The Power of Self-Awareness
Posted on January 25, 2021 by Bruno Fiorentini, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
Great performance goes beyond academic background and business experience. Instead, there is an entire package including soft and hard skills.
Thankfully, the power of self-awareness is a skill that can be taught through researched-based tools, resources, feedback, and reflection.
Benefits of Self Awareness
Self-awareness allows us to know who we are and how others perceive our actions. To challenge our assumptions, it is paramount that we become aware of the internal dialogue that guides our choices. Awareness of why we do what we do allows us to understand how we impact our world, organization, peers, team members, and partners. Being conscious of how we see ourselves and how others see us is at the core of any good manager, leader, or team.
Building Better Teams
The first step is to understand yourself. The second step is to understand your team. An effective leader sets the context, creates a vision, inspires the team, and provides clarity. By doing this, their team will embrace the organization’s vision and recognize its impact, which leads to greater job satisfaction. However, to inspire a team, leaders must be aware of their own actions and learn about their team’s inner world, perspectives, communication style, and motivators. Through this understanding, leaders can effectively build the bridge between vision and inspiration.
The Bottom Line
The third step is for individual team members to develop self-awareness. Research shows a direct correlation between high self-awareness and better team performance. (Source: Erich C.Dierdorff and Robert S.Rubin, published on HBR in March 2015). When there was a large difference between how an individual team member perceives their contribution to a team versus how their teammates perceive it, performance is greatly hindered. Therefore, investing in self-awareness for leaders and teams alike is pertinent to any organization’s profitability.
It Starts With You
As leaders in our organizations, the path to success start with us. Adopting the habit of observing our behaviors, instead of acting and reacting using our unconscious mind, is the first step. The advantages of becoming more self-aware include:
· Uncovering blind spots
· Improving communication efficiency
· Adapting to difficult situations faster
Developing this skill in our leaders will instill a culture of self-awareness in the rest of the organization.
