Coaching Self-Awareness Improvement

Coaching the power of self-awareness Recently I read a great article by John Ryan the president and CEO at the Center for Creative Leadership. And I love his definition of self-awareness. He says "It comes from using reflection and feedback to gain insight into our strengths and address our development needs. We are the worst judges of our own strengths and weaknesses. So it's vitally important to have women and men whom we trust offer insights on what we're doing well and what we can do better."

Personally, I have a coach Scott Rasmussen who does this for me and one of the things that I love that Scott does is he has a great gift of pointing things out without you feeling defensive. As I look back at my career I often look back at situations where I was more interested in being right which manufactured a great sense of defensiveness which blocked me off from learning new things and building better relationships.

This comes off a little bit as an oxymoron for someone who teaches coaching and stresses listening and introspective type activities. I always share with my clients the greatest coach we can have in our life is ourselves. Even though John reference's we are the worst judges of our own strengths and weaknesses I do believe we must first become honest with ourselves in order to gain any type of traction when trying to improve. I do think in order for us to accept anything we first must be honest with yourself. So it begs the question. How do we coach someone to become more self-aware? First, ask somebody a series of questions surrounding how they perceive themselves and then ask them using the word honestly. For example, "How do you think people would honestly describe you?" That might be in contradiction to how people see themselves, but this question is a little bit of splitting hairs but it gets the process of looking in the mirror and becoming more self-aware started.

Second, facilitate the use of observational coaching. Ask an employee whom you feel is struggling with self-awareness to observe other people and ask the following fundamental question: "After that observation what did you learn about yourself from the observation and where do you feel like you have an opportunity to become more aware of how you are perceived by others?"

Last, ask an employee or person you are coaching who is low in self-awareness to journal the things that they learned about themselves from interactions or projects they have been working on. One of the best things that we can do is a journal and write down our feelings, our emotions, and our insights. But if we structure those activities to be journaled to drive more self-awareness employees only will become more self-aware but more apt to the process of improving due to the increase in self-awareness.

Self-awareness is not only an opportunity but truly it is a choice. If we can each become more self-aware inevitably it will lower resistance and barriers to better communication and cooperation in the workplace.

If you are interested in becoming a certified progress coach send me an email at (put the word certified coach on the subject line) email me at: [email protected]