Self-Awareness, Change, and Diversity - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness, Change, and Diversity

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So much of diversity and change has to do with increasing self-awareness and restructuring the way we do things in the workplace to include new ideas and approaches. It’s natural for people to become apprehensive when changes occur in the workplace. This could be a new copy machine, a new procedure, a different mission, a change of leadership or changes in the composition of the workforce.

As with anything new, people have a remarkable ability to increase their self-awareness and adapt to any changes. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to increase self-awareness and help you deal with change in any form. Challenge yourself to come up with answers even if you initially can’t think of any.

1. What can I do to use this change to improve my company?
2. What benefits does this change bring?
3. What skills or abilities does this new employee/changing workforce bring?
4. What can I personally do today to welcome this change?
5. What things do I have in common with this changing landscape?

When you look at these questions you begin to demystify change. As we all know, change is inevitable. These questions will help you create a workplace that truly functions based on that principle.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and welcome change and diversity in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

Leadership and Self-Awareness - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Leadership and Self-Awareness

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Leadership and self-awareness go hand in hand to build happy workplaces but many leaders have no clue how their actions affect the people around them and the well-being of their organizations. They stumble through their days working out their personal issues on people without realizing what they’re doing.

Leaders with self-awareness have the ability to manage their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors so that they treat themselves and others positively. Most leaders have little to no understanding of how they affect the people around them so they spend the day bossing everyone around instead of inspiring them. Here are five signs you’re practicing leadership with self-awareness:

  1. You don’t bark orders.
  2. You create a work environment where people motivate themselves from within.
  3. You don’t picture yourself as a fearless leader steering a ship through turbulent waters.
  4. You work collaboratively for the collective good.
  5. Your staff genuinely likes you.
  6. You appreciate feedback and do something positive with it.
  7. You’re constantly growing.
  8. You delegate often and well.
  9. You don’t get into power struggles.
  10. There is low turnover in your department or company.
  11. There is very little conflict in your organization.
  12. You communicate well because you’re an active listener.
  13. You’re a balanced, likable person.
  14. You don’t lead through fear but rather through kindness and compassion.
  15. You have empathy.

Leaders who possess self-awareness get a lot more done with less effort. There’s no mystery to becoming more self-aware, you just have to work at it every day. Try picking one of the items on the list and practicing it until you get good at it, then move on to the next. Before you know it, you’ll be leading with self-awareness. What will you do to get the process going?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and How to Start a Dialogue on Diversity - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and How to Start a Dialogue on Diversity

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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 - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Self-Aware Leaders Understand That Behavior Only Changes over Time

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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-Awareness and the Record of Your Actions - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and the Record of Your Actions

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An important part of self-awareness is understanding how your behaviors affect not only you, but others as well. As you go through life, you create a record of your actions:

  • The way you treat yourself and others.
  • Whether you live authentically or not.
  • Whether you heal your hurts or run from them.
  • Whether you follow your true path in life.
  • The beneficial vibes you spread.
  • The good deeds you do.
  • The quality of your relationships.
  • Your inner health.
  • The depth of your understanding of yourself.
  • Your level of kindness, compassion and balance.

Each one of your actions reflects who you are at that particular moment. The pattern you establish throughout your life becomes the verifiable record of whom you chose to be. It’s up to you to consciously decide how you behave in life and whether you leave a positive imprint on the world around you. What will your actions say about you?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Know It's Okay to Be Wrong - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

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

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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 - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Communication Mistakes of Leaders Who Lack Self-Awareness

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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:

  1. One-way communication where the leader says something and it can’t be questioned.
  2. Absence of listening to what employees have to say.
  3. Interrupting what other people say or cutting them off in some way.
  4. Inserting your “helpful” questions or opinions into what someone is saying.
  5. Reacting immediately and negatively to what people say.
  6. Pretending there’s an open door of communication.
  7. Correcting what people say instead of valuing their ideas.
  8. Assuming you know what the other person means.
  9. Multitasking while someone is trying to talk with you.
  10. 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

The Self-Awareness Guy