From Patrick Lencioni’s foreword of the Emotional Intelligence 2.0:
“Not education. Not experience. Not Knowledge or intellectual horsepower. None of these serve as an adequate predictor as to why one person succeeds, and another doesn’t. There is something else going on that society doesn’t seem to account for.”
I believe self-awareness is that something else. In my book, “The 9 Dimensions of Conscious Success; It’s all about YOU!”, I emphasize that self-awareness is one of the critical foundational elements for anyone’s success.
I like to say that self-awareness is simply knowing in the moment, how you are! Knowing how you are, helps you be sure your best self is showing up. Your best self is simply that person you want to be in interacting with others.
One of the tips I offer to folks is a simple process to help you know how you are. It is very merely pausing to complete for yourself, quietly, two statements.
- Right now, I’m thinking. . .
- Right now, I’m feeling. . .
This simple little process, if you are totally honest with yourself, raises your self-awareness. It can be immensely useful in that it prepares you better for interacting with others. Think for a moment if you are very tired and physically not feeling well. Would that influence an interaction with others? Most likely. So, knowing and taking time to acknowledge that will help you better inter-relate.
Being successful is strongly linked to a process in which we all must engage if we are to be successful. That process is continuous improvement.
Think about this; any successful process or experience can be improved and, no matter how happy one is with a specific experience, most people I know would always opt for an improved experience if possible.
One of my favorite quotes attributed to Will Rogers is, “Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of experience comes from bad judgment!”
I believe most would agree that good judgment is also linked to success. Think about the growing up experience, your own or perhaps a brother or sister, or someone you were close to growing up. Undoubtedly you can think of examples of making a mistake, maybe a painful one, and then learning from that mistake.
Learning from one’s mistakes is a very important part of growing up. Without it, we stay stuck in a certain ignorance where mistakes are repeated over and over. No one I know would enjoy that, and if you are perhaps a parent, you would not want that for your children. So caring, conscientious parents will often say to a child after a problem or mistake, “So what did you just learn?” It is a loving way to help a child learn and hopefully avoid repeating the mistake.
So, improvement is then linked to learning from one’s mistakes. And to do so, especially when we move on from our parent’s guidance, requires our willingness to really examine experiences to find out; did that work out well for me, or not so well. That analysis is fundamental self-awareness. Being aware of self, so that I can improve. (More about that in a bit.)
Now let me say that high self-awareness is not always fun or enjoyable. Truly being self-aware means, we may find out some things about ourselves, that initially, we wish we hadn’t discovered. True self-reflection is sometimes hard when we see we may not be showing up as the person we wish to be. This may be why many avoid self-reflection or true self-analysis. It could be for many reasons; for some, it is that their ego is just too fragile to acknowledge they “screwed up.” So, many stay in a safe bubble immune from any criticism.
Here is the big problem with that; however, while they stay in that safe bubble, they cannot consciously or deliberately improve, even if they really wanted to.
In my book, I talk about how self-awareness is very closely linked to social awareness. Social awareness is very simply knowing that what you say or do, has an impact on others and knowing what that impact is.
A short “detour” here – back to the notion of success, much has been written about the importance of maintaining healthy relationships in being successful. So, you can begin to see how to connect these dots, these inter-related concepts. Success comes from a variety of things, many of which have to do with inter-relating with others. Life is full of examples of working with others, engaging with others, etc. Some of the best; results, inventions, contributions to society are the result of collaboration and teamwork.
So back to self and social awareness – you can see I think that creating poor relationships with others would definitely hamper one’s success. Most people then would likely intend to have positive relationships wherever they can. It creates a dilemma, however. Is intent enough? Maybe not. To be successful through our relationships, we must be sure our intent matches the impact on others. Again, we’re back to social awareness. The challenge is that you may not know whether the impact matches intent.
One of the best ways I know to be sure intent matches impact is to think in advance (prior to a meeting or conversation) about your intent, state it, and then check-in at the conclusion, with others as to whether you achieved that intent – did intent match the impact.
Basically, this is asking for feedback. Some find the notion of hearing feedback as scary or unpleasant. I’ve found this is because they associate feedback with only negative information, and on the basis of that assumption, they avoid it. First, it won’t always be negative. Second, positive or negative I believe it’s better to know – it’s to your advantage to know how others are seeing you.
My mentor, the late John Jones, used to say, “Awareness preceded meaningful choice.”
Back to the idea of success and continuous improvement, I know of virtually no one who, given a basic choice, would not want to be successful and would not want to improve to achieve that success.
So, the key then is understanding what self and social awareness really are. Then knowing that, how can you leverage both for your own success. To do so, try the tips I’ve included here.
David E. Nielson brings over three decades of corporate, Fortune 500, and private consulting experience in organizational change management, leadership development, and training. David’s book, The 9 Dimensions of Conscious Success: It’s All About You!, just released on audiobook.
To learn more about David, go to davidenielson.com.
Great article. But what about dealing with people who aren’t self-aware? I find this so challenging. I feel like I am surrounded by people who are clueless about both intent and impact, and even when I express their impact on me, they sincerely don’t care. These people tend to be related to me and assume the relationship will remain in tact regardless of how harmful they are acting.
Hi Ana, great question and I think part of the answer is found in your comment. You mentioned that when you inform these individuals of the negative impact they’re having, they demonstrate that they really don’t care.
As I’ve advised many people who’ve asked how to deal with a difficult boss, the truth is we can’t change someone’s behaviour; they have to be motivated to make that change themselves. And as you have clear indicators that these people are unwilling to even make the effort despite hearing the negative impact they have on you (and possibly others), the best thing to do is to limit your contact with them and when you do have to engage with them, remind yourself that you have a different social contract with them where you need to keep yourself at a distance – emotionally and psychologically – to protect yourself from their negative impact.
Another good step to take is to look for patterns of that negative impact. What are the things they say/do that create this negativity and what is it typically in response to? When you see a common pattern emerge, you can now anticipate when these negative impacts will occur and you can create a buffer that limits its impact on you because you saw it coming. You can also use this to limit what information or subjects you discuss with them in person to limit these negative moments.
I know it’s not ideal as it’d be nice for people to acknowledge when their actions are having a negative impact on others and affect change to improve things. But the reality is some people just don’t want to make that effort and as you point out in your case, genuinely don’t care about how their actions and words impact others. As such, you need to focus on what’s within your means to control to improve the situation, not for their benefit, but for yours. Hope this helps, Ana!