Self-Awareness in Leadership

Business Retreats Based on Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Business Retreats Based on Self-Awareness

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Leaders and organizations plan retreats to help bring employees together or conduct some planning but, too often, they endure events where everyone means well but nothing really gets done and people leave more confused than they were before. It happens all the time because we tend to overlook self-awareness, a key building block that helps us grow and succeed on a more meaningful level.

Successful retreats help the participants use self-awareness to accomplish what they want without creating more confusion or acting as a band-aid that doesn’t actually fix anything. Here are some practical ideas based on self-awareness for you to consider before your next retreat:

  • What do you want to accomplish? Think of what your top priority is rather than trying to jam a million things into the agenda.
  • Make sure all key players are present, attendance is not optional. I recommend that all top managers, including owners be present.
  • Do you have a plan for the event. What will be happening and who will make it happen?
  • Do you have an outside facilitator with no vested interest or personal connections with the company to facilitate the event.
  • Have you scheduled enough time and secured a venue that allows interruption-free participation?
  • Is the location easy to access and is the venue comfortable and conducive to positive interaction?
  • Does everyone have a clear understanding of what will be happening at the retreat and who is expected to be there?
  • Have you thought of ways to encourage participation and make the event an enjoyable experience?

A carefully planned retreat can help your organization be more self-aware, move forward, clarify your vision and focus your efforts. The key is to plan an event that leaves people wanting to succeed rather than feeling confused. What are your thoughts on building self-awareness to create a positive retreat?

Regards,

Guy

Self-Aware Organizations Benefit from Diversity - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Organizations Benefit from Diversity

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Leaders frequently ask me why they should pay attention to diversity at all in their organization. The answer is simply so they can bring people together to get more done. While this might sound obvious on the surface, it’s a principle that’s frequently overlooked by leaders who lack the self-awareness necessary to realize that their organization would benefit from people getting along well.

The whole point of making sure everyone is included in idea development, decision making, and workplace operations is so that your entire organization can benefit from the varied talents and abilities your employees bring to the table. It’s counterproductive when leaders lack self-awareness and pretend diversity doesn’t exist when they could be using it to succeed at higher levels. Here are some of the benefits of diversity:

  • Reduced conflict.
  • Improved morale.
  • Stronger teams.
  • Less mistrust.
  • Greater collaboration.
  • More buy-in from employees.
  • Increased employee motivation.

These are outcomes that leaders say they aspire to in their organizations but somehow, when they are associated with diversity, they get nervous. There’s really no reason to be apprehensive, it’s actually an opportunity to invite everyone to the table and prosper from their input. You and your organization will benefit in many ways. How will you increase your self-awareness and welcome diversity into your organization?

Cheers,

Guy

10 Practical Team Building Tips for Self-Aware Leaders - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

10 Practical Team Building Tips for Self-Aware Leaders

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Many leaders and organizations try to implement team building in one or two sessions only to find that their employees quickly revert to old behaviors. It takes self-awareness, time, and commitment for team building to take root and grow in any organization. It’s nearly impossible to move away from the behaviors you’ve built up over time and replace them with new, more effective ones without sustained effort. Here are ten practical tips to help you demonstrate and model self-awareness as a leader and implement a successful team building program.

  1. Make sure leadership is fully involved and sets a positive tone.
  2. Team building is offered to employees at every level.
  3. A one-hour time block per week is set aside for team building activities.
  4. Refrain from changing the team building schedule or combining it with other meetings.
  5. No interruptions during sessions, including people using phones, texting or being called out of the activities.
  6. Leave egos and agendas at the door, everyone is treated equally.
  7. Use an experienced, positive and neutral facilitator for activities.
  8. Focus on activities that build deeper interactions and relationships.
  9. Practice new behaviors over time.
  10. Evaluate how you’re doing after six months and make adjustments if necessary.

The key to successful team building is to have the self-awareness to model behavior and participate in activities that bring people together on a deeper level and help them acquire skills to keep moving forward. Practice team building over time so that everyone gets used to doing it. Once people are comfortable with your new approach, it will become second nature and your workplace will shift to one where collaboration and shared purpose are the norm. How will you practice self-awareness and promote long-term team building in your organization?

Cheers,

Guy

Conflict Resolution Requires Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Conflict Resolution Requires Self-Awareness

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I recently facilitated a workshop on conflict resolution and I found it fascinating that almost no one possessed the self-awareness to understand their own role in conflict. I heard many comments about how the other person would be so much easier to get along with if they only did this or that but very little about what each participant would do himself or herself to improve the situation.

Conflict can be a horrible mess or it can be an opportunity for growth and increased understanding. The challenge for many people is that it requires putting their own issues aside in order to connect with someone else, which requires a high level of self-awareness. So how can you become more self-aware and resolve conflicts more easily? Try thinking of the following ideas the next time you feel a conflict coming on.

1. Be aware of your personal triggers. What sets you off?

2. Remember that you decide how you react to situations.

3. Only you can let someone make you mad.

4. Understand it’s not personal, people aren’t trying to slight you in general.

5. Learn to recognize exactly when someone is getting to you.

5. Where do you feel it? Identify where you feel the conflict in your body.

6. Do something different to interrupt the pattern.

If you deliberately give some thought to these areas you will find that you can increase your self-awareness, reduce the way conflict affects you, and move toward more positive interactions. It takes some discipline but it also affords you a way to not let conflict consume your life.

What will you do to develop your self-awareness and decrease the conflict around you?

