How can you create a curious and self-aware team?

One important strategy that enhance curiosity and self-awareness is the ability for leaders to accept suggestions and criticisms from team members. An all inclusive approach will enhance greater self-awareness and curiosity. Again, it is essential to deal with all forms prejudice and stereotypes that hinders members inclusion in decision making. Encouraging self-determination among team members will allow them to build trust and open-up in the team's activities.

Asking open-ended questions is a skill that requires deliberate practice. The simplest way to start is to figure out how to use "what" questions. "What" questions are actually used by coaches for increasing self-awareness and slow thinking. They are also good tools during retrospectives. - What makes our work simpler? - What helps to achieve a higher quality? - What is missing in the process? - What is holding us up? - What needs improvement? - What way did you overcome the challenges? Practice these questions with the team members, and it'll become a fun game that will improve awareness.

In my experience, it's always to finish feedback with a question. In this case, instead of pushing a desired behavior, you're leading the change. In this example, you can ask: - How can you avoid interrupting clients? - What would you do if you really want to say something but the client hasn't finished talking? - What would be more respectful to do? In this case people who get feedback would voluntarily commit to making a change which will make their commitment stronger.

There's a huge unrealized potential for people's growth in all IT companies that I worked for. It's in working together on one single task. People really want to learn and grow. And the easiest way to enable it is by creating collaborative spaces for completing work together. For example, in one of my teams, members had no ide about DevOps tools and how to deploy software to the Cloud. When we worked with the Cloud deployment team members we never asked them to do work for us, we always asked them to assist us in doing this work and did everything on a call together. Soon our team members knew everything to deploy our application to the Cloud and didn't need as much help from the Cloud Deployment team. And our relationships improved.

Yes, well articulated perspective, I believe Self-awareness is the ability to understand one's own strengths, weaknesses, and impact on others. Having self-awareness is crucial to effectively leading and collaborating with your team. It allows you to recognize your own biases, manage your emotions, and be more empathetic toward your colleagues.

Admitting your mistakes is hard but very powerful. It builds trust and demonstrates the power of your word to keep your integrity. It could be challenging to figure out how to make yourself vulnerable as a leader while maintaining the necessary authority.

Avoiding assumptions can be very hard, but is very powerful. Besides, we all know what "assume" does ;) When we assume we can focus on the wrong thing, place blame where it doesn't belong, or try something that wouldn't have worked in the first place. When we pause long enough to get curious about a person or a situation, then we are more likely to respond productively and effectively. Modeling this curiosity, and responding (instead of reacting) will go VERY far for the success of your teams in working well together.

A regular retrospective event is a great place for the team to reflect on the progress and increase awareness. Don't miss the opportunity for collaborative discussion and practicing reflective listening.