There is NO Talent Development without Self-Awareness

What is self-awareness? Plainly, self-awareness is when somebody is honest with themselves. They look in the mirror and admit not only their strengths, but their opportunities to improve as well.

Tasha Eurich’s book, Insight, did a survey asking people how self-aware they were. 95% claimed they were highly self-aware. But when she tested them, only 10% were somewhat aware.

When you have an hour-long conversation with somebody who is interruptive or disruptive, ask them how they think the conversation went.

Likely, that person will respond they thought it went great. They're not aware of how they came off. Most people don't spend time becoming self-aware.

If you're giving someone feedback and they roll their eyes or fold their arms, later they might say, “No, I wasn't disrespectful.” They're not aware of how they're coming off or how their behaviors are exhibiting themselves.

No matter what we do, whether training, talent development, learning, coaching, mentoring, we cannot have success without self-awareness. You can’t change what you don't acknowledge. You can’t change or improve what you don't admit. People will tell you they're highly self-aware when in fact they're not. Think about that study. Nine out of ten people are fooling themselves.

How do you go about establishing self-awareness?

First, become gifted with questions. Don’t just tell someone they have a negative attitude; they won’t admit to that anyway. They’ll be resistant and take what you did or how you did it out of context. Instead, ask questions. Questions ignite self-awareness.

How are you going to positively engage with your teammates?

Where do you feel you have an opportunity to become more collaborative?

What are two things you do well with your teammates?

What's that one area you feel like you could tighten the relationships more?

Those are questions that will start to establish self-awareness.

Secondly, confirm what they learned. But how?

In training workshops, one of my pet peeves is when the leader asks their clients to fill out an evaluation form. They always ask the same questions, one in particular: “Did the instructor seem to know the material?” And I laugh. They always turn it around to ask me what I would mark down instead. My response is always the same.

Ask them how they're going to apply it.

Here are three questions to apply ways to become more self-aware.

1)?????What did you specifically learn? Emphasis on the word specifically.

2)?????What did you learn about yourself? You’re positively committed to improving. Again, strong self-awareness. You’re positively committed to improving that uses a self-actualized question that frames out their response.

3)?????Based on what you learned, what positive steps will you take moving forward? How are you going to put your learning into action? Lay out the steps. What would you like me to do to assist you?

That ignites a coaching conversation. Even better, that starts the mentoring / coaching relationship.

Without self-awareness—without looking in the mirror—talent development, mentoring, and coaching will have fractional success. Use all the assessment tools you want, yet I encourage you to use those three questions. Draw upon people's experiences, their training, interactions with teammates, books they've read, work history, and more. What did you learn about yourself? If you're positively committed to improving, what specific steps will you make?

If you can create those questions, you will establish self-awareness. More importantly, you’ll continue to crack open that typically-locked-door called self-awareness.

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