-Karthik Gurumurthy
I am currently going through a course with Harvard Business School where Amex has teamed up with HBS for Band-35 and up leaders. It is a very useful and helpful course which I am thoroughly enjoying and am thankful for the senior management to enrol me in this special class. For today's reading, I was going through an article in HBR written by Tasha Eurich.
This is the summary of today's reading:
One of the biggest aspects of emotional intelligence is self-awareness.Being self-aware means being in tune with your emotions, feelings, state of mind, motives, and desires.
Clearly, there’s a disconnect between how aware we think we are of our emotions and the truth.
Dr. Eurich says there are two types of self-awareness: internal and external.
Internal self-awareness is how we see our own values, thoughts, and emotions. To practice this, move away from asking what. Instead of asking “Why did I say that to a team member?”, ask “What made me say that to my team member?” You can’t always rationalize the why, but you can always explain the what.
External self-awareness is how we are seen by others. To practice this, create an open and safe environment where team members and peers can be honest with you. Encourage critical feedback that ultimately helps you improve.
The goal of self-awareness is to balance internal and external self-awareness, or to have how you see yourself be the same as how you are seen by others. True self-awareness requires a balance between these two dimensions. When the two sides match, you can target areas for improvement and change how you interact with yourself and with others.
To develop as leaders, we must focus on both our internal and external self-awareness. It's easy to assume that being high on one type of self awareness would mean being high on the other. Dr. Eurich research has found virtually no relationship between them. As a result, she identifies four different self awareness archetypes, let's take a deeper look.
According to Dr. Eurich classification, a person low in both internal and external self-awareness might be described as a seeker. They might not know who they are and what they stand for or how their teams see them. Sometimes they feel stuck or frustrated with their performance or their relationships. They have plenty of room for development in both areas of self-awareness. Someone with high internal self-awareness but lower external self-awareness is described as an introspectors.
They know themselves well on the inside, they probably spend a lot of time there. But rarely challenged those views against how others might see them, or rarely ask for critical feedback that might lead to growth and unlock more leadership potential. A person low and internal self-awareness and high and external self-awareness might be called a pleaser.
Experience and power can sometimes hinder self-awareness. When we gain more experience or authority, we may become less open to feedback or self-reflection. Simply thinking about ourselves doesn’t guarantee insight; we need external feedback and perspective.
The person high in both internal and external self-awareness, Eurich calls those as simply aware. Actually sometimes she calls these folks unicorns, they're pretty rare. They know who they are, what they stand for and they seek out critical feedback from others. They're willing to take in disconfirming evidence and adjust themselves accordingly. This is where leaders can really leverage the power of self-awareness. Being able to master both sides of self-awareness is crucial for future leaders as they develop emotional intelligence.When we see ourselves clearly we are often more confident and more creative. We make sounder decisions, build stronger relationships and communicate more effectively. We're less likely to lie, cheat and steal, we're better workers who get more promotions and were more effective leaders with more satisfied employees and more profitable companies.
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