Self-awareness, team building, and healing are strongly linked in the workplace because teams can’t function well if everyone is walking around carrying personal grudges and hurts. It often falls on the team leader to help everyone function effectively but it’s nearly impossible if he or she is carrying around a lot of negative energy.

There are many negative workplace experiences that affected people negatively. Individuals sometimes hold on to these feelings for a long time even when they realize intellectually that they would be better off letting them go. I consult with leaders and employees about how they can end this cycle of negative feelings and thoughts and build stronger teams and it almost always begins with healing.

Healing your workplace is one of the most important concepts for you and your employees’ well-being and it begins with having the self-awareness to heal yourself. If you think about it, you deal with people very differently when you are healthy rather than hurt. If you want to create a work environment that is free of hurts from the past, then think about the following questions.

1.  What do I need to heal?

This question will help you define what it is that you need to look at. There is no right or wrong answer, you get to decide what part of you or your workplace is hurt and then you get to heal it. No issue is to small or trivial, if you need to heal it it is a valid starting point. You can have several issues but try to pick one to start on.

2.  How will I heal myself?

There are many avenues you can take to heal yourself and they almost always involve getting help from an outside person who can help you get a clear perspective. You benefit from realizing that you need help and then reaching out to someone who can partner with you to make it happen. There is no right or wrong approach to healing, look for an approach that works for you. Some people talk to a friend, others a therapist and others HR.

3.  How will I know that I am healed?

The goal of healing is to come to terms and feel at peace with the issues you face. You will know you are healed when an issue no longer stirs negative feelings inside you. You will also see improvements in your day to day work life because that issue won’t be affecting you in the same way.  Healing can take time so be patient and keep working on taking care of yourself. Take it easy on yourself and only work on healing one thing at a time. Once you feel better about one thing then you are then ready to move on to the next issue.

Do some careful thinking about these three questions and you will begin the process of building self-awareness and discovering what hurts and how to heal it. The idea is not to reopen terrible wounds and relive those moments, it’s to acknowledge that you have an issue and work on it. Once you heal yourself you’ll be in a great position to help your team do the same. The result is a workplace where people aren’t working out their personal stuff on each other.

How will you increase your self-awareness and start healing your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy