. He thinks his employees are out to get him or make him look bad. He bristles if anyone questions his authority. Leader A smiles on the outside but is constantly battling the demons he harbors inside. Stubbornly self-reliant, he doesn’t seek help and is convinced nobody would be there for him anyway. This type of leader is not living a life of self-awareness because he won’t even begin the process of understanding who he is in order to move forward. He chooses instead to live a life of superficial happiness based on his outward appearance. He treats his employees accordingly.

Leader B also struggles with issues that hurt him deeply and threaten to create internal imbalance. He appears happy to his employees and co-workers but his happiness comes from a very different place. Leader B decided years ago to consciously examine the events that brought him pain. He worked actively to acknowledge and heal his past and created a plan to move beyond the hurt. Leader B feels consistently and genuinely happy because he has healed the wounds from his past. His happiness is real because it’s grounded in deep self-awareness that grew from healing himself. He effortlessly shares his joy with his employees and co-workers.

True self-awareness and happiness come from deep inside you. They are states of being that can only be achieved when you resolve the issues from your past. This doesn’t mean that you need to live in the past, the goal is to pay attention to the things that hurt you earlier in life and fix them so you can move in a positive direction.

Leaders who lead from a place of self-awareness, balance, and bliss not only create kinder workplaces, they also feel better about themselves. Once you leave the burdens of the past behind, it frees you up to experience the workplace in new ways. It’s like going to work without the giant boulder you used to carry around.

Self-aware leadership is not about being selfish or self-indulgent, it’s about understanding who you are and constantly working on becoming the best person you can be so you can lead better. As you become more comfortable with yourself you’ll find that work (and life) will be easier. What will you do to build self-awareness and be a genuinely happy leader?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Finding Your Path as a Leader

January 22, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-awareness helps you find your path as a leader because, when you understand who you are and what you really want in life, you are able to identify things that bring you joy at work instead of misery.

Many leaders experience discomfort at work because they are not doing the things they love. This feeling manifests itself in many ways including unhappiness, lack of motivation and loss of focus. The great thing about work is that you can move in any direction you want at any time. Here’s a couple ideas to help you begin your journey.

Define Your Path

How will you know where you want to go if you haven’t defined it yet? Take some time to increase your self-awareness and figure out who you are and what really brings you joy at work. Focus on ways to reach for your dreams. The idea is to work in an environment that reflects what you really love to do and becomes your path. The more you connect with yourself the clearer your path will look.

Listen to Your Inner Voice

We spend so much time listening to what other people think we should do that we frequently ignore the most important voice, our own. Once you focus on developing your self-awareness and connecting with your dreams at work, the voice inside you will let you know if you’re on course or veering in some other direction. Your inner voice gives you clues and insight and tells you when you’re on the path. Learn to listen to it and pay attention to what it says.

Take Action

Once you’re on your path, doors will open for you that you didn’t know existed before. Make sure to take advantage of opportunities that come your way and that fit with your true goals and dreams. Focus on small actions that build your self-awareness and confidence, and always keep in mind that staying on your path means staying true to yourself.

Following your path is a matter of building self-awareness by getting in touch with who you really are and building a career based on that idea. Remember to take it easy on yourself; it’s OK to go off the path occasionally as long as you’re living the majority of your life on or near it. What will you do to increase self-awareness and be more fulfilled at work?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Value Diversity

January 22, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-aware leaders and organizations are aware of the benefits of a diversity in the workplace. Diversity is not just a buzzword that creates extra work for human resources departments, it is a tangible asset that can be used to benefit the organization. First a brief definition of diversity. I have worked with many companies to help them overcome the challenges diversity presents and each company defines diversity differently. I don’t believe in complicating things so I propose the following definition:

Workplace Diversity

The issues related to developing a workplace that is uniformly inclusive and encourages meaningful participation from all individuals in the organization regardless of background.

This brief definition gets rid of a lot of the extraneous noise related to diversity. We tend to ask too many questions and stumble around issues like race, age, gender, disability and culture when all we really want to do is help our employees get along.

Proactive human resources departments understand the benefits of designing policies that draw from the talent pool and encourage productivity and innovation. Why would any company limit the potential of the employees unless it expressly wanted to limit its own success?

If you are in human resources or are a leader/manager looking for ideas to increase inclusiveness then you might consider the following diversity-boosting ideas.

1. Hire based on qualifications required for a specific job.

2. Strive to create as varied a mix of people in your workplace as possible.

3. Ask your managers to actively identify people’s talents and use them.

4. Encourage people to leave their preconceptions at the door.

5. Create opportunities for the growth and success of all your employees.

6. Set up an ongoing training program that helps individuals discuss diversity.

7. Create a comprehensive written strategy for increasing diversity in your workplace.

8. Practice these approaches over time.

Diversity is not a mystery and is easily incorporated into the culture of any organization. It requires self-awareness, buy-in, and commitment starting at the top. The rewards are impressive. Many companies report increased innovation, productivity, morale and team effectiveness when they implement a thoughtful plan to boost diversity.

Diversity is not a destabilizing force, it is an opportunity to harness the power of the many amazing talents of your workforce. Those who understand this potential succeed at high levels. What will you do to develop self-awareness and use diversity to help your organization thrive?

Cheers,

Guy