Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leaders Know Employees Matter - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leaders Know Employees Matter

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Leaders who lack self-awareness try all kinds of strategies to show their employees they matter. These efforts frequently consist of well-meaning but superficial attempts to demonstrate how much the organization really cares. Things like:

  • The company picnic.
  • Employee of the month (including photo on wall).
  • Mention in the newsletter.
  • Bonus of some kind.
  • Giveaway of some kind.
  • Group email extolling some accomplishment.

These types of efforts yield short-term morale boosting results for the person being recognized. What they overlook is building morale by celebrating the unique talents and abilities of everyone and doing it on a deeper level.

So how do self-aware leaders show employees they matter? It’s a revolutionary process called listening to them, which works like this:

  1. Set up a time with the employee where you can talk with no interruptions and both of you are relaxed.
  2. Ask the employee how he or she is doing. Also ask what’s going well in their job and what they would improve. Ask them for their ideas on how to improve things. Make sure to ask only open-ended questions, the kind that don’t result in a yes or no.
  3. Listen to him or her without interrupting, getting defensive, opining, giving advice, fixing anything or reacting negatively.
  4. Repeat the process at a time convenient for both of you.

This practical approach will help you show your employees they matter in less time and with far greater meaning than any recognition program. The reason for this is that people like for their bosses to show an interest in them as well as value their input and wisdom. They like to be recognized on a personal level and feel like they’re important. Listening also builds rapport and trust on an individual level.

So much of the way many organizations run is squeezing the most performance possible out of everyone and then throwing them one or two a recognition crumbs. Self-aware leaders understand that connecting with their employees directly and compassionately creates a happier, more effective workplace. It also helps leaders because they gain insights and perspectives they might not otherwise if they hadn’t listened.

Listening is a powerful tool to validate your employees and show them they matter. Try this approach sometime and make it a habit. You’ll learn things about your employees and organization that will help you lead better and get more done. It also gives you a remarkable opportunity to take action to build a more highly functioning and happier workplace.

An important added benefit: Your employees will like you more. What will you do to develop self-awareness, listen to your employees, and show them they really matter?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Trust Their Employees - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leaders Trust Their Employees

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I’ve met many leaders who lack self-awareness and don’t trust their employees. They hover endlessly around any given employee and offer “helpful” tips or constantly correct whatever the person is doing. They allow no independence and don’t delegate tasks. I’ve had leaders nonchalantly express in several workshops that they can’t trust their employees to do anything right so they have to do it themselves.

Guess what kind of workplace these leaders create? It’s usually one populated by employees who are flustered, annoyed, dependent, unfulfilled, unmotivated, and who don’t really care about their work. After all, why work hard when your talents and abilities will never be recognized?

Not trusting employees is not about being good or bad, you’ll just get better results if you trust people rather than constraining them. If you don’t trust your employees here are five tips to help you build self-awareness and move in a positive direction.

1.  Ask yourself the question, “Do I like it when people trust me?”  Most people feel great when their bosses trust them.

2.  Take a look at yourself.  There is a reason you don’t trust people because there are many leader who actually trust their staff and get excellent results from them.  Without mentioning your employees and focusing only on yourself, what is the reason?

3.  Provide educational opportunities.  If you feel you can’t trust an employee with a given task then provide training that will help them learn the necessary skills.  Extra credit if you allow someone else other than you do the training.

4.  Do you feel out of control when your employees make their own decisions?  This is a very normal feeling to have and it can be shifted by simply giving people the ability to work independently.

5.  Change your focus.  If all you think about is that people are untrustworthy then that’s the kind of workplace you’ll create.  Look for ways to focus on how you can trust your employees more every day.

Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, “Trust is earned,” which too often allows leaders who lack self-awareness set arbitrary and constantly changing standards that nobody can ever meet. Granted, there are going to be employees that you can’t trust because you caught them stealing but, for everyone else, they’re just there to try to do a good job if you’ll let them. You decide whether you give them the benefit of the doubt or keep them stuffed in a box.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and trust your employees more?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Know How to Keep Their Employees Motivated - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leaders Know How to Keep Their Employees Motivated

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It can be challenging to keep employees motivated in any organization in the face of deadlines, workloads, interpersonal conflicts, rules and directives. Self-aware leaders are able to motivate their employees even when times get tough because they understand how to help people inspire themselves instead of forcing them to think and act a certain way. Here are some practical ideas on how to keep your employees motivated:

1. Praise employees. Catch people doing things well and let them know that you value their work. Praise desirable behaviors, it will increase the likelihood that people will behave that way in the future. Reinforce positive behaviors rather than correcting people when they’ve, “Done something wrong.”

2. Design and implement motivational activities. Create a weekly program in your workplace where people celebrate each other. You’ll appreciate how much you can boost morale by setting aside twenty minutes weekly so people can praise each other for a job well done.

3. Assign people meaningful work. Learn what your employees’ talents and interests are and give them duties based on things they enjoy doing. People feel more energized and important when they are given work that means something to them rather than being required to do unfulfilling tasks.

4. Value people equally. Stay away from having a favorite employee who gets special treatment or extraordinary attention. Treat everyone equally and emphasize that each person is vital to your organization’s success. Show people they matter by appreciating their unique input and efforts.

5. Have a plan to keep people motivated. Motivation doesn’t happen unless you commit to creating a culture that builds and supports it over time. Focus on a long-term process and have key people continue training others and motivating people throughout the organization.

Keeping your employees motivated requires commitment, attention and ongoing support. Try the five ideas we’ve talked about here, practice them over time and you’ll enjoy the benefits of a motivated workforce.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and keep your employees motivated?

Cheers,

Guy

Leaders Who Lack Self-Awareness Guarantee High Employee Turnover - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Leaders Who Lack Self-Awareness Guarantee High Employee Turnover

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I often hear leaders who lack self-awareness talk about their high turnover problems as if they exist completely removed from anything that is going on in the workplace. I’ll have a well-meaning but completely baffled leader tell me that she simply can’t figure out why she can’t hold on to her best employees or that people just keep leaving for some reason. Here are twenty ways that leaders who lack self-awareness guarantee high employee turnover.

  1. Keep asking employees to do more and more work in the same amount of time.
  2. Don’t praise employees.
  3. Don’t give people adequate breaks.
  4. Nobody is available to listen to employees if they have an idea or an issue of some kind.
  5. Low pay.
  6. Poor benefits.
  7. Limited or non-existent opportunities for advancement.
  8. People aren’t able to use the talents and abilities that are meaningful to them, they’re just hired to fill seats.
  9. Everything in the workplace is geared toward productivity and money, not people.
  10. No training opportunities beyond those that make you do more work in less time.
  11. Employees are treated as if they’re expendable.
  12. Continuously reminding people that at least they have a job and, if they don’t like it, there’s the door.
  13. Leadership is distant and not genuinely engaged with employees.
  14. People only hear about their performance when it’s something negative.
  15. The organization doesn’t seem to care about harassment, bullying or conflict.
  16. Leaders say one thing and do another as in proclaiming that they care about employees and then working them to exhaustion for little pay.
  17. Leaders create an environment where people are afraid to take a vacation because they think they’ll lose their job.
  18. No two-way communication, leaders simply talk at employees and direct them to do things.
  19. Lack of kindness and compassion.
  20. Top leadership doesn’t believe in treating employees well.

There are many reasons why employees leave their jobs but most of them have to do with not feeling valued, important or fulfilled. When your job doesn’t matter to you and your employer doesn’t care about you it’s much easier to leave the organization.

The perplexing thing is that many leaders practice these behaviors and design these types of workplaces even though they’d get better results if they were more self-aware and made minor adjustments to build happier workplaces. The starting point is for the leader to realize that he or she can create a workplace that values people.

What will you do to develop self-awareness, celebrate employees, and reduce turnover?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Insecure People Lack Self-Awareness

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Insecure people lack self-awareness and are often afraid of other human beings, new situations, and different ideas. Self-aware individuals are comfortable with diversity and change and are able to get along with a wide range of people.

Insecurity chips away at our self-esteem and keeps us stuck feeling poorly about ourselves. It can even affect our relationships because it inserts and unhealthy element into the relationship. Insecurity can be defined as when someone feels that they are not worthwhile. People feel insecure when they are scared, feel threatened or feel like they are not important.

