SELF-AWARENESS

WHY BEING SELF-AWARE BREEDS SUCCESS

Self-awareness⁠ one of the pillars of emotional intelligence⁠ which acts as a guiding force for a balanced and well-lived life. Making difficult decisions is easier if you are in touch with your guiding values.

With the massive increase in remote workers, self-awareness and effective communication at work have never been more vital than they are today. It is important to emphasize that the individual sees himself clearly in order to understand how others perceive him and his message. This principle is fundamental to making better decisions in the company and being a strong leader with solid ideas in this way your voice and your ideas are received with more precision.

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Self-awareness is the conscious knowledge of ourselves. Developing self-awareness, and understanding our own psychology, is a skill that is part of our personal and professional development.

Having a proficient level of self-awareness can increase our emotional intelligence which then helps us to control and express our emotions and use them effectively to build relationships.

This can be useful when leading or managing others – working as a team or developing relationships with stakeholders.

Building up our self-awareness and emotional intelligence skills will help us instinctively know how to manage situations and inspire and motivate others.

To develop self-awareness, we need to understand and implement:

•  Tools to improve self-awareness

•  How to gather and interpret feedback on yourself and why it’s useful

•  The pillars of emotional intelligence and why they are important in leadership

•  Unconscious bias

Self-Awareness

Content

Complete your 16 Personalities Psychometric Test​.

This test is based on the theory of psychological types created by Carl Gustav Jung which later were developed by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. They developed a convenient way to describe the order of each person’s Jungian preferences.

  You can apply this test with your team by doing the – 16 Personalities Psychometric Test and reflecting on how this could impact ways of working together.

•  Discover what kind of learning style and technique best suits you with this free online test. Takes around 10 minutes to complete.

Honey and Mumford Learning Style Questionnaire:

What kind of learner are you?

Self-awareness has countless proven benefits — stronger relationships, higher performance, and more effective leadership. Sounds great, right? Here’s the shocking news: 95% of people think that they’re self-aware, but only 10-15% are! Luckily, in this video organizational psychologist, Dr Tasha Eurich has a simple solution that will instantly improve your self-awareness.

(Duration 17m17s)

Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy argues that “power posing” — standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident — can boost feelings of confidence and might have an impact on our chances for success.

(Video duration: 20m56s)

Emotional Intelligence

Otherwise known as emotional quotient or EQ is the ability to understand your own emotions and use and manage them in a positive way to build communication effectively, empathize with others, reducing conflict and release stress.

What is Emotional Intelligence and how to improve it

Psychologist Susan David shares how the way we deal with our emotions shapes everything that matters: our actions, careers, relationships, health, and happiness. In this deeply moving, humorous, and potentially life-changing talk, she challenges a culture that prizes positivity over emotional truth and discusses the powerful strategies of emotional agility.

Duration: 16m48s.

We’ll go to the doctor when we feel flu-ish or a nagging pain. So why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain: guilt, loss, loneliness? Too many of us deal with common psychological-health issues on our own, says psychologist Guy Winch in this video. But we don’t have to. Duration: 17m24s.

Feedback

By understanding the unconscious forces at work that steer our decisions, we can take action to make our decisions fairer and demonstrate that to our teams when giving feedback. The importance of feedback is because it is always there, is effective listening, can motivate, can improve performance and it is a tool for continued learning.

“Performance review.” Does the mere mention of this event make your heart sink? Employees and managers, the world over dread this ritual, and therein lays the main problem: we have institutionalized the giving and receiving of feedback.

What do you think?

Want to make people happy? Anxious? Care to create an uproar in your organization? Want to stir up all the dormant fear hidden just below the surface in your organization? Do you think we’re talking about laying off half your staff-right? Wrong. Nothing raises hackles as fiercely as a change in performance feedback methods, especially when they affect compensation decisions.

 

•  360 Degree Feedback: See the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

TEDx talk. Most efforts to improve individual and organisational learning focus on teaching people how to give feedback. After years of consulting with organisations around the world on how to manage their most challenging conversations, author Sheila Heen and her colleagues realised they may have been thinking about the problem the wrong way.

Duration: 19m29s.

 

•  Have a Complicated Relationship With Feedback?

These 4 TED Talks Can HelpShort but powerful ideas to make you more comfortable giving and receiving feedback.

Unconscious Bias

Our minds are influenced by unconscious shortcuts to help us quickly sort, categorise, and make judgements on the constant streams of information we receive. But when we take these shortcuts to make decisions on more important things, we can impact the quality of our decision-making, leading to a negative impact on others.

Conscious

 

•  2% of thought

•  Slow

•  Effortful

•  Logical

•  Infrequent

•  Calculating

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Unconscious

 

•  98% of thought

•  Fast

•  Instinctive

•  Emotional

•  Frequent

•  Stereotypical

Find out more

Mind Gym Workout

1 – Build Bridges

2 – Good decisions

3 – Knowing me knowing you

4 – Rate success

5 tips for success

1 – Reflect on your emotional reactions to spot your shortcuts.

2 – Check every decision you make is based on fact, not assumption.

3 – Look for opportunities to call out assumptions and make it safe for others to do so.

4 – Explore ways you can individually counter bias.

5 – Consider the impact of your decisions: who does this affect?

Books

•   Banaji, M.R. Greenwald, A.G. (2013).

Blindspot: Hidden biases of good people.

New York: Delacorte

•   Kahneman, D. (2012). Thinking, fast and slow.

London: Penguin

•   Fine. C. (2007 ). A mind of its own: How your brain distorts and deceives. London: Icon

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1. Get Organized
2. Keep Detailed Records
3. Analyze Your Competition
4. Understand the Risks and Rewards
5. Be Creative
6. Stay Focused
7. Prepare to Make Sacrifices
8. Provide Great Service
9. Be Consistent

Exploring our shortcuts

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  • Clear Decisions

Judgement

Improve personal judgement:

A. Be aware of personal bias. Recognise where your unconscious preferences and motivations influence how you make decisions.

B. Consider opposite points of view. Good judgement is about making the best decision rather than ensuring your viewpoint wins out.

C. Accept your mistakes without avoiding self-awareness.
Take responsibility for your mistakes without repelling negative feedback when required.

D. Learn from experience. Avoid repeating what didn’t work.

E. Use instinct where necessary to make a decision.

F. Automate repeat and routine decisions to free your mind for more important decisions.

SET THE CRITERIA

GATHER EVIDENCE AND DATA

EVALUATE

CHALLENGES

Challenges

º We make assumptions when setting our criteria.

º We tend to rely on our gut feeling

º We try to retrofit the evidence to the criteria

Validate

º Create a safe space to have the conversation.

Discouss

º Share your concerns objectively and open the discussion.

Solutions

º Stress test criteria to check for bias.

º Use blind testing

º Use peer review to ensure our criteria and evidence match.

Unite

º Get everyone back on track.

Judgement

  • TRUTH
  • BIAS

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What is critical consciousness at bottom if not an unstoppable predilection for alternatives?

“Edward Said”