“Know Thyself.” –Socrates
A colleague of mine recently shared a story with me.
A few years ago she was working in a key leadership position for the president of her company—we’ll call him Steve.
She was eager and excited about her new role.
But several months in, she was frustrated and dissatisfied with the job and initially couldn’t say exactly why.
After all, her new boss was friendly, engaging, and hard-working.
But Steve was tense, obsessive, and high-strung. He would frequently delegate projects to his team, only to take them back weeks later and do the project himself. He would sometimes make a unilateral or far-reaching decisions without consulting the executive team.
Several employees were also underperforming, and he never seemed to hold them accountable. The whole leadership team could see it clearly, and it hurt company morale.
Worse yet, she discovered that several of those employees were actually being paid more because they had complained the most.
She tried approaching Steve about these issues several times. The conversations were reasonable, but nothing changed.
What happened?
She left the position in less than a year, and was quickly recruited for a better job.
No doubt, Steve had many promising leadership traits. But Steve had a significant blind spot that was ultimately crippling his leadership. Unless he changed, he would continue to lose the most talented people.
Without some kind of radical intervention, Steve is very likely to continue the same patterns, behaviors, and habits until the end of his career.
So what could make Steve change?
The importance of self-awareness as a leadership trait
A 2012 survey of 75 members of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council rated self-awareness as the most important capability for leaders to develop. MIT’s Sloan School of Management agrees that self-awareness is a top characteristic of the best leaders.
Furthermore, Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist and executive coach who gathered a research team to analyze the results of nearly 800 existing scientific studies on self-awareness. They also conducted 10 separate investigations with nearly 5,000 participants, to determine what self-awareness really is, why people need it, and how to increase it.
She distills these findings in her best-selling book Insight: The Surprising Truth About How We See Ourselves, How Others See Us, and Why It Matters More Than We Think.
Her team uncovered a shocking reality.
Nearly everyone believes they are self-aware, but only 10-15% of people in her study actually met the criteria.
It is important to understand that there are two types of self-awareness: internal and external.
Internal self-awareness is how accurately people perceive their values and aspirations, or recognize their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Internal self-awareness is associated with higher job and relationship satisfaction, personal and social control, and high levels of happiness. It also typically leads to lower anxiety, stress, and depression (Eurich, 2018).
External self-awareness means clearly understanding how other people view us. Research shows that people who know how others see them are more skilled at showing empathy and taking others’ perspectives. “For leaders who see themselves as their employees do, their employees tend to have a better relationship with them, feel more satisfied with them, and see them as more effective in general” (Eurich, 2018).
Internal self-awareness is easier to develop on your own. External self-awareness is typically harder to develop.
And research identifies a few big things that can impede self-awareness: 1) years of experience or expertise and 2) power or authority over people. Why is this? Because the more expertise or experience people have, the more they see their own opinions as the best and are less likely to take other opinions into consideration. And second, the more authority or power a leader has, it becomes increasingly unlikely that people will be willing to risk their job or paycheck by giving unfavorable feedback to the boss.
But how can you discover things about yourself that you just don’t see?
The simple answer is—you have to ask.
I remember first being challenged to seek feedback from coworkers after reading some of Marshall Goldsmith’s work in 2011. Goldsmith is widely recognized as one of the top executive coaches in the world.
I felt inspired by his books and articles and thought, I really want to be the best leader I can be so I’m going to try this. I developed a quick tool with research-based questions and sent out paper feedback forms to my boss, peers, and subordinates.
Then I sat down excitedly to open my envelope of feedback forms. I found mostly positive comments about me being friendly, reliable, and great at working with others. But I had a fair amount of constructive criticism as well. A few people even said I came across as “arrogant.”
I underestimated the emotional toll this process would take. I am embarrassed to say my mind obsessed over it for weeks. I would wake up at night ruminating and trying to identify where the comments came from.
But after a month, the fears and ruminations subsided and I decided to share my findings openly with my coworkers, then publicly announce one or two important areas I would work on, as a result of the feedback I had received.
The process was enormously beneficial and I have gone on to conduct a variety of anonymous 360 surveys on myself about annually since that time.
Every time it is painful to my ego. Every time it is extremely helpful.
There is a certain peace and confidence that comes with having a better grasp of where you stand with people when you allow them to give you anonymous feedback. There is also an entirely new level of accountability to the people you lead when you allow them to regularly assess your performance as a leader.
It is a right of passage for any leader and leaders cannot make much progress in self-awareness without this regular discipline.
All feedback is information. And it is always to your advantage to know how people perceive you than to not know, even if you disagree with the feedback or find it painful. You might even decide not to change for good reasons. But do this consciously, knowing the impact it is having on others.
The higher you go in leadership, the more important that you seek blind feedback from others because they will naturally hide or limit the amount of honest feedback they give you because of your authority and power.
Leaders who never do this are doomed to repeat behaviors that irritate their coworkers, bosses, or teams—and never know why. This will almost certainly hold them back from achieving their highest potential.
One final thought, not all feedback needs to be anonymous. One great and simple practice is to regularly ask people “How can I improve?” You may get a lot of mileage out of this simple question.
But never use informal feedback as an excuse not to get anonymous feedback. The reasons for that have already been emphasized in this article.
Eurich suggests you ask for feedback from “loving critics,” or people with whom you have positive working relationships but are likely to give you honest feedback about areas you can improve.
So are you ready to take the next significant step in your leadership journey and begin making a practice of letting your coworkers assess your leadership behaviors on a regular basis?
Take action now
No matter where you start, don’t make excuses or delay. Then do it regularly.
You could do a simple paper-based or online survey using even a few simple questions.
But if you are looking for a place to start, I’ve created a free form you can print and give to people or put into an online survey. This 360 form includes research-based questions from a global leadership study along with many emotional intelligence domains correlated with effective leadership behaviors. None of it is copyright protected.
INSTRUCTIONS: I recommend you give this form to 12 to 15 people to ensure you get enough feedback to identify any theme patterns. Meet with a trusted mentor or colleague to review and identity areas you want to work on. Then pick only one or two things. Send a summary email or discuss in a meeting the feedback you received and the behavior you plan to work on. Then ask people in about six months if you have improved. Then keep assessing yourself each year.
Another great tool is the Google Oxygen Project Manager Feedback Survey. However, this form is only for subordinates to assess their manager.
Have a great weekend!
Parker
Want more resources?
- MIT Sloan School Article on Self-Awareness citing Stanford Study
- Insight by Tasha Eurich
- What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
