Self-awareness: Low-Key Superpower

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Long time?FoD?readers might remember the?preamble from a few years ago ?where we discussed everyone’s “hidden” ability to harness the power of hindsight.

In an instant, just by using the word “should,” everyone of us can transform into Captain Hindsight.

And while we think this may be a super power, it really isn’t. As we discussed back then, we think words like “shoulda,”?“coulda,”?“woulda,” or “if only” make us stronger, but in fact, can weaken us.

Click on the link above or ?HERE ? on LinkedIn if you’d like to revisit that one.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a real super power that, when activated, can be a game changer.

It is a super power we all can acquire. We don’t need to be from another planet or get bitten by a bug or have some dark, traumatic event in our origin story to trigger it.

It’s simply the?power of self awareness.

I know, I know, it’s not cool like levitation or nunchuck skills. To some, this may sound lame and pretty underwhelming. In fact, I’ll bet most people think they already possess this power.

But if you can acquire and refine your power of self awareness, you will pretty much achieve every goal, milestone or KPI you set for yourself.

Why is self awareness so important? I’ll start by asking you a few questions:

• What are you better at than anyone else?
• What is the best advice you have ever been given?
• What is the one thing you do that derails you from achieving a goal?
• What would your last boss say is your biggest weakness?
• What personal quality makes you a great partner or teammate or boss?
• What personal quality can make you a terrible partner or teammate or boss?
• In a meeting or discussion, what’s your ratio of listening to talking?
• If you had to rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 as a communicator (1 being the worst, 10 being the best), where would you rate yourself? Where would your co-workers rate you?

These are not difficult questions — but when was the last time you thought about them? How often do you think about them? How often do you re-assess yourself?

Harnessing the power of self awareness means truly understanding and embracing the whole package of what makes you who you are — the good AND the bad. We all have those things.

Most people think the work is done after identifying their strengths. They think that if they put themselves in situations or in relationships that accentuate their strengths, everything else will work out. Their strengths will overshadow their weaknesses. Plus it makes us feel good to think about the stuff we do well — and it’s too painful to think about what we don’t do well.

But our weaknesses are still there. And despite our attempts to ignore them or dismiss them, others definitely see them and experience them. Perhaps we are willing to takes steps to acknowledge areas of needed improvement, but it’s hard to actually take meaningful action to do what is needed to improve.

Think about the most effective leaders you have encountered in your personal and professional life. Where do you think they scored on the self awareness scale?

My bet is the best leaders you know are the ones who are the most comfortable in their own skin.?They don’t over analyze and try to fix everything about themselves that they or others perceive as wrong. They can tell you precisely what they know, they can tell you precisely what they don’t know and they work to motivate themselves and others to maximize their strengths and neutralize weaknesses.

The best leaders?understand,?embrace?and?appreciate?the whole package of what makes them who they are.

Some simple ways we all can sharpen our self awareness skills:

• Be present in what is happening at a given moment.
• Understand that effective communication requires active listening in addition to talking.
• Spend less time worrying about preserving our egos.
• Have empathy play a bigger role in how we interact with others.
• Show humility, keep an open mind and welcome insights from those around us.
• Accept that we will always be a “work in progress.”

Does this resonate? Do you agree with me that self awareness might be the most under appreciated super power? If so, hopefully this gave you enough food for thought so you can make it bigger part of how you operate.

XOXO

Dave

This was adapted from the February 4, 2023 intro to my weekly "Friends of Dave" newsletter, which is accompanied by interesting links I curate each week. If you would like to see past full issues, please click here (note: NOW ON?Substack )>>>?https://friendsofdave.substack.com/