Becoming Human-First as a Leader: Practice Self Awareness
Becoming human first as a leader, on top of leading with compassion, checking in with your team in 1:1s, and being vulnerable about what’s going on with you, also requires a certain level of self-awareness that is developed by listening to both your team and to yourself.
Emotional intelligence is essential to being human as a leader and it starts by looking inwards and getting in touch with your inner voice. Leaders who are connected with their inner selves, who have an authentic relationship to their inner voice, are able to create more and make better decisions.
An important tool to use in increasing self-awareness is open awareness, in which you broadly notice what’s going on around you without getting caught up in or swept away by any particular thing. In this mode, you do not judge or feel judged, you are not brought down, and you do not tune out the feedback or information you’re getting. You simply accept the intended message.
Focusing on others is vital. Business is founded upon relationships and it is important to maintain these by using empathy to think about the feelings of others. Understand what they need from you, and deliver on those needs to nurture that relationship.
Daniel Golemanm, a leadership expert and top contributor at the Harvard Business review, has described three forms of empathy. The first is cognitive empathy which entails simply knowing how the other person feels and what they might be thinking. The second form of empathy is emotional empathy, when you feel physically along with the other person, as though their emotions were contagious. This emotional contagion is a reflection of our inner neurological system that has a system of mirror neurons where your neurons will fire both when you complete an action or observe that action performed by another such as yawning. The third form of empathy is compassionate empathy, wherein not only do you understand a person’s predicament, but you are spontaneously moved to take action to help the suffering individual however you can.
Now that you have a better understanding of empathy, make sure to keep a finger on the pulse of your emotions so that you can exercise your muscle for sensing others’ feelings and perspectives, and then move on that emotional intelligence to uplift your teammate by taking an active interest in their concerns.
Another key aspect of self-awareness is control, staying grounded in the moments where it really counts. Learning to take a step back from a situation before addressing it is one of the most difficult parts of leadership. High stress and rapid change environments will test your resilience, but taking a few minutes to respond instead of reacting immediately, makes for a better outcome and allows you to exhibit your skills of cognitive empathy and control – the skills that a true leader would exhibit in crisis.
Actions:
Be curious and questioning, employing exploitative and explorative strategies in concentrating on the job at hand and your current resources, while also exploring and opening up an awareness to recognise new opportunities on the horizon.
Create an environment where your team is safe to think, create, fail, and iterate freely – where individuals can take risks and express disagreement with their superiors in a growth environment where no idea is a bad idea because each one is generative.
Understand that the answers to your current problems lie within, they cannot be outsourced to some other person, you have to trust your own intuition to be a great leader.
Here’s how you can improve your self awareness:
Write down your thoughts. Have an open dialogue with yourself in a journal where you put everything in your head onto paper.
Ask your team for feedback, goal-set your key priorities, keep track of your progress toward these milestones, and be open in welcoming alternative viewpoints.
In your reflection and journaling, consider writing down every time you have a need, and write down how you will honor, acknowledge and fulfill this personal need moving forward. Take your time with this.
Take it step by step, day by day. Leadership doesn’t happen overnight, it happens over time.
You got this.