Self-Awareness in Leadership

I was reading a discussion on a business site about team building recently. Two vocal contributors talked about how team building was only a fluffy, superfluous activity that could only lead to coddled, lazy employees. What was needed, they contended, was discipline and a strict adherence to rules and directives. They added that employees were there only to carry out the leader’s vision and not to have a good time.

I said to myself, “Where do I sign up?  Sounds like a great place to work.”

Many leaders lack self-awareness and still function under the paradigm that the only thing that matters in business is to drive people until they break. They genuinely believe that organizations are solely about their leaders and the rest of the employees are just there to carry out their vision. Everything is wrapped around one charismatic disciplinarian who leads his flock bravely off the cliff into glory.

This style would be much more effective if people had no minds, no dreams, no independence, no skills and no need to grow or be fulfilled in any way in the workplace. In the real world, there are very few people willing to have someone boss them around mercilessly all day. So what’s a budding autocrat to do? I might look at developing my self-awareness, relaxing a bit, and letting people be who they are. I don’t say this to make leadership more difficult, I offer it as a way to create workplaces that run better because people feel better about themselves and the organization.

Feeling good is a difficult concept for leaders bred on discipline and order. Many equate feeling good with being weak but I tend to think that it’s about people performing well while feeling like they’re important individually and collectively. There’s a big difference between doing work because you have no other choice or because you want to intrinsically. When leaders are self-aware and motivate their employees from within, they can count on them using their natural talents and abilities to greater advantage. The trick is finding a way to encourage people to succeed based on their own inner motivators rather than those imposed from someone on the outside.

Team building requires the ability not only to have people produce but also to move beyond simply requiring people to perform tasks in some predetermined way toward a single goal. It’s about providing choices and opportunities and recognizing that people are able to think for themselves when given the chance. It’s easy to boss people around but much harder to have them direct themselves. How will you develop your self-awareness and practice excellent team building?

Cheers,

Guy

I’ve consulted with organizations where leaders and employees are genuinely puzzled by diversity, there is a palpable sense of resistance or worry that this diversity thing will throw everything into chaos. Other organizations welcome diversity. So what’s the difference? Self-awareness. Companies that have self-aware employees and leaders tend to welcome new information and variety of approaches because they are comfortable with themselves and others.

The bottom line with diversity is that it’s not scary, it’s simply a way to use the diverse talents and experience of your employees. If we move away from thinking of diversity of something creepy we can use it to make ourselves and our organizations more successful. What if we thought of diversity in the following ways?

• Diversity will help us use all the talents of our staff.
• Diversity will help us reduce conflict.
• Diversity will help us work collaboratively.
• Diversity will help us create stronger teams.
• Diversity will help us compete more effectively.

Diversity is as effective as we make it. If we choose to see it as a nuisance or a threat we’ll get predictable results. If we view it as a tool then it can help us succeed. Self-aware leaders and employees appreciate diversity because it gives them more tools to work with and succeed, they see it as an asset rather than a threat. What will you do to increase the self-awareness in your workplace and view diversity positively?

Cheers,

Guy

Leaders who lack self-awareness do a lot of things that alienate their employees and then shake their heads and wonder why things got out of hand when the person leaves the organization. One of the key elements of inspirational leadership is to remember that you’re there to interact positively and make things easier for the people around you. The less challenges and obstacles your employees have, the better you’ll look and the less time you’ll spend trying to put the pieces back together. Here are ten ways that leaders lose employees:

1. Treat people uncourteously or disrespectfully.
2. Don’t recognize or put to use people’s talents and abilities.
3. Put people in jobs they hate and give them no opportunity to grow.
4. Don’t listen to people.
5. Inability or refusal to fix things when they go awry.
6. Regularly get into a conflicts.
7. Insist you’re right and they’re wrong.
8. Read the employee the policy handbook instead of working with them to resolve an issue.
9. Not knowing how to communicate effectively.
10. Lack of follow-through.

The secret to enlightened leadership is to do the opposite of these things. Treat people like they really matter and show them you care deeply about their well-being and growth and you’ll create a workplace where individuals feel important and work accordingly. If you currently do any of these things, think of ways to replace the behavior with one that leads in a more positive direction and you’ll be on your way to creating a more positive workplace. What will you do to keep your employees happily working for your organization?

Cheers,

Guy