Some people withdraw when they are insecure, others lash out. Regardless of how we behave, insecurity is about having a how we feel about ourselves. So what can we do to feel better about ourselves? Think of the following ideas to increase your self-awareness and self confidence, and reduce your insecurity:

Characteristics of Secure People
Aren’t threatened by others.
Listen well and don’t require attention by talking.
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 People
Threatened by others.
Talk a lot to get attention.
Need to be the center of attention.
Jealous of others’ success.
Competitive, always need to win.
Put people down to feel better.

Think of yourself, where do you fall on these two extremes? If you see yourself on the insecure side, don’t worry, all you have to do is increase some of the positive traits. Even very insecure people can feel better about themselves by doing things that allow them to build self-awareness and experience their own success.

I suggest to my clients that they find out something they like to do and pursue it. Learn from the successes and challenges in life and you will learn how to feel great about yourself. Feeling secure takes some practice but the rewards are amazing.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and feel less insecure?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Effective Communication, and Interviewing for the Ideal Candidate - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness, Effective Communication, and Interviewing for the Ideal Candidate

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Self-aware leaders and organizations can use effective communication skills like active listening and open-ended questions to increase their chances of hiring excellent people. Let’s look at how you can use these skills to understand your job candidates better and increase the likelihood that you’ll find a person who is a good fit for your organization.

Open ended questions area a valuable tool to help you get more information in less time. When you’re developing open-ended interview questions, think in terms of asking questions that allow people to answer without saying yes or no such as, “In what ways does your previous experience relate to A or B,” or “Tell me more about your philosophy on A or B and how it would impact C and D,” or “How would you deal with A, B, C?”

Open-ended questions allow the candidate to demonstrate proficiency in whatever area you would like to highlight. They also help you steer the conversation away from proscribed questioning that tends to elicit yes or no or canned answers. They make your job easier because the candidate is required to show you what they know and tell you about himself or herself without you having to guess.

Active listening is another key skill to help you obtain information that you might not get in a standard interview. Practice asking a question and then not talking at all. Let the candidate tell you about their perspective and only prompt when absolutely necessary and, then, only to encourage them to keep expanding on the subject. You don’t have to direct the conversation so it makes the process more enjoyable. Remember that you can’t listen actively if you’re busy talking.

Practice these skills and you’ll get to the core of what you want to learn about the candidate and make better hiring decisions. It’s remarkable what happens when we simply listen to people telling us about themselves.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and practice effective communication in your interviews?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leadership and the Importance of Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leadership and the Importance of Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

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I’ve met a lot of well-meaning leaders who lack self-awareness and don’t appreciate the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. I attribute this to the fact that we often set up our workplaces as dictatorships where everyone follows the party line and any deviation means an immediate punishment or banishment. Here are some examples of the value of diversity and inclusion in the workplace:

  • Diversity can help you identify what your employees love doing and what makes them uniquely valuable to your company.
  • Inclusion helps you build a workplace where people aren’t bickering with one another and actively sabotaging each other’s growth and progress. When everyone feels they are an important part of the group, you reduce the chances of people being unhappy and doing counterproductive things.
  • Diversity means that you have a much larger pool of perspectives, ideas, talents, and life experiences to draw from to make your organization stronger.
  • Inclusion means that you build a workplace where people accept and value one another instead of tearing each other down.
  • Diversity means you value each person just as they are instead of forcing them into a conformist box.
  • Inclusion gives you the opportunity to build a cohesive, collaborative, welcoming workplace.
  • Diversity means you’re a confident leader who isn’t scared of a variety of ideas and points of view.
  • Inclusion means you’re a leader who possesses the self-awareness to realize not everyone thinks and behaves like you or is less important to the success of the organization.

The whole point of self-awareness, diversity, and inclusion is to build workplaces where people are valued and feel important. It’s the opposite of the alienated person in the cubicle or on the assembly line who is only a number. Diversity and inclusion help you build a vibrant, forward-moving organization that uses the wealth of knowledge and experience its employees offer.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and value diversity and inclusion in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy