As a leadership coach, we work with clients who want to make real changes in their professional and personal lives. In order for that partnership to flourish, the coach must have a high degree of self-awareness and the leader must be willing to take a serious and sometimes difficult review of their self-awareness before the deeper work begins.
Self-awareness is one of the least discussed leadership competencies and might be one of the most valuable. Self-awareness is about knowing your strengths and areas where you are not strong and honestly admitting where the learning gaps are and what needs to be developed. This includes admitting when you don't know the answer. That can be counter intuitive and a scary proposition for leaders operating in highly competitive environments. Many of us operate on the belief that we must appear to know everything or else others will question our abilities. We hide our deficiencies and are taught at an early age to not expose our vulnerabilities. This leads to diminishing our effectiveness as leaders and only compounds our fears, guilt and shame. That's not a prescription for courage and to daring greatly.
Here’s a little secret, whether you acknowledge your weaknesses or not, everyone still sees them. The leader who tries to hide weaknesses actually exposes them, creating the perception of a lack of integrity and authenticity. Clearly, not where a leader wants to be. Why, because it diminishes trust and leads to disengagement. No organization can thrive in the absence of creativity, innovation and learning and the greatest threat to all three of these is disengagement. So rather than conceal them, get some feedback or better yet find a coach to help you with this process. Clearly, organizations benefit more from leaders who take responsibility for what they don't know than from leaders who pretend to know it all.
Acknowledging the need to become better at anything is only the beginning, and it's often the most difficult step. Understanding how to change into something that works for you is what makes the path to self-awareness so challenging. It will be very important to solicit honest feedback about your performance from others and here are three ideas:
- You can get it through 360 assessments where peers, superiors and reports provide feedback on all aspects of your behavior.
- You can also take time in your day to reflect on your interactions and events with others by asking yourself three questions: what went right? What did not go well? What will I do differently the next time?
- Or you can take it a step further and do regular post consults with others by asking effective questions and then listening without justifying or defending your actions. You will need a high degree of emotional intelligence (EI) to do this well. EI is defined as awareness of your own and others' emotions, and how they are impacted by situations. EI is a skill that can be cultivated in everyone.
Let’s examine this last option a little deeper. The skill of asking effective questions can be invaluable to you and your organization. However, when the question is about your own performance it can be harder to be objective about negative feedback. When you show that you are equally open to all types of feedback, you demonstrate self-awareness and the willingness to learn. Asking questions is a transparent approach to problem solving and decision-making and helps lead to a more self-aware organization. An organization that is self-aware is open to learning and better equipped to anticipate and/or to adjust quickly to changes in the marketplace. These are solid reasons why leaders at all levels should include self-awareness in their development goals.
As you are receiving feedback it's extremely important that you listen without judgment and not defend your actions. By effectively listening on what is said and what is not being said, accepting the feedback without defending yourself, you are more likely to hear what you really need to hear and increase your credibility and authenticity with the person giving the feedback.
On an interpersonal level, self-awareness of your strengths and weaknesses can enhance trusting relationships and increase your credibility and improve your emotional intelligence -- both of which will increase your leadership effectiveness. On an organizational level, the benefits are greater. When you acknowledge what you have yet to learn, you're modeling in your organization that it's okay to admit you don't have all the answers, to make mistakes and most importantly, to ask for help. These are all characteristics of an organization that is constantly learning and learning from vulnerability and further facilitates more innovation, engagement and agility.
To begin to increase your self-awareness, seek feedback on your performance from others by asking good questions and listening without justifying or defending your actions. Remember, organizations benefit far more from leaders who take responsibility for what they don't know than from leaders who pretend to know it all.
What are your thoughts on this topic? How would you begin to break through your filters to begin shifting your focus on becoming a self aware leader? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.
In Latin, Aperio means to reveal, uncover, to make clear. Coaching is a powerful process that enables the client to reveal and illuminate their authentic leadership style via a sharp focus on who they are at the core.
