Increasing self-awareness
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Self-awareness can make a huge difference to your career. We all have things that can either help us to drive forward or that can trip us up. Without knowing what those things are – or being willing to admit them to ourselves – we’ll fail to use them to our advantage. In fact, it amazes me how often I’m left scratching my head following an encounter with someone, wondering whether they have any idea of the kind of impression they’re making or the impact they are making on their team, or other people’s ability to contribute.
Don’t get me wrong – given that I’m not 100% self-aware myself, I’m sure that I sometimes do the same. But that’s where having a keen interest in self-awareness comes in – as well as helping me to curb my negative impact, it allows me to deliberately control my behaviour to be far more effective, and to achieve a much bigger positive impact. And knowing what I look like and behave like when I’m at my best can be powerful and help me to create success.
So if you lack a little (or a lot!) of self-awareness, what can you do?
Self-reflection
Depending on who you are, you might find this easy or difficult. Some people are very comfortable looking at a situation they found themselves in and thinking about why it went well or didn’t go well – and it can lead to insights if you’re open and willing to allow a little bit of self-criticism and to see yourself as less than perfect. That said, some people can find it hard. Personally, I’m not very good at self-reflection because I tend to overthink situations and have a tendency to be too self-critical, but it’s still a great place to start.
No matter how easy you find it, one thing that can really help this is to write your reflections down. How you do it is personal to you, and some people choose to do it very publicly through a blog (and of course the internet is full of people willing to give feedback!) whereas some prefer privately journaling their thoughts. If you do tend to be overly self-critical, this could work well for you as it also allows you to go back later to see if you still agree with your conclusions.
Ask other people
Whether through a formal mechanism (such as 360-degree feedback) or informally through conversation, other people can give you a good window into yourself. Just remember that feedback always falls into one of two categories – the first is feedback that is correct, resonates with you, and which you agree with. The second is feedback you disagree with, but you need to remember that it’s based on a perception that you have somehow created. It’s important not to just reject the latter. Instead, focus on how to change that perception (or not create that perception in the future). Both are useful in helping to think about how you could change, develop – and the things you want to stay the same.
Psychometrics
Over the years, I have found psychometrics to be incredibly helpful in gaining personal insight. I first realised this aged about 26 when one of my early managers, a fantastic guy who was also a psychologist, offered to give me some tests and gave me insight into the results. Some 15 years later, many of the insights stuck with me because the tests made me realise things that had just never occurred to me about myself – and they definitely explained some of my weirdness!
Keep going
The last thing to bear in mind is that this is not a one-off exercise – you need to regularly work on refining your view of yourself. It’s partly because you can learn a lot whenever you step up into a new role or take on a new responsibility. And even if you’re not moving to pastures new, I strongly suspect you might have hidden depths!
TAKE AWAY
Gaining self-awareness is a continual process – when you think you think you’ve arrived at the point where you’re self-aware, there will likely still be more to learn. But if you stick with it, it can have an incredibly positive impact on your career.
Don’t get me wrong – given that I’m not 100% self-aware myself, I’m sure that I sometimes do the same. But that’s where having a keen interest in self-awareness comes in – as well as helping me to curb my negative impact, it allows me to deliberately control my behaviour to be far more effective, and to achieve a much bigger positive impact. And knowing what I look like and behave like when I’m at my best can be powerful and help me to create success.
So if you lack a little (or a lot!) of self-awareness, what can you do?
Self-reflection
Depending on who you are, you might find this easy or difficult. Some people are very comfortable looking at a situation they found themselves in and thinking about why it went well or didn’t go well – and it can lead to insights if you’re open and willing to allow a little bit of self-criticism and to see yourself as less than perfect. That said, some people can find it hard. Personally, I’m not very good at self-reflection because I tend to overthink situations and have a tendency to be too self-critical, but it’s still a great place to start.
No matter how easy you find it, one thing that can really help this is to write your reflections down. How you do it is personal to you, and some people choose to do it very publicly through a blog (and of course the internet is full of people willing to give feedback!) whereas some prefer privately journaling their thoughts. If you do tend to be overly self-critical, this could work well for you as it also allows you to go back later to see if you still agree with your conclusions.
Ask other people
Whether through a formal mechanism (such as 360-degree feedback) or informally through conversation, other people can give you a good window into yourself. Just remember that feedback always falls into one of two categories – the first is feedback that is correct, resonates with you, and which you agree with. The second is feedback you disagree with, but you need to remember that it’s based on a perception that you have somehow created. It’s important not to just reject the latter. Instead, focus on how to change that perception (or not create that perception in the future). Both are useful in helping to think about how you could change, develop – and the things you want to stay the same.
Psychometrics
Over the years, I have found psychometrics to be incredibly helpful in gaining personal insight. I first realised this aged about 26 when one of my early managers, a fantastic guy who was also a psychologist, offered to give me some tests and gave me insight into the results. Some 15 years later, many of the insights stuck with me because the tests made me realise things that had just never occurred to me about myself – and they definitely explained some of my weirdness!
Keep going
The last thing to bear in mind is that this is not a one-off exercise – you need to regularly work on refining your view of yourself. It’s partly because you can learn a lot whenever you step up into a new role or take on a new responsibility. And even if you’re not moving to pastures new, I strongly suspect you might have hidden depths!
TAKE AWAY
Gaining self-awareness is a continual process – when you think you think you’ve arrived at the point where you’re self-aware, there will likely still be more to learn. But if you stick with it, it can have an incredibly positive impact on your career.