Strategic self-awareness: the leadership development you want and need

As you’ve become more senior, have you noticed the feedback you’re receiving has been less frequent and not as rich as earlier in your career? Are you looking for the actions required to be more successful? Perhaps you sense there’s something holding you back, but you’re not sure what it is? This was me. After a decade of stifling trial and error I was exhausted. Building strategic self-awareness gave me clarity and tangible actions. A key reason to share this with you is that for me unlocking this understanding?of myself was transformational and exciting, I finally felt I had a way forward! I continue to still ask these questions, as I continue to grow in our changing world – every day’s a school day!?

In my last post?What eats culture for breakfast? ?I shared leadership’s impact on culture and mentioned one of the two critical aspects of leadership development is self-awareness (the other is learning agility). Continuing from my last post I’ll share why you want strategic self-awareness and how to build it, but first a story.?

My story

2013 had a crucible moment in my career as a leader. I was loaned to a corporate client. It was my first time leading a team that wasn’t Big 4 Management Consultants. The extrinsic carrot/stick motivation of performance ratings was not available. I thought bad leaders micromanaged, so I did the opposite and was completely hands off. Without accountability we were missing deadlines and outputs didn’t meet stakeholders’ expectations (of course the team didn’t know what the expectations were as I was so hands off).?

My solution: I complete the team’s work on the evenings and weekends. That (plus other missteps I’m not aware of) created a toxic environment of resentment that led to relations spiraling from bad to worse. Once a major deadline was met, all were happy for the project team to be dissolved, but my body gave in. Burnt out, I was hospitalized for 3 months. It gave me a lot of time to reflect. Torn by the dissonance that I wasn’t the leader I aspired to be, I set out to learn what leadership is, which I’ve found to be a lifelong journey. Please let me know if my story resonates with you.?

Our story?

This team’s experience was not unique. Research indicates that about 75% of the workforce say that their immediate supervisor is the worst single aspect and most stressful aspect of their job1. It’s hard for leaders to know this, as?co-workers tend to avoid frankness when they deal with each other. Especially true in reporting relationships.?The higher the level, the less honest feedback the leaders receive.?This can lead to a distorted sense of strengths, weaknesses, and abilities2.?

Unfortunately for self-awareness,?it’s proven that individuals are not accurate self-reporters, regardless of how certain they may be3. Moreover, employees now have improved awareness of toxic cultures and the impact leaders have on their mental health, all this in the wake of quiet quitting and limited consultation on return to office plans. If you’re thinking this all sounds grim, you’re right, but there is hope! I invite you to see these challenges as an opportunity to take stock.

What is strategic self-awareness?

Strategic self-awareness is understanding your strengths, abilities, and limitations?in relation to others. Self-awareness and strategic self-awareness can be differentiated as follows4:

Self-awareness is how you perceive yourself, known as?your identity.?

Strategic self-awareness is how you understand how others perceive you,?your reputation.?

Why is there a difference? Context matters. Our behavior is a function of us (the person) and our environment (this is Lewin’s formula). Strategic self-awareness helps us better understand who we are in an environment e.g. our workplace.?

Why you want strategic self-awareness

While some may argue that what others think doesn’t matter, in the workplace for getting along and getting ahead our reputation really does matter.?Reputation matters to you because it’s observable and measurable, it is the results of your performance reviews, and the opportunities for advancement you are considered for. To be a leader, your reputation determines whether people want to follow you or not. As I’ve mentioned previously, by definition if you don’t have followers, you’re not a leader.?Your reputation matters to your teams and the organization’s culture as?people will follow how you lead. ‘How we do things around here’ is our culture. Your reputation will likely become the team’s culture.

Knowing ourselves e.g. our values, purpose etc. is still important as it gives us direction, authenticity and self-compassion, but as mentioned we often overestimate our strengths and our weaknesses too (e.g. imposter syndrome). Success is aligning your identity with your reputation.

How do you get strategic self-awareness

The best starting point is?anonymous multi-rater 360-degree feedback. That is getting anonymous feedback from those that report directly/indirectly up to you, your peers, and your bosses/clients.?Consider conducting anonymous multi-rater 360-degree feedback every 12-24 months, depending on how quickly you work through your development actions. The anonymity addresses colleagues not being frank with one another, and the questions and frequency addresses the limited quality and quantity of feedback you receive as you become more senior.?

