Leadership Self-Awareness

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

Self-Aware Organizations Benefit from Diversity

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership / , ,

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

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership, Self-Consciousness / , , ,

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

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership, Self-Consciousness / , ,

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

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership / ,

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

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership, Self-Consciousness / , ,

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

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Autocratic Leadership - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Autocratic Leadership

/ / 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

Self-Aware Leadership and Developing a Clear Vision for Your Organization - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leadership and Developing a Clear Vision for Your Organization

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership, Self-Consciousness / , , ,

There are countless leaders who let their organizations drag them along as they hold on for dear life. For them, every workday is another exercise in reacting and trying to manage chaos. There’s a significant difference between letting your organization happen to you and having the self-awareness to make things happen proactively.

Do you have a clear vision at this moment of where you want to take your organization? If the answer is no, then ask yourself these questions:

1. Am I doing what I really want to do in my organization?

2. Do I feel successful and fulfilled when I leave work?

3. Does my organization build me up as a professional?

4. Do I have clear goals for the future of my organization?

5. Do I have a strategy or plan for how I will lead?

The answers to these questions will give you an idea of where your leadership could take your organization. Sometimes the only difference between leaders who succeed and those who don’t is their ability to plan proactively.

When you are actively working on developing your self-awareness, you’ll be able to asses your strengths and areas for improvement, thus making it easier to come up with a plan that moves your organization in a positive direction.

Take a moment this week to ask yourself these questions and to start planning your future success rather than reacting to whatever comes your way.  You’ll enjoy having a clearer vision of your organization’s progress. What will you do to practice self-aware leadership and develop a clear vision for your company?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy