Self awareness is a critical component of successful and highly regarded people in the workplace. Self awareness has been directly linked to contributing to more productive and profitable organisations as well as highly successful and admired leaders. According to Tasha Eurich in her awesome book Insight, we need a balance of internal self awareness (examining our own thoughts, feelings and actions) and external self awareness (feedback from others) to build our awareness of how we portray ourselves.
If you would like to uncover more of your own ‘extraordinary’, seriously focus on consciously raising your self awareness. Here are some tips:
- Revisit personality profiles. There are a lot of great online versions of popular questionnaires that will give you insight. And ask people around you who really know you to fill one out as though they were you and compare the difference. Be completely honest with yourself about what is great about your preferences, and what is painful about your preferences. Becoming more self aware means knowing your shadow side and letting go of what doesn’t serve you.
- Write down three things you have been justifying as ‘just who you are’ but don’t serve you or the people around you. Like…talking too much, being sarcastic or overthinking things. Ask three people who work closely with you to be ruthless in not letting you get away with what you’ve decided to focus on. Let them follow through on their commitment to you, without apology or any justification from you!
- Play with your own emotions. See if you can sit with an uncomfortable emotion (like overwhelmed or frustrated) for a minute by just concentrating on the emotion itself. Don’t act on it! See what happens.
The only control potential you will ever have in this world is what you think, how you feel and what you do. Make them your primary focus and let the extraordinary ooze out of you.
The Field runs a leadership development program called ‘The Extraordinary Minds Program’ for organisations who believe that their people will always be their greatest success story!