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear –?Socrates

For the sake of clarity, the purpose of me writing this post is to encourage seeking anonymous multi-rater 360-degree feedback for leadership development as opposed to assessing performance, which could create conflicting interests and diminish its use as a tool for leadership development.?

For it to be a transformational experience for you, critical for success is:

1. Assessing relevant behaviors?– questions should include coachability, ability to perform under pressure and most importantly be tailored to your organization’s strategy, mission, and values and behaviors5. A generic list of questions won’t reflect your environment, so won’t explain the difference between your identity and reputation. Work with a coach or your HR to come up with the right questions
2. Accepting the feedback?– “the trick to viewing feedback as a gift is to be more worried about having blind spots than hearing about them “ – James Clear, author of Atomic Habits6
3. Working with a coach?– coaching is found to not only help you build your self-awareness e.g. help accepting the feedback and its cause, but also is shown to lead to improved performance and improved job satisfaction3?
4. Developing an action plan?– the feedback has limited impact when action plans and accountability are not a formal part of the process. The plan should consider your environment I.e. strengthen the factors that will make it easy for you to succeed and weaken the obstacles to your success. Lastly, thank your feedback providers and share your action plan with them, this will help improve accountability and mitigate the risks of survey fatigue3
5. Tracking your progress with your coach?– this is shown to boost accountability and improve impact3

My greatest learning from receiving 360 feedback and working with a coach was how easy it was for me to over index on a strength causing it to become a weakness. For example

• I am comfortable with ambiguity and limited detail which helps me thrive in change initiatives, however this may mean my vision is too abstract, and my guidance/expectations are not clear enough. This can lead to all involved to be frustrated when we don’t hit the mark, so of course the awareness helps me to provide more detail upfront and throughout collaborations
• My bias for action helps me get things done but may stop me from spending enough time planning, sharing updates and updating plans for changes, and worse taking the time for acknowledging colleagues’ great work. I now schedule planning check ins and retrospectives, and make time in the agenda for project update framed as ‘Juicy gossip’ to make it more fun and acknowledge accomplishments invite the team to do the same
• I’m a great listener which helps me better understand needs and empathize with my colleagues, however my colleagues often think me not speaking means I’m not engaged. I must strike the balance between listening, repeating what I understand and asserting thoughts and views

You can strengthen your strategic awareness with a science backed personality assessment (e.g. Hogan or NEO-PI-38) to be in a much better position to understand the underlying causes for your behaviors. I completed Hogan’s leadership forecaster series. I’ve popped some links below for example tools/providers to collect anonymous multi rater 360-degree feedback.?

Concluding thought

I felt such relief when I worked with a coach and better understood how others perceived me –?my reputation. It was transformational and empowering to plan experiments in response to the feedback, measure the experiment’s impact, and adjust my behaviors and experiment again. I invite you to speak with HR, get a coach, and seek anonymous multi-rater 360-degree feedback. I’m confident you’ll align your reputation with your identity – unleashing your true self, create even better experiences for your team, and foster a culture for you and your team to thrive in.

This article was originally posted on?samdagan.com #culture #leadershipdevelopement #coaching #selfawareness #360degreefeedback

Resources for collecting anonymous multi rater 360-degree feedback

• For the best tools I like?G2’s list of 360-degree feedback tools
• For?free tools check out this website
• The?Center for Creative Leadership ?offers offers 360-feedback services?

References

1. Hogan, R. (2007). Personality and the fate of organizations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers
2. Vecchio, R. P., & Anderson, R. J. (2009). Agreement in self– other ratings of leader effectiveness: The role of demographics and personality. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 17, 165–179.
3. Church, A.H., Dawson, L.M., Barden, K.L., Fleck, C.R., Rotolo, C.T., & Tuller, M.D. (2018). Enhancing 360-Degree Feedback for Individual Assessment and Organization Development: Methods and Lessons from the Field. Research in Organizational Change and Development
4. Hogan, R., Kaiser, R. B., Sherman, R. A., & Harms, P. D. (2021). Twenty years on the dark side: Six lessons about bad leadership. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 73(3), 199–213.?
5. Burke, W. Warner (2018). Organization change: Theory and practice, 5th Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
6. Clear, J. (2023). Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. Random House Business Books.
7. Burke, W. W., & Noumair, D. A. (2002). The role of personality assessment in organization development. In J. Waclawski & A. H. Church (Eds.), Organization development: A data-driven approach to organizational change (pp. 55-77). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass