The Dawning of a New Era of Hope

Stem cell researcher Robert Lanza hopes to save thousands of lives and for a long time this caused him to fear for his own At the time, a doctor was threatened at a nearby fertility clinic, and a pipe bomb exploded at a bio lab in Boston. Back then I thought that there was probably a 50-50 chance that I was going to get knocked off because I was so visible, says the doctor. I said, okay, try to kill me Im still going to do what I think is right. In Lanzas case, doing what is right involves working with therapies based on human stem cells. The blind shall see again; the paralyzed shall walk again; the hemophiliac shall not bleed anymore. That may sound like something out of the Bible, but Lanza is no faith healer. In fact, the US business magazine Fortune called him the standard-bearer for stem cell research. Lanza is often compared to the main character played by Matt Damon in the film Good Will Hunting, a highly talented outsider who, like Lanza, comes from a humble background.

Initial Success: We have some surprisingly good visual outcome, says Steven Schwartz, an eye surgeon at UCLA. He says that one of his patients can read a clock again and go shopping, while another can recognize colors again. Lanza is a genius and his work is stellar, Schwartz says.

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Robert Lanza Self-Awareness in the Pigeon

The vast majority of people up to 95 percent, in fact believe they have a decent amount of self-awareness. And maybe youre one of the lucky 10 to 15 percent who really does have an accurate view of themselves but if were going by the numbers, well, the odds arent in your favor.

Those statistics are based on years of research from psychologist Tasha Eurich, author of the book Insight. On a good day, 80 percent of us are lying to ourselves about whether were lying to ourselves, Eurich says.Making things extra tricky is the fact that self-awareness has two components: Internal self-awareness is the ability to introspect and recognize your authentic self, whereas external self-awareness is the ability to recognize how you fit in with the rest of the world. Its almost like two different camera angles, Eurich says.

The two are independent, entirely different variables, meaning you can have one without the other. For example, maybe you know someone who is a complete navel-gazer with a high level of internal self-awareness. Yet you and everyone else think this person is a selfish jerk, but because he never receives external feedback, he has no idea. Conversely, someone could have a high level of external self-awareness, a clear understanding of how they fit in with the rest of the world, without knowing what they want and what makes them happy. To be truly, fully self-aware, though, you need both components a feat thats difficult to pull off for pretty much anyone. But, its worth noting, not impossible.

Accept that its going to be a challenge.

We villainize people for not being self-aware when all the decks are stacked against us, Eurich said. Pretty much all over the world, forces are conspiring to make us more self-absorbed, which is basically the opposite of being self-aware. Modern life makes it easy to become a part of what Eurich calls the cult of self: social media, for example, acts as a microphone-slash-spotlight we never have to turn off, while the concept of personal branding turns careful image curation into a professional skill. None of this is to suggest you should shut down your Facebook profile, Eurich says, but these elements can serve as environmental blocks to self-awareness: Whether or not you know it, the cult is trying to recruit us all.

Our environment isnt the only obstacle were all built with our own internal blocks as well. In a 2010 TED Talk titled The Riddle of Experience Versus Memory, psychologist Daniel Kahneman noted that our memories are often inaccurate, which makes introspection difficult. In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, he writes:

Except for some effects that I attribute mostly to age, my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues. I have improved only in my ability to recognize situations in which errors are likely And I have made much more progress in recognizing the errors of others than my own.

In that last sentence, Kahneman is alluding to the bias blind spot, our tendency to recognize cognitive biases in others without noticing them in ourselves.

In other words, your brain isnt built to easily spot your own lack of self-awareness. It may seem like a futile pursuit, but Kahneman offers an answer thats a little bit hopeful, even if its also a little bit frustrating. What can be done about our biases? he writes. The short answer is that little can be achieved without considerable investment of effort.

Moving past these blocks first requires acknowledging where youre starting from. Indeed, the most powerful thing you can do is to gently stop assuming youre already self-aware, Eurich suggests.

Know why youre doing it.

From stronger relationships to increased well-being, there are countless benefits to self-awareness. For example, in a study commissioned by consulting firm Green Peak Partners, researchers from Cornell University examined the traits that contribute to the effectiveness of successful leaders, concluding thata high level of self-awareness was the strongest predictor of success.

It wasnt a particularly surprising finding, the paper noted; when leaders are self-aware, they know how to hire subordinates who are strong in the areas where they themselves are weak. These leaders are also more able to entertain the idea that someone on their team may have an idea that is even better than their own, the authors wrote. Confidence and power are often prioritized in leadership roles, they added, and leadership searches give short shrift to self-awareness, which should actually be a top criterion.

Make peace with who you are.

Just because self-awareness is a desirable trait doesnt mean its one we enjoy having. In a series of studies published last year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers asked subjects to engage in conversations with strangers, acquaintances, close friends, and loved ones, comparing the impression participants made on their conversation partner to the one they thought they made. Overall, the subjects enjoyed the interactions less when they had an accurate view of how they were perceived when they had high levels of external self-awareness.People tend to like individuals who have accurate self-perceptions, yet individuals tend to enjoy their own relationships more with people they believe see them in desirable ways, the authors concluded. In other words, ignorance can be bliss when it comes to external self-awareness; like a heavily filtered Instagram, wed rather people see a better version of ourselves, even if that version isnt quite accurate.

Which is why self-acceptance is a necessary ingredient in self-awareness. Self-acceptance is a really important tool to not just increase our self-awareness, but also love the person we think we are,Eurich says. You can think of them as two twin pillars. Without self-acceptance, self-awareness becomes an unpleasant process, which in turn keeps us from embracing it. To put it another way, learning to accept yourself makes it easier to be honest about who you are.

Ask yourself the right questions.

Introspection is key to building internal self-awareness, but aimless wandering through your own psyche probably wont get you very far. You need a framework. To that end, Eurich has identified seven pillars of self-knowledge to help guide introspection: your personality, values, passions, aspirations, strengths, weaknesses, and something she calls fit, which is the environment most conducive to your well-being.Start by giving yourself the time and space to mull over each of these areas. (Eurich has even created a 14-question quiz to help you along.)

Your approach matters, too. When introspecting, its common for people to ask why. Why didnt I get that promotion? Why do I keep fighting with my spouse? Research has shown there are two problems with this, Eurich said. The question why sucks us into an unproductive, paralyzed state. It gets us into this victim mentality. Second, no matter how confident we are about the answer to why, were almost always wrong.

Eurich and her colleagues looked at their research over the years to see what it was self-aware people were doing differently. We went through all of our interview transcripts and we started to see a pattern. They were almost never asking why, but they were asking themselves what, she says. What skills do I need to build in the future? What dont I know? Why questions are emotionally charged, whereas what questions are rational and figure-focused, making it easier to approach a problem objectively.

Make it a group effort.

To build external self-awareness, on the other hand, you need to let someone else answer the questions. Eurich suggests asking someone close to you what they think about you, potentially even using the framework of those seven pillars. You need to go in the outside world and get feedback from people you trust, people who want you to be successful but are also going to tell you the truth, she says. (Eurichs quiz is a two-parter you also have to find a friend to answer questions about you).

You should also gather feedback from multiple loving critics, as Eurich calls them, to ensure you arent only getting one view.Another loved one might see you in a completely different light. While you dont want to outright dismiss any feedback or criticism, you do have to learn to think objectively. Getting a second, or third, opinion can help. In the end, though, its on you to synthesize all those opinions into a cohesive self-portrait and then get acquainted with the result.

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A Beginners Guide to Self-Awareness - thecut.com

Once upon a time I regarded self-awareness as something that was of little value to me. It seemed too touchy-feely. When people told me I had to find myself, I thought, How can I find myself when Ive never been lost?

The self-assuredness of my early 20s was quickly shattered when I got laid off at the age of 26. Suddenly, I started feeling lost. I was starting to realize I had been directing all of my energies toward proving that I was an adult (whatever that meant!).

In reality I had no clue who I was. Yikes!

Obviously I missed school the day they taught us about self-awareness. Oh wait, thats right, they never taught any of us about it!

I believe the practice of self-awareness is one of the greatest skills in life because it enables you to learn about yourself in a way no one else can ever teach you. It shows you how to design your lifestyle on your terms.

Before we dive into defining self-awareness, lets break it down and focus on the meaning of awareness first.

I like to think of awareness as what you notice in life. Its about paying attention.

Its the details you pick up from your perception of the world. Its your consciousness actively gathering and processing information from your environment. Its how you experience life.

Theres lots of stuff to notice each day, each hour, and even each minute. Look up from this blog post for a moment and slowly scan the area around you. What did you notice? Which details can you describe?

My wife and I notice very different things about the world. I often tell her she could have been a CIA agent because she can recall an astonishing amount of detail from any given scene of life.

Im more oblivious. Well, not really oblivious so much as hyper-focused on one particular part of the same scene my wife and I are experiencing.

I tend to be very aware of people. I easily remember peoples names. I feel their vibe. I notice how people interact with each other in a group. I catalog their stories in my brain. I can pick up conversations exactly where we left off even if months have passed.

My wife, on the other hand, will notice the physical details and movements of all people, even strangers. I tend to be more aware of people I know or spark my curiosity.

Neither form of awareness is right or wrong. Theyre just different. Its our natural tendency.

If awareness is about noticing stuff in the world, self-awareness is about focusing your awareness on yourself.

Its your ability to notice your feelings, your physical sensations, your reactions, your habits, your behaviors, and your thoughts. You are aware of all those different aspects as if you were another person outside yourself observing them.

Another way to think of it is paying attention to your intuition.

Or as someone I once interviewed told me, self-awareness is about being honest with yourself.

We all have a self-image of how we want others to perceive us. You might view yourself as punctual, but in reality you are often late to appointments. Self-awareness is about focusing on the reality of your behavior and not on the story you tell yourself about yourself.

Many of the people I interviewed about feeling stuck in their lives often described a feeling they could no longer ignore.

On the surface of their lives, everything seemed fine. In fact, they were able to ignore and even repress this feeling because they didnt have the self-awareness to explore it.

Some felt a physical sensation in the pit of their stomach or a tingling in their chest. Others felt more and more distracted. People also told me they felt unsatisfied or unhappy, but had no idea why because they could see no immediate reason for it in their lives.

Those that started to investigate the source of these unexplained feelings and sensations were those that began a deeper practice of self-awareness.

They started observing even more subtle sensations and the nuanced circumstances of their behaviors. They gave their feelings a voice and hushed the monkey chatter of their conscious thoughts.

Those that chose not to investigate these feelings increasingly felt more anxious. More stressed out.

Exploring the unknown can be scary. We believe we have to have everything figured out by the time we are 30. Becoming self-aware about unresolved feelings threatens everything we thought we were supposed to be working toward.

I strongly encourage you to stop ignoring those feelings because theyll never truly go away. Instead, start exploring them through a practice of self-awareness.

At the very least you will learn more about yourself and how you can live in closer alignment with who you really are.

In the context of lifestyle design, self-awareness is the first step toward designing your lifestyle around the work youve always wanted to do.

It is the mechanism for acquiring self-knowledge, the path to learning which habits you need to alter to start working on your terms.

The first step for practicing self-awareness is gaining a greater awareness of your emotions.

We have been taught to shut our feelings out of our decision-making process and to rely solely on our rational thoughts.

I believe this puts our decision-making process out of balance. When we rely solely on our rational thoughts, we often make decisions to try to live up to someone elses ideals.

Our feelings are the internal advocate for our own ideals. To make effective decisions, we need both rational thought and our feelings. We need to pay attention to our gut as much as our brain.

I didnt become actively self-aware of my feelings until my early 30s. I suffered from chronic anxiety throughout much of my career, and I owe that to my deficient awareness of my feelings.

Bring greater awareness to your feelings by including them in your decisions. Listen to your gut and explore why your feelings might object to the decision of one of your rational thoughts.

Ask yourself, Where is that feeling coming from? Make a habit of recognizing your feelings.

The second step to practicing self-awareness is making a habit of tracking your feelings

Very simply, start writing down your most positive feelings and your most negative feelings. Keep a journal or note on your phone. Try it for at least 30 days.

Begin to notice patterns and trends. This simple practice will help you better define your purpose, your values, your motivations, and anything holding you back from the work youve always wanted to do.

I like to think of monitoring your feelings as communicating with your subconscious mind. Its your true inner voice. It often knows what you want in life before you are able to put it into words.

The third step for practicing self-awareness is expanding your practice to areas of your life beyond your feelings.

There are countless areas of your life you can monitor, but you should focus on areas you believe will have the greatest impact on designing your ideal lifestyle.

Once youve gotten experience with tracking your feelings, I recommend tracking your energy next. This will help you identify your peak performance period each day. These are the period(s) of the day when you are most energized, focused, and able to create your highest quality work. Tracking your energy will also provide insights into what motivates you and what drains you.

I know starting a self-awareness practice for the first time can be difficult, so thats why I created a 12-week self-assessment challenge to help begin your self-awareness practice. Its completely free.

Sign Up Now

Each week youll be emailed a new self-assessment challenge that prompts you to explore a specific aspect of your life like how you spend your money or identifying your values.

Developing a self-awareness practice is the foundation of lifestyle design. It is the primary method for learning about yourself and your needs.

It will also do wonders for reducing your anxiety and preventing you from getting stuck in the future.

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What Is Self-Awareness? - Life Skills That Matter

The human species is an amazing product of evolution. A fundamental part of it, our consciousness, itself a natural wonder, also happens to include self-awareness. Unlike other animals, we not only know some things, but we know that we know them.

It's why the Delphic oracle (so it's said) was able to first think about it, and then say, "Know thyself."

It's also why we can have philosophy cafes to discuss practical and esoteric subjects, while octopi don't. They may be smart, but they don't take that next step and think about why they are so smart.

Human sentience and unique self-awareness are astonishing capacities that, ironically, few humans actually think about.

Few humans think about how they are able to think, perhaps because of another unique feature of our cognitive state: denial. No clearer example is the denial over human-caused climate change.

Despite the fact climate change is established science, as certain as gravity, the denial mechanism is about as fired up as it can get.

Trouble is, science doesn't care whether it's believed or not. It just is.

Another thing is increasingly obvious about how this denialism is powered. For most denialists just like, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump nothing is going to change their minds about the reality of climate change (again, the science), how it has been caused (our use of fossil fuel) and what to do about it (rapidly replace our energy sources with renewable, sustainable energy sources).

For real-time examples of denialism run amok, just skim over the comments that'll most certainly appear below.

Another thing is obvious too: While Canadians love to chortle about how we are smarter than Americans, ignorance and basic human stupidity about climate change don't magically get turned back at the border.

"Build that Wall"?

If there were one for repelling callowness, I'd be all for it. Yet we have enough of our own homegrown elements to suffice.

As I peer out my window, all I see is smoke. Smoke from forest fires raging out of control in B.C. Despite the red flags burning our eyes and throats, it still isn't enough to get Canadians to seriously ask how our forests have become such tinder-boxes.

But let's do it anyways, even though I hear the denialists already.

So for starts, let's agree that, yes, some of it is natural occurrence. Yes, some of it is due to poor forestry practices.

But let's try to focus, shall we, and understand the issue as science sees the ferocity and frequency of these fires like those seen in Fort McMurray just last year.

Whatever other issues are playing their part, the intensity of these fires is due to how we remain willfully ignorant about how addiction to fossil fuels is having a cumulative effect, intensifying climate change.

Let's connect the dots.