Cheers,

Guy

10 Characteristics of Leaders Who Lack Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

10 Characteristics of Leaders Who Lack Self-Awareness

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Quite frequently in my trainings I notice that certain leaders become uncomfortable, defensive or combative when I suggest that they take a look at themselves and their behaviors.  They’ll list their accomplishments, defend their tough decisions, justify negative behaviors or blame others for things that went wrong.  Sometimes I get dead silence or resistance because they aren’t comfortable looking at themselves.  It can be hard to look in the mirror.

Self-awareness is, understandably, a somewhat unusual concept for many leaders because it’s not emphasized or practiced in our workplaces.  We tend to focus on results rather than people so, naturally, leaders gauge how good they are by the kind of results they get rather than how healthy, insightful or empathic they are.

Most leaders are simply responsible for being authoritative, highly productive and making decisions that make money without ever having to take a look at what kind of people they are and how they affect others.  Here are ten characteristics of leaders who lack self-awareness:

  1. Any problems are due to other people’s shortcomings.
  2. They don’t have a sense of how their actions affect others.
  3. They haven’t worked out their own stuff and it tends to get on their employees.
  4. They almost exclusively make decisions based on their own perspective and needs.
  5. They don’t ask for feedback from others because they know they’re doing a great job.
  6. They get upset when someone questions what they do.
  7. They haven’t found deep personal fulfillment and happiness yet.
  8. Their ego drives their actions.
  9. They worry about how events affect them but not others.
  10. They have difficulty praising the great work others do.

Think about these ten points and whether you know someone who practices any of them.  If you do, it doesn’t mean they’re bad or wrong, it just shows to what extent we’ve glorified the image of the strong, productive and decisive leader who runs around all day barking orders and never has to think of who might be getting hurt.

Self-awareness is about being comfortable with who you are because you’ve reached a point of genuine health, balance and understanding of yourself and others.  The key point is that self-awareness leads to treating yourself and others well.  The happier you are with yourself the more likely you’ll be to treat your employees with empathy and kindness.

Self-aware leaders move beyond the need to appear powerful or trumpet how great they are to simply being good people.  What ideas do you have to encourage more self-awareness in leadership?

Cheers,

Guy

Insecure Leaders Lack Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Insecure Leaders Lack Self-Awareness

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Lack of self-awareness leads to insecure leaders who are unable to run their organizations effectively or interact positively with their employees. They focus way too much on unhealthy and unproductive behaviors rather than building positive, supportive, flexible workplaces.

Insecure leaders often do negative things in the workplace because they don’t feel great about themselves deep down inside, which comes from a lack of self-awareness about their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, and how they impact others in the workplace.

Leaders display insecure behavior for many reasons including because they are frightened, feel threatened, are not in control of their own actions or emotions or feel like they are not important enough. Some leaders withdraw when they are insecure and others become overbearing or require a lot of support and attention. Regardless of how you behave, insecurity is about how you feel about yourself. So what can you do to feel great about yourself and your leadership abilities.

Consider the following ideas to boost your self-awareness and reduce your insecurity.

Characteristics of Secure Leaders

  • Aren’t threatened by others and don’t need to dominate.
  • Listen well and don’t talk on top of others.
  • Don’t require attention all the time.
  • Are comfortable with other people’s success.
  • Don’t feel they have to win.
  • Don’t put other people down to make themselves feel better.

Characteristics of Insecure Leaders

  • Threatened by others.
  • Talk a lot to get attention.
  • Need to be the center of attention.
  • Jealous of other people’s success.
  • Competitive, always need to win.
  • Put people down to feel better.

Which list do your behaviors reflect more often? If you see yourself on the insecure side, it’s not the end of the world, all you have to do is increase some of the positive traits. Even highly insecure people can feel better about themselves by practicing behaviors that allow them to experience their own success and help others do the same.

Leaders can increase their self-awareness by working out their own personal issues and finding ways to use their talents and abilities in the workplace. When you focus on building yourself up in positive ways you can then do the same for your workplace and employees. Being confident takes some practice but you’ll get to enjoy a more rewarding work life.

What will you do to develop your self-awareness and be a healthy, secure leader?

Cheers,

Guy

6 Steps to Be a Self-Aware Leader and Resolve Workplace Conflict - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

6 Steps to Be a Self-Aware Leader and Resolve Workplace Conflict

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The two most common approaches to workplace conflict resolution are: making it worse and avoiding it. Leaders who possess self-awareness understand that conflict is a signal that something important is happening and that they need to pay attention to it. They are self-aware enough to realize that conflict is a great opportunity to bring co-workers together and improve how their workplaces function. Try these six steps the next time conflict erupts in your workplace:

1.  Name the conflict (keep it simple, one sentence or less). Don’t worry about giving it the perfect name, what matters is just making sure everyone is on the same page.

2.  Each of you describe how you see the conflict. All views are valid. Let people share their stories without judgments, rebuttals, or comments.

3.  Brainstorm a few ideas to fix the conflict. All ideas are valid and welcome.

4.  Agree and choose one of the ideas from the brainstorm to work on. Don’t worry about which one you pick, the important thing is for the people involved to work together.

5.  Each of you decides what you will work on and by when. Let each person chose what he or she wants to do.

6.  Get an outside person involved if you are still having difficulty working together.

I’ve found that, if two people just sit down and agree to talk (respectfully, without shouting, and in a quiet setting), they can resolve even the most complex situations. It’s wonderful when two people have the self-awareness necessary to work together, come to an agreement, and figure out a mutually beneficial way to resolve the issue at hand.

Remember that dealing with workplace conflict isn’t a quick fix that happens immediately, it takes people agreeing to sit down with each other and working together to develop new solutions over time. What will you do to develop your self-awareness and resolve conflict in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy