How Self-Aware Are You?

Research shows that leaders who are self-aware are more effective. And their teams and organizations are more successful. But what does self-awareness really mean, and how accurate are we in assessing our own self-awareness?

Self-awareness is one of the key components of emotional intelligence, which are: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. The study of self-awareness originated in 1972, when psychologists Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund proposed their theory that: “when we focus our attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behavior to our internal standards and values. We become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourselves.”

In an interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Organizational Psychologist Tasha Eurich, said that self-awareness is made up of two types of knowledge: 1) seeing ourselves clearly, our strengths, our weaknesses, what we value, and what we aspire to do, and 2) knowing how other people see us. Although she has found in her work that quite a few people have one or the other types of self-awareness, “people who have both types of self-knowledge and balance them are the ones who are the most successful at work and in life.”

How accurate are we in assessing our own self-awareness? Eurich’s research shows that “95% of people think they’re self-aware, but the real number is closer to 10-15%.”

Overestimating our own ability at something is a pretty common phenomenon. It’s known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, a “cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is.” An example is the survey where people were asked to rate their own driving ability and 7 out of 10 said that they were above average drivers. You only have to be on the road for a few minutes to realize that’s an exaggeration. People judge their driving by their own standards – “I haven’t gotten ticket so I must be a great driver.” Without feedback (a ticket or an accident) people may continue in their good-driver illusion. Likewise, without feedback, leaders may continue to think they are self-aware, and not see the need to continue to learn and grow. That’s where 360 tools and assessments, such as Lumina Spark, can help. Understanding how others see you can help you identify blind spots, and adjust behaviors that may be working against you.

Yet Eurich cautions against getting too hung up on one side of the equation.  “There are some people with those two types of self-awareness who are so focused on how other people see them that they’re actually not acting in their own best interests. They don’t even know what they want out of life, for example. That’s just another reason that we have to balance both of those types of self-awareness.”

Leaders who are truly self-aware acknowledge that they don’t know everything. That they’re not perfect. They build trust with their teams by allowing themselves to be vulnerable, and by accepting team members’ ideas, input and feedback.

One of the things I found most surprising in Eurich’s interview was what she said about self-awareness at higher levels in the organization. “The research shows that the more powerful you are, the more senior you are, and even the older you are as a manager, the less self-aware you’re likely to be, which I find shocking,” she said.  

Self-awareness is important not just at work, but also in our personal lives. When we’re self-aware we make better decisions. We build stronger relationships. We’re more successful.

And the good news is, self-awareness is something we can develop and improve!

Lumina Spark is an innovative, comprehensive and realistic approach to self-understanding that is based on the latest academic research in the “Big 5” personality traits as well as certain elements of Jungian theory. Lumina Spark looks at 8 aspects and 24 qualities, and measures these along a continuum to create a unique portrait for each individual. And it goes deeper.  Each quality is measured for three personas:

1. Your Underlying persona – who you are most naturally
2. Your Everyday persona – how you “show up” based on what’s required of you at work
3. Your Overextended persona – how you behave under stress

Attaining self-awareness by understanding your strengths and development areas in each of these personas is powerful.  It helps you understand how you lead, how you behave under stress, and how you respond to situations and people around you. This knowledge enables you to leverage and adapt behaviors as necessary to lead your team and organization to success.

“By becoming self-aware, you gain ownership of reality; in becoming real, you become the master of both inner and outer life.” – Deepak Chopra

Selling L & D Solutions: Start with a Needs Analysis

One of the things I often hear from learning and development professionals who are new to consulting is the challenge they have around “selling.” Like most people who go out on their own, they’re experts at (and inspired by) what they do, but they soon realize that there are other aspects of the business they need to attend to – the administrative, the financial, the marketing, and, of course, the selling.

My suggestion is to not think about it as “selling.” Instead, think about it as helping a client achieve goals, overcome challenges, and fulfill needs. It’s about asking good questions (needs analysis), communicating effectively, building relationships, and mapping learning solutions to performance needs – all the things learning and development professionals do on a daily basis.

