What is self awareness?
If there’s one topic you should be an expert in, it's you. Self-awareness, the ability to know our unique talents, strengths and passions, is an asset for achieving your personal and professional goals, yet it is often more associated with one’s personal life but there are significant professional benefits from being self aware.
In effect, self awareness is shining a light on your behaviors, thinking and values for your own understanding and the better informed you are, the better decisions you can make about your career.
Inc.com says “Today, an employees’ greatest value is not their work — it is in their thinking” and having an understanding of your preferred thinking styles, biases, strengths and communication style can help improve your choices and contribution during your career. It’s about creating a case file or data set, on your own thoughts, emotions, what you’re good at, what you hate and why etc.
Psychologists often break self awareness down into two different types, either public or private. Public self awareness is when people are aware of how they appear to others. You know those situations when you’re shaking inside when presenting to a room full of people, and someone says ‘I never would’ve known, you seemed so confident up there'? That internal nervousness is the second type – private self awareness, which increases as we become more informed or aware of some aspects of ourselves.
Why is self awareness important in your career?
"Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change." - Steven Covey
Essentially, the more you pay attention to your emotions and how you work, the better you'll understand why you do the things you do. The more you know about your own habits and strengths, the easier it is to improve on those habits or choose projects or roles that enable you to use your strengths. It often takes some experimentation and focus to build more self awareness.
Self awareness is often overlooked when discussing leadership competencies but it’s the foundation for high integrity leadership – it’s what helps you identify when you’re in the zone and ready to move forward, and when it’s time to hold fire, get the skills, know-how or assets you need before continuing. It’s what helps you acknowledge your strengths and identify your development areas so you can ensure the teams you work with have the skills and talents that aren’t strengths of yours, thereby creating a high powered and highly effective team. Knowing and acknowledging areas that aren’t strong for you enables you to create a well balanced team as well as models the behavior for the rest of your team
As a leader, helping your team or colleagues raise their own self awareness creates value for both them and the organization. We should never be afraid to empower our teams with knowledge that helps them improve their performance, or realize their strengths are better suited elsewhere.
How to increase self awareness
Here are a few ways to increase your own self awareness, or that of your colleagues:
- Listen when you’re being given feedback from people you trust (they key being people you trust!) and do so without defending or justifying – listen openly and ask good questions to create a deeper understanding
- Invest in behavioral assessments such as StrengthsFinder, DISC or Myers-Briggs etc. They each give insight into your preferences. Being aware of your talents, skills and preferences can lead to selecting projects or companies that maximize time using these skills and therefore greater engagement and success
- Fill in some of those online quizzes and tools
- Hire an executive coach
- Find, read, watch and discuss content that has given you an ‘a-ha’ moment – that moment when you realise why you do things they way you do, why something comes easily to you or you are challenged by certain things. It can help others raise their awareness by sharing your insight too.
- Lifehack also suggests you might wish to write your own manifesto and state “The main purpose of self-awareness is self-improvement, so it makes sense that you need to have goals. If you're struggling with that part, a manifesto is a great way to push yourself into figuring out what you want.”
