What is Self Awareness and Why is it Important?

self-awareness seems to have become the latest management buzzword and for good reason research suggests that when we see ourselves clearly we are more confident and more creative we make sounder decisions build stronger relationships and communicate more effectively we're less likely to lie cheat and steal we are better workers who get more promotions and were more effective leaders with more satisfied employees and more profitable companies research revealed many surprising roadblocks myths and truths about what self-awareness is and what it takes to improve it they've found that even though most people believe they are self-aware self-awareness is a truly rare quality only 10 percent to 15 of the people actually fit the criteria three findings in particular stood out and are helping us develop practical guidance for how leaders can learn to see themselves more clearly one there are two types of self-awareness for the last 50 years a lot of definitions were used for self-awareness for example some see it as the ability to monitor our inner world whereas others label it as a temporary state of self-consciousness still others describe it as the difference between how we see ourselves and how others see us so before we could focus on how to improve self-awareness we needed to synthesize these findings and create an overarching definition across the studies they examined two broad categories of self-awareness kept emerging [Music] the first internal self-awareness represents how clearly we see our own values passions aspirations fit with our environment reactions including thoughts feelings behaviors strengths and weaknesses and impact on others they've found that internal self-awareness is associated with higher job and relationship satisfaction personal and social control and happiness it is negatively related to anxiety stress and depression the second category external self-awareness means understanding how other people view us in terms of those same factors listed above people who know how others see them are more skilled at showing empathy and taking others perspectives for leaders who see themselves as their employees do employees tend to have a better relationship with them feel more satisfied with them and see them as more effective in general it's easy to assume that being high on one type of awareness would mean being high on the other research has found virtually no relationship between them as a result there are four leadership archetypes each with a different set of opportunities to improve 1. introspectors they're clear on who they are but don't challenge their own views or search for blind spots by getting feedback from others this can harm their relationships and limit their success 2. aware they know who they are what they want to accomplish and seek out and value others opinions this is where leaders begin to fully realize the true benefits of self-awareness three seekers they don't yet know who they are what they stand for or how their teams see them as a result they might feel stuck or frustrated with their performance and relationships 4. pleases they can be so focused on appearing a certain way to others that they could be overlooking what matters to them time they tend to make choices that aren't in service of their own success and fulfillment when it comes to internal and external self-awareness it's tempting to value one over the other but leaders must actively work on both seeing themselves clearly and getting feedback to understand how others see them the highly self-aware people they interviewed were actively focused on balancing the scale the bottom line is that self-awareness isn't one truth it's a delicate balance of two distinct even competing viewpoints [Music] two experience and power hinder self-awareness contrary to popular belief studies have shown that people do not always learn from experience that expertise does not help people root out false information and that seeing ourselves as highly experienced can keep us from doing our homework seeking disconfirming evidence and questioning our assumptions and just as experience can lead to a false sense of confidence about our performance it can also make us overconfident about our level of self-knowledge for example one study found that more experienced managers were less accurate in assessing their leadership effectiveness compared with less experienced managers similarly the more power a leader holds the more likely they are to overestimate their skills and abilities one study of more than 3 600 leaders across a variety of roles and industries found that relative to lower level leaders high level leaders more significantly overvalued their skills compared with others perceptions in fact this pattern existed for 19 out of the 20 competencies the researchers measured including emotional self-awareness accurate self-assessment empathy trustworthiness and leadership performance researchers have proposed two primary explanations for this phenomenon first by virtue of their level senior leaders simply have fewer people above them who can provide candid feedback second the more power a leader wields the less comfortable people will be to give them constructive feedback for fear it will hurt their careers business professor james o'toole has added that as one's power grows one's willingness to listen shrinks either because they think they know more than their employees or because seeking feedback will come at a cost but this doesn't have to be the case one analysis showed that the most successful leaders as rated by 360 degree reviews of leadership effectiveness counteract this tendency by seeking frequent critical feedback from bosses peers employees their board and so on they become more self-aware in the process and come to be seen as more effective by others likewise in interviews they found that people who improved their external self-awareness did so by seeking out feedback from loving critics that is people who have the best interests in mind and are willing to tell him the truth to ensure they don't overreact or over correct based on one person's opinion they also gut check difficult or surprising feedback with others [Music] three introspection doesn't always improve self-awareness it is also widely assumed that introspection examining the causes of our own thoughts feelings and behaviors improve self-awareness after all what better way to know ourselves than by reflecting on why we are the way we are yet one of the most surprising findings is that people who introspect are less self-aware and report worse job satisfaction and well-being the problem with introspection isn't that it is categorically ineffective it's that most people are doing it incorrectly to understand this let's look at arguably the most common introspective question why we ask this when trying to understand our emotions why do i like product to so much more than product b or our behavior why did i fly off the handle with that employee or our attitudes why am i so against this deal as it turns out why is a surprisingly ineffective self-awareness question research has shown that we simply do not have access to many of the unconscious thoughts feelings and motives we're searching for and because so much is trapped outside of our conscious awareness we tend to invent answers that feel true but are often wrong for example after an uncharacteristic outburst at an employee a new manager may jump to the conclusion that it happened because she isn't cut out for management when the real reason was a bad case of low blood sugar consequently the problem with asking why isn't just how wrong we are but how confident we are that we are right the human mind rarely operates in a rational fashion and our judgments are seldom free from bias we tend to pounce on whatever insights we find without questioning their validity or value we ignore contradictory evidence and we force our thoughts to conform to our initial explanations another negative consequence of asking why especially when trying to explain an undesired outcome is that it invites unproductive negative thoughts people who are very introspective are also more likely to get caught in ruminative patterns for example if an employee who receives a bad performance review asks why did i get such a bad rating they're likely to land on an explanation focused on their fears shortcomings or insecurities rather than a rational assessment of their strengths and weaknesses for this reason frequent self-analyzers are more depressed and anxious and experience poorer well-being so if why isn't the right introspective question is there a better one researchers scoured hundreds of pages of interview transcripts with highly self-aware people to see if they approached introspection differently indeed there was a clear pattern although the word white appeared fewer than 150 times the word what appeared more than one thousand times therefore to increase productive self-insight and decrease unproductive rumination we should ask what not why what questions help us stay objective future focused and empowered to act on our new insights all of this brings us to conclude leaders who focus on building both internal and external self-awareness who seek honest feedback from loving critics and who ask what instead of why can learn to see themselves more clearly and reap the many rewards that increased self-knowledge delivers and no matter how much progress we make there's always more to learn that's one of the things that makes the journey to self-awareness so exciting

Channel: Wise Thinker

Views: 5,817

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Keywords: self awareness, self-awareness, what is self awareness, what is self awareness and why is it important, self awareness test, increase self awareness, how to develop self awareness, personal growth, self improvement, self aware, how to increase self awareness, self awareness gary vaynerchuk, garyvee, benefits of self awareness, importance of self awareness, wise thinker, better life, how to expand your awareness, lack of self awareness, how to develop self-awareness, sigma male

Id: wlSmO_YBi0w

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021