Self-Awareness Is Knowing How Others Perceive You

The basic idea: One of the smartest insights I've seen a leader share this year came from the CEO of Utah-based Weave, Brandon Rodman, who wrote, "Contrary to what the phrase self-awareness implies, it means to be aware how others perceive you. It’s NOT how you perceive yourself. If doesn’t matter if you think you are aggressive, it matters if others do."

So when you catch yourself saying that you are self-aware, you probably aren't.

Self-awareness is a practice, not a skill. It requires that you develop tactics to gather honest and accurate feedback from others. For example, you could check in with two other attendees of a meeting and ask, "Did I convey the impression that I was open to the ideas of others, or did I sell my own positions too hard?"

A bit more background: Author Tasha Eurich, my colleague in Marshall Goldsmith's 100 Coaches program, wrote in Harvard Business Review that "even though most people believe they are self-aware, self-awareness is a truly rare quality: We estimate that only 10%–15% of the people we studied actually fit the criteria."

Tasha makes the case that "self-awareness isn’t one truth. It’s a delicate balance of two distinct, even competing, viewpoints."

The first viewpoint is internal self-awareness: how you see your emotions, reactions, beliefs, and so on. It's what most people think of as self-awareness.

The second variation, which I'm writing about today, is external self-awareness. It is understanding how others perceive you, and Tasha discovered a surprising relationship between these two types: there is virtually no relationship between them. You can be highly aware of your own reactions and emotions ("that SVP always triggers me, and I need to manage my own state carefully to avoid overreacting") and still have immense blind spots when it comes to grasping the ways that others perceive you.

The more unbiased external feedback you get—and the more openly you consider it—the more likely you are to have accurate external self-awareness. For example, if you want to spend more time listening and less time talking, you could record and get a transcript of every meeting in which you participate, then have an intern analyze the percentage of time you spoke in each meeting.

There's another simple technique you might try as suggested by Level 2 Legal CEO, Joey Seeber. He suggests asking at the end of every interaction, "Has this been of value to you?" and then deeply listening to the response.

Of course, if you surround yourself with people who tell you only what you want to hear, no amount of questioning will produce accurate feedback. Above all else, you must demonstrate with your actions and reactions that you cherish frank feedback, even when it is critical.

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Bruce Kasanoff is a social media ghostwriter for entrepreneurs.