Is self-awareness enough?

Self-awareness and effective leadership go hand-in-hand

True self-awareness is not only about being aware of and understanding how and why you behave in each situation; it is also about being aware of how your behaviour is interpreted by others.

Those people who are highly self-aware can do this in “real-time”; they are aware of and understand how they are thinking, feeling and behaving “here & now”. This gives them the ability to evaluate themselves, manage their emotions, understand how they are perceived by others and align their behaviour with their values and the needs of others.

Being aware that you have a structured & disciplined approach to problem-solving and that once you have taken on a problem you tend to be focussed & determined to succeed is, what some call, internal self-awareness.

However, being aware that others may interpret your behaviour as being stubborn and blinkered and your approach as rigid and dogmatic, is, what some call, external self-awareness.

In order to be truly self-aware, we need both high internal self-awareness & high external self-awareness.

Those who have this “double” awareness can monitor the impact they are having on others and consciously adjust their behaviour to ensure maximum effectiveness.

Spending time on introspection, answering personality questionnaires and identifying your values & beliefs are all important, but it is also important to get feedback from others to check that what you are “transmitting” is being “received” as you want it to be received, especially if you are trying to influence people to go somewhere!

There is no truth. There is only perception.

If perception is in the eye of the beholder, interpretation is in the brain of the beholder.

Others have a very small, but important, window into who we are; they see & here at best, 20% of who we are – our words & deeds, what we say & do.

Others do not see our values, our beliefs, our attitudes, our drivers, our dreams, our pulsions, our fears, our injunctions – the hidden 80% of who we are.

When others interpret our behaviours, they do it with their filters, their biases and their mental models, not with ours. They will interpret with their values & beliefs, their intuitions, not ours. They do not necessarily see the why beneath what we are doing & saying.

The hidden 80% provides the “why” we do “what” we do.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions

Unfortunately, like a good breakfast, you need to be able to digest it, for it to be useful.

Accepting feedback is often difficult, even when people try to be tactful and use a method like DESC or OFNR, many of us tend to reject the feedback; “the person doesn’t know me”, “I was having a bad day”, “the situation wasn’t easy”, “it’s only their perception”, etc.

There is no “right or wrong” in feedback, it’s all a question of perception and interpretation. If someone sees you as stubborn & blinkered (to stay with my example from above), it doesn’t mean you are stubborn & blinkered it simply means that the person sees you (with their filters, etc.) as stubborn & blinkered – and will probably interact with you as though you are stubborn & blinkered.

Saying, “but I am not …..”, isn’t that useful, better to try and understand the other persons interpretation.

At the end of the day self-awareness isn’t one truth, it’s a balance of two or more, often differing, viewpoints.

#selfawareness #selfdevelopment #perception #boblarcher