Interesting that several weeks ago, with sunny clear blue skies, we were reading about the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Some of us were musing over Mr. Trudeau's assertion that it was going to happen, and that no leader would leave 170 billion barrels of Alberta bitumen in the ground.

So, what will it take to acknowledge the science?

We need to realize that our environmental policies shouldn't have to wait for denialists. Decisions should be dependent on the science, as any other policy.

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After all, nature, once abused, pushes back to remind us that our actions have real consequences. So as mentioned, while Trump and others deny it, the effects as they are reported, practically on a daily basis, are as clear as can be:

"Thousands of studies conducted by tens of thousands of scientists around the world have documented changes in surface, atmospheric and oceanic temperatures; melting glaciers; disappearing snow cover; shrinking sea ice; rising sea level; and an increase in atmospheric water vapor. ... The last few years have also seen record-breaking, climate-related weather extremes, as well as the warmest years on record for the globe." Executive Summary of the National Climate Assessment

Sadly, watching our province burn to the ground, the horror we have fleeing our homes, choking on the smoke, witnessing the destruction of our wildlife, and counting the millions of dollars in damages and the incredible hardship on those fighting the fires maybe more will begin to connect the dots.

If so, they'd better hurry, because the rest of us can't wait.

See more here:
Choking On Denial: Forest Fires And Climate Change - Huffington Post Canada

In a chat with YourStory, Deep talks about how his companys culture to be empathetic to customers and employees has helped SAPs growth in the country.

Deb Deep Sengupta, President and MD, SAP India, has his priorities for his company as well as for himself as a leader very straight. Ask him what he believes is the job of the head of a company, and pat comes an analogy on player-coach: essentially a coach who leads from the front but one who does not hesitate to get his hands dirty in the field with his players every once in awhile.

SAPs plan for India is clear; the enterprise software multinational wants to not just make efforts to increase growth and rake in profits, but the company wants to create a social impact as well.

Stressing on the concept of growing through giving back, Deep says, Social impact should not be just for NGOs. There is no point if the company cannot be empathetic and create social impact.

Among its many initiatives, what stands out is the companys digital literacy programme, in partnership with its many customers including ITC and L&T to provide tech knowledge to rural youth, women and specially-abled people in all parts of the country.

But what is the company doing with startups? Deep elaborates: We have an entrepreneurship development programme with IIT Bombay and Ahmedabad. We also have a big facility in Bangalore and Gurgaon, which has a startup studio, where people can come in, meet with mentors and can bounce off ideas. SAP taps into its global network and provides access to portals and systems. Also, we give access to private equity and venture capital fund. SAP has a fund called Sapphire Ventures. We look at interesting ideas and do select M&As to be part of our portfolio. We also to connect with PEs in our network.

Deep makes a passionate case for technology-led companies, pointing out that all the flak they receive for not creating jobs is misplaced. E-commerce and aggregating companies have created 1.3 million jobs in the past five years, he adds.

Deep, who has an 11-year-old son and two dogs, follows the same rule of empathy at home as well, often looking from his sons point of view when he is backed into a corner.

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Empathy and self-awareness, the most important traits of a leader ... - YourStory.com

A new study carried out by the Department of Psychology at Barnard College in the U.S. used a sniff test to evaluate the ability of dogs to recognize themselves. The results have been published in the journal Behavioural Processes.

The experiment confirms the hypothesis of dog self-cognition proposed last year by Prof. Roberto Cazzolla Gatti of the Biological Institute of the Tomsk State University, Russia. Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, the lead researcher, wrote, "While domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, have been found to be skillful at social cognitive tasks and even some meta-cognitive tasks, they have not passed the test of mirror self-recognition (MSR)."

Prof. Horowitz borrowed the "Sniff test of self-recognition (STSR)" proposed by Prof. Cazzolla Gatti in 2016 to shed light on methods of testing for self-recognition, and applied it to 36 domestic dogs accompanied by their owners.

This study confirmed the previous evidence proposed with the STSR by Dr. Cazzolla Gatti showing that "dogs distinguish between the olfactory 'image' of themselves when modified: Investigating their own odour for longer when it had an additional odour accompanying it than when it did not. Such behaviour implies a recognition of the odour as being of or from 'themselves.'"

Prof. Cazzolla Gatti firstly suggested the hypothesis of self-cognition in dogs in a 2016 pioneering paper entitled after the novel by Lewis Carroll "Self-consciousness: beyond the looking-glass and what dogs found there."

As the Associate Professor of the Tomsk State University anticipated: "this sniff-test could change the way some experiments on animal behaviour are validated." Soon, the study of Dr. Horowitz followed.

"I believe that dogs and other animals, being much less sensitive to visual stimuli than humans and many apes, cannot pass the mirror test because of the sensory modality chosen by the investigator to test self-awareness. This in not necessarily due to the absence of this cognitive ability in some animal species," says Cazzolla Gatti.

Prof. Cazzolla Gatti's idea, as recently confirmed by Dr. Horowitz on a larger samples of dogs, shows that "the sniff test of self-recognition (STSR), even when applied to multiple individuals living in groups and with different ages and sexes, provides significant evidence of self-awareness in dogs, and can play a crucial role in showing that this capacity is not a specific feature of only great apes, humans and a few other animals, but it depends on the way in which researchers try to verify it."

The innovative approach to test the self-awareness highlighted the need to shift the paradigm of the anthropocentric idea of consciousness to a species-specific perspective. As Prof. Cazzolla Gatti anticipated last year in his paper: "We would never expect that a mole or a bat can recognize themselves in a mirror, but now we have strong empirical evidence to suggest that if species other than primates are tested on chemical or auditory perception base we could get really unexpected results."

This new study published in the journal Behavioural Processes, validating the sniff test of self-recognition (STSR) and the hypothesis of a self-awareness in dogs and other animals developed by Prof. Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, pushes ethologists to move "beyond the looking-glass to see what other animals can found there."

Explore further: Dogs (and probably many other animals) have a conscience too

More information: Alexandra Horowitz, Smelling themselves: Dogs investigate their own odours longer when modified in an "olfactory mirror" test, Behavioural Processes (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2017.08.001

Journal reference: Behavioural Processes

Provided by: National Research Tomsk State University

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STSR tests confirm that dogs have self-awareness - Phys.org - Phys.Org

Working with business leaders, I am struck by the challenges that my clients experience, leading companies in such a radically changing and dynamic world.

I believe there are two key traits that are crucial for todays business leaders to help them meet those challenges adaptability and self-awareness.

READ MORE: Management news

Because todays marketplace is so unpredictable, leaders need to be ready to learn fast and move quickly. Their role is to help their organisations adapt and flourish amid the constantly changing political and economic landscape a very different role from the more traditional and structured hierarchies that most of us witnessed earlier in our careers.

The choices are hard, especially when it comes to letting go of some of our core beliefs and ways of thinking that have worked for us in the past. Todays business leaders now need to step back, look at whats happening and what lies ahead, keep asking what is working, learn from their mistakes, and most importantly, learn to thrive from this approach.

A recent McKinsey article, based on research from the worlds largest organisations, highlighted how different everything feels from just a decade ago. Leaders are operating in a bewildering new environment in which very little is certain; the pace is quicker, and the dynamics far more complicated. Business leaders worry that its impossible to stay on top of all the things they need to know. And yet, there are great examples of success where adaptive organisations are leading the way in the market.

Take Amazon for example. I find being a customer so easy, and their response matches what I want. A lot has been written about their CEO Jeff Bezos, but his philosophy of making bold investment decisions, building the culture, taking risks and thinking long term, has resulted in huge global success.

200 Voices: find out more about the people who have shaped Scotland

In todays economic environment, a leader being adaptable is no longer a nice to have, its the new normal if you want your company to deliver a real competitive advantage. There is a Chinese proverb that says that the wise adapt themselves to circumstances, just as water moulds itself to whatever vessel it is in.

