Work Environment and Self-Awareness

How to Start Building Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

How to Start Building Self-Awareness

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A great way to start building self-awareness is to decide to do it. People often don’t realize that it takes deliberate and ongoing (lifelong) effort to achieve self-awareness. You don’t just wake up one day and decide you know yourself perfectly, you commit to learning about yourself throughout your journey. Here are some ideas to help you start your self-discovery process:

  • Make a list of your strengths.
  • Make a list of your areas for improvement.
  • Brainstorm some ideas of what you’d like to work on to become more self-aware.
  • Pick one brainstorm item to start working on.
  • Do one small thing to work on your brainstorm item.
  • See how things go. Make adjustments if necessary.
  • Pick another item to work on.
  • Repeat.

Increasing self-awareness requires dedication and deliberate, ongoing action. You get to know yourself by constantly working on becoming a healthier, happier, more balanced person. Where will you start?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Leadership - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Leadership

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Self-awareness and leadership are two things that should never be without each other. Countless innocent people suffer the consequences of working for leaders who are not self-aware and who do things like:

  • Work out their personal issues on employees.
  • Get into power struggles due to control issues.
  • Have unhealthy, overbearing egos.
  • Micromanage.
  • Create constant conflict.
  • Impose their will at all costs.
  • Not listen to anyone’s opinion or ideas.
  • Play favorites or allow cliques.
  • Treat people rudely.
  • Only know how to express anger and fake happiness.
  • Create a workplace of fear.

The whole point of being a self-aware leader is that you are in touch with your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to such a degree that you’re able to create a kind, caring, efficient workplace where everyone matters. A leader with self-awareness is likely to:

  • Be healthy emotionally and not get his or her stuff on others.
  • Not have a need to control or dominate.
  • Have a healthy sense of self and respect others’ individuality as well.
  • Let people do what they do well.
  • Have positive interactions with employees.
  • Let other people be part of the decision-making process.
  • Listen actively in all settings.
  • Bring people together.
  • Treat people with kindness and compassion.
  • Comfortable dealing with a wide range of emotions.
  • Create a workplace of courage.

In my experience training leaders, I’ve found that most of them do things from the first list. The irony is that our workplaces don’t have to be dysfunctional and toxic. The whole point of self-aware leadership is to encourage people to be balanced, and comfortable with themselves. The way you do it is to have ongoing training in place that helps leaders take an honest look at themselves and become healthier by learning and practicing the skills from the second list.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Your Conscience - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Your Conscience

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Your level of self-awareness is deeply connected to your conscience because you can never escape the psychological toll that behaving negatively takes on your life. For example: If your job requires that you do things that hurt people, you can’t run from it or pretend it’s not happening, it affects you regardless of how hard you try to ignore or justify it. The same applies to thinking or behaving negatively in your personal life: If you damage others, you impact the quality of your own life. Some people try to compensate for negative thoughts or behaviors by giving to worthwhile causes or doing kind things for their immediate family or friends, but the relief is temporary at best.

A more fulfilling and rewarding approach is to consciously do things that lead in a positive direction like behaving kindly toward others, practicing compassion, or helping people thrive. When faced with a choice, select the option that does the most good for as many people as possible and do nice things without expecting any personal gain. Self-awareness means that you’ve taken the time to be so comfortable with yourself that you give freely and treat others wonderfully. What will you do to develop a healthy conscience?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Soft Skills Training - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Soft Skills Training

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Many well-meaning leaders and organizations that lack self-awareness have high hopes for soft skills training and are perplexed when it fails. This phenomenon happens because they think three hours of soft skills training can change their entire workplace. They optimistically hire someone to facilitate a workshop or two and expect their leaders and employees will behave differently overnight. The missing ingredients are time and commitment.

People who lack self-awareness forget that it takes considerable time and effort for soft skills (such as team building, effective communication, leadership or diversity) to take root in an organization. Think of how long it took you to learn the behaviors you currently practice. It takes time to teach people new skills and many leaders and organizations overlook the following concepts for training success:

  1. Decide that this training is as important as any other part of your operation and commit to a long-term program.
  2. Designate a set time and place for the training.
  3. Implement your training from the top down, involve the highest level of leadership from the very beginning.
  4. Focus on training that helps people learn positive workplace behaviors.
  5. Pay a professional to develop and facilitate a training program based on your specific workplace.
  6. Attendance isn’t optional and is part of people’s work duties.
  7. Give employees the time and support needed to learn and practice new skills in the classroom and on the job.
  8. Make the training an integral part of your company culture.
  9. Measure the impact of the training as you move forward and make adjustments as needed.
  10. Train people so they can train others in the organization.

Try these ideas and you’ll find your training yields better results. The success of soft skills training depends on how committed an organization’s leadership is to making it happen. What will you do to develop self-awareness and help your soft skills training succeed?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Healthy Interactions - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Healthy Interactions

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Self-awareness helps you have healthy interactions with others because, when you’re comfortable with yourself, you’re able to set your personal issues aside and get along with people no matter what the situation.

Have you ever been around someone who always has to win or be in a dominant position? Have you worked with a boss who works out her personal stuff on her employees? Perhaps you’ve endured friends or family members who make everyone miserable or have a tantrum if things don’t go their way. Maybe you know someone who emotionally blackmails others to get what he wants.

These types of behaviors happen all the time and are symptoms of lack of self-awareness. They occur because people don’t feel good about themselves and don’t understand why they think and behave the way they do. When people are deeply in touch with who they are and are happy and balanced they tend to behave more kindly toward others. They have healthy boundaries and empathy for others because they understand that other people also have needs.

Interacting positively with others is a valuable skill to learn because it helps you live a genuinely happy life. It’s the difference between the boss who tramples all over his co-workers and employees and barks orders all day versus the boss who listens calmly and communicates respectfully. One of them is happier and more balanced. You get to choose how you interact with others. You can either let your stuff get all over everyone around you or you can honor who they are and treat them wonderfully.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and promote healthy interactions?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Is about You - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Is about You

/ / Self and Self-Awareness, Self-Awareness, Self-Consciousness / , , , , , ,

It’s hard to experience self-awareness if you decide you don’t want to work on it. You have a lot of power to decide what you’re willing to do. You can move forward confidently or you can put up obstacles. The only person who chooses whether you grow and succeed is you.

Take some time to think of the areas in your life you’d like to improve and what would make you feel happy and balanced. Then it’s up to you to determine where you want to start and what you’re willing to do. The key in self-awareness is to live authentically and take action on the things that will help you live a genuine life.

Cheers,

Guy

 

Real Happiness Exists When You Have Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Real Happiness Exists When You Have Self-Awareness

/ / Self and Self-Awareness, Self-Awareness / , , ,

There have been many times over the years where I’m facilitating a workshop or consulting for someone and it’s apparent that the people involved don’t have self-awareness and really don’t believe deep inside that they can be happy or create an enjoyable workplace. This lack of optimism comes from deep inside and is often caused by messages people received as kids. If you’re constantly being told that life is hard and happiness is frivolous, you’ll tend to carry that view into every part of your existence.

You can be genuinely happy but it takes conscious effort and self-awareness. Here are two vital elements to help you get started:

  1. Believe that happiness exists.
  2. Be willing to let go of the thoughts and behaviors that get in the way of being happy.

Think about your own situation and whether you walk around thinking and behaving in ways that promote happiness. It’s up to you whether you want to create positive vibes in the universe or not. If you choose to focus on being happy and supporting others to do the same, you’ll live a much more enjoyable personal and professional life.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and be happy for real?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy