Have you ever felt out of kilter with some of the people around you – be they work colleagues, friends or family? Does it seem that the way they approach or think about things can be a bit odd?
It wasn’t until I started to work on my own self-awareness, that I understood why I’d felt that way – and maybe why people had seen me as a bit incomprehensible at times too!
I’d always seen myself as being a bit day dreamy, uncomfortable with conflict and often last minute. I now realised that these aspects of me were my preferences for ideas and connections, for harmony and consensus and to go with the flow rather than making plans. And of course, with this new understanding of myself, I also realised why some people were not like that.
These insights are sadly too often missing in leadership. We can find ourselves working with others who don’t seem to ‘get’ us. Or the other way around – we work with someone whose approaches seem so alien to us that we can’t understand them. At best, this can confuse. At its worst, it can be a source of frustration and conflict.
This brings me to why understanding ourselves is fundamental for effective leadership and being a happier human being. Without the insight I’d discovered, I’d have continued thinking there was either:
These thoughts can stifle relationships. They can lower self-confidence and reduce our effectiveness as a person.
Developing self-awareness allows us to see ourselves as we are – the whole version of ourselves. It increases our understanding of how we impact others – and our ability to form deeper connections. True self-awareness enables us to see ourselves as both the light and dark and to see ourselves through the eyes of others.
I’ve used my own self-awareness to choose work that suits my strengths and values. I use my personality traits to develop my coaching and facilitating style and to build trusting relationships. But – I’m also aware that over-indulging in my preferred ways of being can be unhelpful for me and others. Self-awareness also allows us to see when and why it can be helpful to adjust our behaviour, rather than using it as an excuse for poor behaviour or as a reason to ‘take me as I am’. Acknowledging my ‘shadow’ self – the parts of me that I’d rather not see, enables me to keep those in check more often.
In short, understanding ourselves better:
I love helping clients develop their self-awareness because they discover why they think, feel or behave in a certain way and how it’s impacting their relationships and leadership. It’s often the cause for an ‘a-ha!’ moment. From there, they can decide how to make positive changes that benefit themselves and those around them.
I was coaching a client a few months ago who was recently promoted to the senior leadership team. She worried that she would need to learn a new way of leading as her style differed from her new peers. It impacted her self-confidence and her ability to be successful in her new role. We started by establishing what had made her successful in the past and led to her promotion, which helped her to identify her key strengths. We explored how she could use her strengths in this new role rather than trying to be someone she wasn’t.
We then used 360 feedback to help her understand the perspectives of others. She learned that rather than conforming to her peers’ styles, people wanted her to keep her way of leading and to use her strengths to bring new perspectives to the team. This built her self-confidence and led her to identify ways she could influence senior stakeholders using her unique style and strengths.
By the end of our sessions, she commented on how she hadn’t understood her strengths and appreciated how others saw her. She was grateful to be able to use this self-awareness to feel more confident and continue to be successful.
The first thing I always say to clients is that self-awareness is a life’s journey. I don’t believe you can ever be 100% self-aware because we and the world around us are constantly changing. But what we can do is continue to learn about ourselves and how others experience us so that we can be as happy, confident and connected as possible.
Here are the three main methods I use with myself and with clients:
Understanding aspects of you:
Being more connected to yourself:
Understanding how others see you:
Self-awareness is the foundation for personal growth. It can be the catalyst for positive change which benefits you and the people around you. Taking even just a moment to reflect can help you to better know yourself and how you impact others.
More resources…
Tim Ferriss and Brené Brown on Developing Self-Awareness (youtube.com)
3 strategies for becoming more self-aware | Tasha Eurich (youtube.com)
The Power of Self-Awareness | William L. Sparks | TEDxAsheville (youtube.com)
Insight: The Quiz (insight-book.com)
5 Ways to Become More Self-Aware (hbr.org)
Personal Branding for Brits: How to promote yourself, raise your profile and get ahead…without sounding like an idiot by Jennifer Holloway | Goodreads