Adaptive leaders show clear direction, dedication and ambition traits that inspire others to follow them. These individuals are willing to experiment, take calculated risks, encourage innovation, and have a style that is very open. The essence of this approach is that they learn how to follow, and followers learn how to lead.

Perhaps a more difficult skill to craft is self-awareness. This requires digging deep and looking closely at your personality all of your strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions. Its a quality that allows you to understand other people and how they perceive you, your attitude and how you respond to them.

So why do we need to develop greater self-awareness now? Quite simply, because in todays economic climate we need to make changes in how we think, in our emotions and reactions.

Self-awareness is the first step in creating what we want and mastering where we focus our attention, our emotions, reactions, personality and behaviour, determining where we go in life. Until we are aware of this and regularly take a good look at ourselves, we will find it difficult to respond appropriately and keep up with the 21st century challenges.

Any high-performing sports person or musician is relentless in honing their craft. Business leaders need to apply the same principles. That might be learning how to play to their strengths and improving the areas they are weaker on, or surrounding themselves with people whose strengths will complement their own and learn from each other.

Either way, its time for our captains of industry to take a good look at themselves and start building up their leadership muscles!

Caroline Donaldson is director at Kynesis Consulting

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Caroline Donaldson: Self-awareness is key to leadership - The Scotsman

There are many characteristics associated with effective leaders; you can find those lists easily, or you can just make a list yourself. If you have read my writing much, you know that I believe that remarkable leaders are learners that they must be learning to be successful in nearly every part of their role. I believe that an important part of our ability to be a learning leader is to be self-aware.

The Oxford Dictionary defines self-awareness as a conscious knowledge of ones own character, feelings, motives, and desires. Given that definition, I want to give you three reasons why you would want to build the skills and habits of self-awareness if you want to be a better leader and some reflection questions for each of these reasons.

Others are watching. Everything in your behavior is being observed and evaluated by those around, especially your team. They are noticing what you do and say, how you do and say it, and even what you arent doing or saying. The degree to which a leader is unaware of their behavior and how it is being perceived by others limits their ability to be successful today, and become more successful tomorrow. To better understand this, consider questions like:

How are people responding to you? In what ways are those responses surprising? How often do you feel misunderstood, or your actions are misinterpreted? Do you recognize other peoples perceptions as feedback to consider?

You impact everything. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, your presence and behavior will necessarily change the way your team operates, what they value and what they believe.

Who you are and how you behave changes the relationships your team members have, the expectations they carry about their work, how productive they are, and what values they carry in their work. As a leader, you must realize how your presence affects the team. To think about this more carefully ask yourself questions like: Do you notice your team (or individuals) changing when you walk into the room? If so, in what ways? How open does your team seem with you? How would you access the level of trust team members have in you?

Consider cause and effect. As it relates to self-awareness, the most important cause and effect relationship starts with your thoughts. What you are thinking impacts your actions, consciously or not, and therefore directly impacts the two items above. Some questions to ask yourself here include:

What are your beliefs about your team and each member of it? What are the most important parts of your job? What do like most about your role as a leader? What do you wish you were better at?

Self-awareness requires introspection: to look inside yourself at what you were thinking and feeling at any moment, and how it lead you to speak and act. When looking back at a situation, you can see how you responded and why, but more importantly, you can see what type of reaction or outcome resulted. Since we mostly operate on auto-pilot, when we stop and reflect on what we did, why we did it and how it worked, we have a chance to change the auto-pilot settings in the future (if we so choose).

If you want to become a more effective leader, decide to be more self-aware, more introspective, and step back to assess yourself using the kinds of questions above. Time spent doing this will almost assuredly aid you in your journey to becoming a more effective leader.

And before we close, one more important thing . . .

The most effective leaders recognize the power of self-awareness, and are also more open to and actively seek feedback from others as a part of their learning and growth. As important as the self-awareness and self-evaluation is, it is just a starting point and fuel for the desire to grow as a leader and a human being.

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The Self-Aware Leader - Inside INdiana Business

What is Self-Awareness?

