Self-Awareness ≠ Self -Management
by Kimberly Togman, 11:11 Partners Collaborator
Years ago, I described myself as alarmingly self-aware. I was pretty pleased that I easily recognized and understood my emotions, and knew my triggers, motivations and what drives me. This extended to pretty solid intuition and ability to read others. Not perfect, but pretty good. I congratulated myself for my level of emotional intelligence. After all, self-awareness is the foundation of all emotional intelligence.
Then one day I was gobsmacked by the realization that I didn’t use that self-knowledge to guide my behavior in different situations. It finally occurred to me that self-awareness does not equal self-management.
Self-awareness is the foundational building block of emotional and social competence. Yet it alone is not enough to successfully navigate the complex world of leading and working with others. Ultimately, recognizing your own internal composition without modifying your behavior to match the environment you operate in will stymie progress, lead to avoidable conflict and potentially lasting damage or complete failure. Being aware that you are both clumsy and can’t fly without stepping back from a steep ledge, could easily land you splat on the ground below.
Perhaps more relevant examples:
Self-Awareness: Ben is a straight-shooter and proudly calls it like he sees it. He says, “I’m a no BS kind of guy. Some people can’t handle my direct way, and well…I am what I am. We just won’t get along.”
Self-Awareness + Self-Management: George is an extreme extrovert and loves commanding attention and blurting out his (usually) good ideas in meetings. Knowing that he is a big personality, he has developed the ability to temper his exuberance, pay attention to the amount of airtime he is taking, and draw out others to share their thoughts and opinions. “My colleagues are brilliant. Their talents and perspectives are different from mine, I’d be an idiot to steamroll over them.”
Self-Awareness: When someone raises their voice and seems angry when talking to her or disagreeing with her, Kendra knows she has a tendency to shut down and just want to get out of the conversation. + Self-Management: She has learned to not let her reaction show on her face, to take a deep breath, remind herself she is not responsible for the other person’s reaction, and get curious about the situation.
Building Self Awareness and Self-Management
So, how do you get better at both knowing yourself and using that knowledge for good?
Practice Pause. Notice. Name.
Pause. When you are having an interaction that isn’t going quite the way you’d like, deliberately pause and take a slow deep breath. Inhale and exhale slowly. No need to exaggerate it, you can do this quietly.
Notice. Notice how you are holding yourself. Where is there any tightness in your body? What sensations do you feel? How are you experiencing the other person? What do you observe about them? What are you reacting to?
Name. Name the feelings, observations, and reactions either to yourself, or share out loud with the other person.
Practicing Pause. Notice. Name. helps you develop your awareness of yourself, and yourself in relationship to others. Deliberately slowing down the action, taking the time to observe the many inputs to your experience, and finally attaching a name to that experience sets you up to choose what you do next. That’s self-awareness + self-management.
Invest in Assessments
There are many individual assessments that can also help you build self-awareness. At 11:11 Partners we use the Kolbe A Index to help individuals understand their instinctive strengths in how they gather and organize information, manage risk and uncertainty, and handle space and tangibles.
To uncover potential blind spots, consider a 360-degree assessment. In a 360, you’ll get feedback from people all around you like your manager, peers, direct reports, and other key stakeholders. In addition to uncovering blind spots, this type of feedback can help you identify your strengths and areas for development as seen by others. An executive coach can conduct and interview-based assessment or administer a survey-based tool like the Leadership Circle Profile which helps to identify your internal operating system of creative competencies and reactive tendencies. You can also do a mini self 360 by interviewing people on your own and asking questions like: When do you experience me at my best? What do you wish I’d do more of? What do you wish I’d do less of? What is improvement I could make that would have the greatest positive impact?
The value from assessments comes after you receive the feedback they provide. Feedback is only data. The key benefit comes from how you use the data to grow your self-awareness and then in turn use it in self-regulation. Greater self-awareness comes from reflecting on the information and asking yourself questions like:
What is surprising?
What would you like to understand better?
In what ways is each piece of feedback true?
Better self-management can grow out of questions such as:
What changes can you make to best build on your strengths?
What can you develop to have the greatest impact?
In what situations or circumstances would it be helpful to better manage your reactions? How might you do so?
Effective leadership depends on high emotional intelligence. Self-awareness provides the foundation. How you build on that foundation is a strong determinant of your leadership success.