Awareness

Introduction

It can be truly challenging for business leaders to ensure you are paying adequate attention to the right things in such a rapidly changing business environment. Awareness can be something of a superpower which enables you to achieve more than you hoped or planned. In this article I want to introduce you to the wonderful work of Tasha Eurich.

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS:

It is very difficult to take timely action in relation or in response to something about which you aren’t properly aware. For a business this partly refers to environmental awareness. International Businesses that are closing or suspending operations in Russia are a case in point. What about your business? How effectively are you able to ‘read the signs’ whether they be ominous or indicating opportunity?

SELF-AWARENESS

At the level of the individual leader, self-awareness is absolutely crucial. Indeed this can enhance opportunities (or set a leader’s upper limit) for success. But I am not thinking of self-awareness as hype in a motivational guru’s talk. As indicated in the slide below, there’s good robust research that has investigated the subject for a long time.

BENEFITS:

Tasha Eurich and her research team have identified two kinds of self awareness: internal self-awareness (how well you know yourself) and external self-awareness (how well you understand how others see you). Now to the benefits. The benefits the research team lists includes:

So what are the benefits of you as a leader investing time and effort to raise your self-awareness?

1. Greater confidence

2. More creativity

3. Sounder decisions

4. Building stronger relationships

5. Becoming a better worker

6. Running a more profitable business

What right thinking leader would not want these benefits for him/herself and for those around them?