But how do you get started? It helps to have structure. Step one is, of course, to identify an opportunity. Consider this scenario. You’re at a networking event and are introduced by a former colleague to the VP of Engineering at a large hi-tech company. After exchanging backgrounds and pleasantries, you ask what her current biggest challenge is. She shares that one of her project teams is struggling to meet deadlines for deliverables. There have been two instances so far on a current project where mistakes were identified too late, causing delays in the timeline, and additional cost. As the conversation continues, you learn that team members seem to operate independently, each focused on their part of the project, with little team synergy or communication along the way.

Learning and development opportunities generally fall into two categories. One is where the client just knows that development is a good thing and they have the budget to do it. They don’t necessarily have a problem, but they want to invest in a team development activity that’s more meaningful than bowling or a ropes course. The second category is where they know they have an issue, but they’re not sure of the cause or how to fix it.   

You’ve gleaned from your conversation at the networking event that the engineering project team falls into the second category. Through several follow up emails the next week, you manage to set up an initial meeting. The next step is to prepare for the meeting. What do you need to know before you go? What questions will you ask once you’re there?

Obviously, you want to know as much as possible about the organization and the individuals who will be in the meeting. Are you meeting with a decision maker or is this initial meeting at a different level? What is your goal for the meeting? What does your agenda need to be to get there?

Remember that this meeting is all about the client, not about sharing your menu of solutions. Prepare questions that will help you understand their goals, challenges and needs, as well as:

• The business goal that is not being met
• The impact of it not being met
• Skills and behaviors that are “mission critical” to the business, or impact all employees
• Performance deficiencies within these skills and behaviors that have the greatest negative impact
• Expected or desired performance levels

As you think about your goal for the meeting, include what you want the client to do after the meeting – Introduce you to the next level up? Schedule a next meeting? Connect you to others in the organization?

Making the time to thoroughly prepare your questions, agenda, and goal for the meeting will increase the likelihood of a positive outcome.

Lead on,

Rebecca

Effective Dialogues Improve Team Performance

In today’s workplace teams come in a variety of flavors: department teams, project teams, virtual teams, global teams, cross-functional teams, permanent teams, temporary teams, task force teams, self-directed teams and combinations thereof.  Each of these has its own inherent challenges.  Common among them, however, is the need for effective dialogues. Here’s how to achieve them.

Establish communication standards.  Whether it’s about sharing ideas or resolving conflict, it’s essential to develop and implement guidelines that encourage and support open communication. That includes communication media. Email may be acceptable for information exchange, but issues should be discussed in person or, if that’s not practical, by phone. Guidelines should cover:

·         Using a common language (especially important for global teams)

·         Identifying trigger words and phrases to avoid

·         Emphasizing effective listening strategies

·         Promoting an understanding and appreciation of varying communication styles

·         Scheduling regular meetings

Identify and address barriers to open communication. Barriers to communication generally fall into three categories: physical, emotional and environmental.  Support effective dialogues by removing any physical distractions (these could range from a noisy conference room to a bad telephone connection). Work to understand and appreciate the diverse styles of your team and create opportunities for the team to develop a mutual understanding of each other. As they learn to consider each other’s style and frame of reference, they’ll learn to minimize the emotional reactions that get in the way of effective dialogues.

Create guidelines for managing conflict. A certain amount disagreement on a team is natural and necessary for innovation and optimal performance. The key is how you channel and manage it.  Give your team tools for dealing productively with conflict by working together to create conflict management guidelines. Emphasize respect and active listening. Include feedback best practices. Encourage a dialogue that begins with points of agreement and develops from there. Ensure that the focus is on the issue at hand rather than personalities. State the team goals and expectations clearly and concisely and remind the team of their mutual commitment to those goals.

Evaluate and improve. Like any relationship, team relationships need to be nurtured. Make time for a periodic “check in” through an open dialogue specifically around how team communication is going. Encourage those who are typically less vocal to weigh in. Identify areas – from team feedback and your observations – where improvements could be made. Then make them.

Lead on,

Rebecca