Good Leadership Begins with Self-awareness

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

Carl Jung

A drunken man went out of a seaside bar late at night and started swinging from side to side towards the beautifully lighted with lamps sidewalk of the coastal avenue.

After a few challenging steps, he stopped and started searching his pockets. Then he looked back at the dark street where the bar was, in stupor. He shrugged his shoulders, bent his knees and started searching the ground under the nearest lamppost. He searched for a few minutes when a police officer came by and asked the drunken man: “Good evening, sir! It seems to me you lost something, is that right?”, “Yes, indeed, officer.”, replied the man, “I’ve lost my keys.” The police officer offered his help and they started the search together. After a few minutes searching in vain, the police officer asked: ”Are you sure you lost your keys here, under the lamppost?”. “No”, replied the drunken man. “I might lost the keys somewhere across the street, near the bar.” “So why are we looking over here?” asked the surprised and irritated officer.

“The light is much better here,” the intoxicated man responded with aplomb.

...

To think that you are self-aware does not necessarily mean that you really are. The ability to consciously observe and accurately identify the models in which one operates, along with one's own feelings, thoughts, beliefs etc., is really difficult to develop and requires a great deal of dedication and persistency.

Self-awareness is a corner stone in search for development of enduring and strong leadership skills. How we, as leaders, will be able to recognize the models in which the members of our team operate if we are unable to identify them in ourselves?

Many scientific studies in the last few decades proved that, metaphorically speaking, the image we see in the mirror is often quite different than the image other people see when they look at us.

Being truly self-aware means to be able not only to understand the way we operate, our true strengths and weaknesses, but also our ability to recognize how other people see us.

So, how to develop and improve our self-awareness:

1. Be curious.
2. Give yourself feedback.
3. Ask others for feedback.
4. Find what truly motivates you.
5. Find your emotional triggers.
6. Don't judge.
7. Develop new habits.

Curiosity about oneself is a must if we want to become more self-aware. When we are curious about our own thoughts and we are able to asses those thoughts without labeling them and without judging, it’s a lot easier to work with them.

Important part in developing our self-knowing is regularly to give ourselves feedback. Here again it's essential to observe our thoughts and feelings, without judging. The question we ask is "What makes me react this or that way?", instead of "Why?".

It doesn't matter if we are on a managerial position or not, the way other people see us is critical for our development. That is way we must be proactive in searching others for feedback. It is obligatory not to respond to this feedback with explanations, excuses etc. The efficient response is just to listen actively and understand other people's point of view.

Knowing ourselves well is impossible without finding what drives us to strive for success and excel. But we have to be very careful, because excellence is not about being perfect. Actually it is quite the opposite - it is to know well all the strengths we have as well as all the weaknesses, and use this information to achieve our most sacred goals and dreams.

It is also very important to aware of our own emotions and what triggers them, as they are happening. To be able to do so, we must not be afraid of them, be self-critical or suppress them. The only way to work with them is to fully accept them and to find different and equally satisfying ways to react next time.

We can't do that if we are judging ourselves. We can do it be embracing and accepting ourselves.

And final, but not last, is to develop new habits. This means to develop new neural pathways in our brain. If we include all our senses in the process - sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, and we are consistent and persistent, the result will be more conscious awareness about our operating models.

In conclusion, self-awareness is one of the five main domains of our Emotional Intelligence. And our EQ is a required competency for every successful leader.

What is your view on this topic?

-Stoyan