The latest buzz word seems to be self-awareness, it’s everywhere … from self-help guides to Donald Trump’s tweets!
But self-awareness is not a new concept. In fact, it can be traced back over 45 years when psychologists Duval and Wicklund first developed their self-awareness theory. Their proposition was that ‘when we focus our attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behaviour to our internal standards and values. We become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourselves.’
We prefer the more recent definition provided by Sutton in Europe’s Journal of Psychology: ‘The extent to which people are consciously aware of their interactions or relationships with others and of their internal states.’
95% of people think they’re self-aware, but only 10-15% truly are!
– Tasha Eurich
How self-aware are you?
Many people presume they have a high level of self-awareness. However, a study by organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich, found that, whilst 95% of people think they’re self-aware, only 10-15% truly are.
Understanding yourself is paramount. Learning more about yourself, your personality, strengths, weaknesses and your motivations, is the first step in shaping your outlook on life. Self-awareness is empowering because once you are self-aware, you understand how other people may perceive you and how you perceive them, how you differ and how you are alike. It is then easier to make changes in your behaviour and grow accordingly.
Why does self-awareness matter?
Self-awareness has long been seen by Facilitators as both a way of alleviating psychological distress and improving self-development. It can impact our everyday lives in so many ways – from how we interact with work colleagues, to dealing with relationships, increasing confidence, making decisions, adapting to change, choosing the right career and managing stress for our general wellbeing.
Self-awareness is crucial for helping you perform better. Research has shown, including that from the Harvard Business Review that those who are more self-aware tend to perform better at work, get more promotions and is a crucial element for business leaders to lead more effectively. Companies with more self-aware professionals have shown stronger financial performance.
In a study undertaken by Green Peak Partners and Cornell University examining 72 executives at public and private companies with revenues from $50 million to $5 billion, it was found that “a high self-awareness score was the strongest predictor of overall success”.
A level of importance should be placed on developing self-awareness within workplace settings in particular as the business benefits speak for themselves. Many organisations have already implemented self-awareness training and development opportunities and have seen the positive impact this has made.
How do you become more self-aware?
There are many options to help you become more self-aware. You can take expert advice from a professional coach, introduce mindfulness into your everyday routine, look at yourself objectively and document your findings, ask your most trusted friends for their objective opinion of you, undertake a personality/psychometric assessment and ask for feedback from your work peers and colleagues.
Although a combination is the best approach, we’re going to focus on the last two.
A personality assessment is a great starting point
Self-awareness is more than just gaining the knowledge about yourself, it’s also about how you apply this knowledge.
DiSC is a personality assessment which aims to increase self-awareness. It provides you with a DiSC profile detailing your style, characteristics, behavioural type. But, unlike other tools, it also provides you with strategies to implement this learning day to day, to achieve your goals.
For an individual to be truly self-aware and understand their impact on others – they must gain feedback about their approach. Many work settings do not have a structure in place for receiving feedback – or if they do it is generally negative feedback only.
Objective feedback from work colleagues should allow us to reflect on both our strengths and weaknesses.
For those in a leadership role for instance, it can identify skills gaps and reveal areas they need to improve upon. This knowledge will help leaders make better informed decisions and help to positively motivate their employees, as they can identify their needs too.
How to start your journey to self-awareness
To help you gain more knowledge of the DiSC model, or if you would like to become qualified to distribute the DiSC personality profiles, our Official DiSC certification programme will provide everything you need.
Alternatively, our qualified team of L&D professionals would love to have a chat about your team’s self-awareness pitfalls before creating and delivering a bespoke solution for you. Find out more about our outsourcing and consultancy services here.
