Welcome to the self-leadership series. This week we are giving 7 tools to boost your self-awareness. The starting point for leadership transformation is self-awareness and like any other skill, it requires regular practice to train this new capacity. Find out how to cultivate your self-awareness and grow your consciousness about your thinking patterns, emotional reactions and behaviors.

TOOLS TO DEVELOP YOUR SELF-AWARENESS

As a leader you are supposed to actively work on internal and external self-awareness. It means both having an accurate image of yourself and getting feedback to understand how others see you.

Here are 7 some tools to cultivate your self-awareness and further grow it.

1.Create some space to connect with yourself and reflect

Give yourself time and space every day to connect with yourself. Ideally, you should integrate morning rituals into your life by waking up earlier and starting your day with meditation, reading, writing and/or physical exercise. These morning routines are part of the rituals of most successful people and are also described in more detail in Hal Elrod's book "Miracle Morning".

2.Look at yourself objectively

Examine your values, strengths, weaknesses, passions, and so on with honesty. You can refer to the exercises I shared in previous articles.

3. Journaling

Recording your thoughts on paper helps to relieve your mind and clears it up to make space for new information and ideas. It also enables you to track your progress.

Take some time every evening to look back at your day, your thoughts and feelings, your achievements, what you are proud of , what you would do differently and your key learnings of the day. Look into some specific habits which are not serving you, or negative thoughts or cognitive biases influencing your decisions. What are the things you are telling yourself? (self-talk) What are things you said or did which you regret? Where did you leverage your strengths?

As a leader, reflect on how you are as a leader, what is your impact, how people might view you and what you could do differently to have the impact your desire and grow your team. And while answering these questions, look into the extend to which you are living in accordance with your core values (see article on core values).

Identify what could you do more of?, what could you do differently and what you will stop doing and then set yourself a goals by asking yourself “How can I improve on this tomorrow?”.

4. The three why’s.

Being self-aware means knowing your motivations and identifying if they’re reasonable.

Before acting on a decision, ask yourself “Why?” Follow up your response with another “Why?” And then a third. If you can find three good reasons to pursue something, you’ll have clarity and be more confident in your actions.

5. Practice mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness helps you find greater clarity and self-awareness. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” Through mindfulness practice, you will be more present with yourself so that you can observe your thoughts and emotions as they arise. You’ll become aware of how your mind wanders and building the habit to gently bringing it back into the present moment.

Research has demonstrated the multiple benefits of mindfulness on health (e.g. decreased stress, lower blood pressure, better sleep, reduced symptoms of burnout, etc.), productivity (e.g. increased concentration and focus, increased capacity in thinking and perception, enhanced mental functioning, heightened creativity, etc.), emotional intelligence (incl. capacity to regulate emotions and read other people’s emotion) and social and relational skills (incl better active listening capacities, less judgment).

For beginners, start with ten minute sessions. You can find plenty recordings on Internet by searching for Jon Kabat-Zinn meditation or you can also look into Tara Brach’s meditations. I often recommend Apps to my clients such as Headspace or Calm (English) or Zenfie (in French). Once you have grown your formal practice through meditation using the breath as your anchor to the “here and now”, you can further how your informal practice by being present in what you are doing (e.g. walking mindfully, eating mindfully etc).

“Self-awareness is a key to self-mastery”(Gretchen Rubin)

6. Ask trusted friends and mentors to describe you (external self-awareness).

None of us is fully aware of how we come across to others, we all have blind spots in our thinking patterns and behaviors..

We thus have to rely on the constructive feedback of our peers, friends, and mentors. Ask trusted friends, peers and mentors who understand you; whom you respect; and will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Let them know you are looking for an open, honest and critical feedback.

You can also ask friends to bring it to your attention when you are doing something that you know you want to change (e.g if you are aware of your tendency to interrupt people when they talk, ask a friend to let you know discretely so you become more aware when you are doing it).

Important is to make people feel safe while they are giving you an informal yet honest view. When you get a feedback, listen actively, don’t rebut or defend your actions, just say “thank you”. Take the feedback and attempt to understand their feedback.

7. Physical exercises

Reconnecting with your body and intuition is an integral part of developing self-awareness. You could explore gentle yoga, Tai Chi or Qi Qong to increase your self-awareness skills of your body and reinforce the body mind connection. These techniques involve a deliberate posture, purposeful breath and an emphasis an awareness.

If possible, building in some physical exercises in your morning routines.

There is no magic wand that will grant you with immediate and accurate self-awareness. Building self-awareness is a life-long effort and it takes courage, commitment, and humility. The earlier you start to work on yourself, the more self-aware you’ll become. The stronger your observing self becomes, the more space you create between you and your thoughts, feelings, and actions, and the more you are at choice of the impact you’ll have as a leader. The seven practices described in this article will help you move faster and further along the way. And no matter how much progress we make, there’s always more to learn. So, stay curious!

Find out more on self-leadership, read my dedicated blog post.

Feel free to contact us for additional coaching support or leadership programs.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Recommended books:

“Miracle morning” by Hal Elrod
“Insight, The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think” by Tasha Eurich, June 2018

Articles:

“Here is what mindfulness is (and isn’t) good for” (Harvard Business Review)

'“Spending 10 Minutes a Day on Mindfulness Subtly Changes the Way You React to Everything” (Harvard Business Review)

About the self-leadership series

This weekly series aims to share tools to help you grow your self-leadership and to connect to your three leadership intelligences: Head, Heart and Gut. When using these three intelligences, you increase your impact, relational skills, adaptability and resilience and can navigate the ever-changing environment with ease. So grab a notebook to make these practices powerful for you!

Previous articles in the self-leadership series: