Self Awareness
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
The first step in improving emotional intelligence at the workplace is self-awareness. Self-awareness is more of knowing self in terms of strengths, limitations, beliefs, values, purpose, passion, and feelings/ emotions at a deeper level.
Why is Self-awareness required?
When we are aware of ourselves, we choose the right field to play to win and be prepared to improve.
Let me give you some real examples which will bring more understanding about the power of self-awareness in personal and professional growth.
1. One of my known business heads realized that he frequently stuck in a meeting and not able to ask the questions to his team. That is the moment of self-awareness of his limitation. After realizing that, he has been consciously learning the art of questioning in different circumstances.
2. One of my colleagues who was working as a senior manager identified his strength lies in people management than in detailed engineering. That moment of realization made him shift into a general management area and been successful for the last decade.
3. One of my friends recently identified his limitations in dealing with the online webinar format of learning, particularly on listening ability and coping up. Now he is working on improving the listening capability as suggested to him.
4. Personally, when i became aware of my limitations on my writing skill without grammatical errors, now I am using grammatical software to improve the writing quality and still working on it.
The real problem is not with the strengths or limitations, but not aware of those strengths/ limitations and leading a suboptimal life with suffering self and others.
When you know more about yourselves, it will improve your leadership effectiveness and relationship qualities.
But the strange fact is that most of us think that we know about ourselves very well. That is not TRUE. One of the studies conducted by Carnegie Mellon University researchers among the leaders of many organizations found that only 15 % of the people are aware of themselves very well and remaining either overestimated or underestimated themselves.
When I was working in an organization, as part of the leadership development process, the HR team asked me to rate myself on some of the leadership attributes. Also, they asked my peers and junior colleagues to rate me on the same attributes. To my surprise, in all the attributes, I have rated high about myself than others. That is a blindspot. That is the moment of self-awareness about myself.
We will learn the structured way of knowing ourselves in the coming weeks, and as of now, to get an overview of your judgment about yourself, suggest you take the following action this week.
Why is Self-awareness required?
When we are aware of ourselves, we choose the right field to play to win and be prepared to improve.
Let me give you some real examples which will bring more understanding about the power of self-awareness in personal and professional growth.
1. One of my known business heads realized that he frequently stuck in a meeting and not able to ask the questions to his team. That is the moment of self-awareness of his limitation. After realizing that, he has been consciously learning the art of questioning in different circumstances.
2. One of my colleagues who was working as a senior manager identified his strength lies in people management than in detailed engineering. That moment of realization made him shift into a general management area and been successful for the last decade.
3. One of my friends recently identified his limitations in dealing with the online webinar format of learning, particularly on listening ability and coping up. Now he is working on improving the listening capability as suggested to him.
4. Personally, when i became aware of my limitations on my writing skill without grammatical errors, now I am using grammatical software to improve the writing quality and still working on it.
The real problem is not with the strengths or limitations, but not aware of those strengths/ limitations and leading a suboptimal life with suffering self and others.
When you know more about yourselves, it will improve your leadership effectiveness and relationship qualities.
But the strange fact is that most of us think that we know about ourselves very well. That is not TRUE. One of the studies conducted by Carnegie Mellon University researchers among the leaders of many organizations found that only 15 % of the people are aware of themselves very well and remaining either overestimated or underestimated themselves.
When I was working in an organization, as part of the leadership development process, the HR team asked me to rate myself on some of the leadership attributes. Also, they asked my peers and junior colleagues to rate me on the same attributes. To my surprise, in all the attributes, I have rated high about myself than others. That is a blindspot. That is the moment of self-awareness about myself.
We will learn the structured way of knowing ourselves in the coming weeks, and as of now, to get an overview of your judgment about yourself, suggest you take the following action this week.
quick action on self-awareness
- Reach out 3 people who are very close to you and know more about you. They can be your partner, colleagues & friends.
- Ask them to give feedback on TOP 3 POSITIVE qualities of you and TOP 3 AREAS OF LIMITATIONS of you as they feel.
- Summarise the responses and calibrate yourself on what do you think about yourself and others' feedback are matching or not.
Pl do not get into justification or defend. Just be aware of yourself.
Self-awareness is the first step in improving your emotional stability and leadership qualities.
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