Self-Awareness is the thinking skill that focuses on a childs ability to accurately judge their own performance and behavior and to respond appropriately to different social situations.

Self-Awareness helps an individual to tune into their feelings, as well as to the behaviors and feelings of others. For example, a child successfully uses self-awareness skills when they notice they are talking too loudly in a library where other children are trying to work, and then adjusts the volume or their voice to a more considerate level.

Video games allow kids to practice their Self-Awareness skills while in the midst of a fun and immersive gaming experience. Many games require that players think about their thinking in the game in order to overcome challenges, and multi-player games require interpersonal cooperation and understanding of ones teammates intentions.

Watch the video to learn more about how video games can help your child improve their Self-Awareness thinking skill.

Self-Awareness is vital both to a childs academic success as well as their social and emotional growth. This thinking skill facilitates a childs ability to accurately judge their own performance and behavior, as well as their ability to appropriately respond to different social situations.

These are some general strategies and ideas for helping kids to improve their Self-Awareness skills.

There is convincing research demonstrating how early training in thinking, executive, and learning skills improves long-term academic performance. The choice to teach thinking skills rather than academics to kindergarteners results in improved performance in mathematics and reading for middle school students and beyond. In other words, for children to grow up to become accomplished readers and mathematicians, more time should be spent teaching thinking skills to kindergarteners and first graders.

Self-awareness is an important skill in the capacity to assess ones academic performance. Carefully checking over ones work in math, taking the time to see that you have spelled words correctly while writing, and stepping back to make connections and inferences about what one has read are all important skills, particularly at higher levels of learning. Metacognition facilitates reflecting about what one has learned, and not simply memorizing a series of facts.

Playing video games, searching the Internet, trying out the newest app, or Facebooking a friend demands a variety of thinking skills. Proficiency with any of these digital tools requires the ability to apply skills such as Planning, Organization, Working Memory, or Self-Awareness. For children, the attraction of video games and technologies makes them an ideal teaching tool for practicing game-based skills and learning to apply them to school and daily activities.

Self-Awareness is a frequently applied thinking skill for video game players who are looking to improve their performance or simply share their game passions with other players. Players will often ask each other questions, explain their approaches to difficult parts of the game, and reflect on new ways they can use their digital technologies to help them in real-world activities.

The thinking skill of self-awareness is associated primarily with Dawson and Guares executive skill of metacognition. In the LearningWorks for Kids thinking-skills model, we have added the component of social thinking, which reflects an individuals capacity for understanding others feelings and motivations. This is consistent with newer theories of executive functioning, particularly those by Russell Barkley, in which the social component of executive skills is highly valued.

As an executive function, self-awareness refers to the capacity to understand the impact of ones behavior on others, as well as the capacity to connect and empathize with individuals in their environments. Self-awareness helps children to be reflective and think about their actions and behavior, as well as to step back and consider what others in their environment are experiencing. Self-awareness facilitates the capacity to learn from ones mistakes, accept criticism, and listen to and understand the feelings of others.

Assessing the executive function of self-awareness in children involves seeing how effectively they understand themselves and others. The Learning-Works for Kids Thinking Skills Assessment is based on the Executive Skills Questionnaire, which measures self-awareness primarily by childrens capacity to explain the rationale for their decision making, accurately assess their performance, and their capacity to take on other peoples perspectives.

Link:
What are Self-Awareness Skills? - LearningWorks for Kids

Through my research in emotional intelligence and brain function, Ive developed a model of the mind as a three-tiered building. The first tier is the foundation and where youll find the brain, the control center. The second tier contains the four realms of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skill.

And above that, at the top tier, are leadership competencies. These come from a methodology called Competency Modeling, one of the main developers of which was my mentor at Harvard, David McClelland. Following this model, we identify who will be best in a specific role by evaluating those who have excelled in that positionusing whatever metric appliesand then comparing them with people in the same role with mediocre success. This allows us to identify the competencies found in the stand-outs that you dont find in the average these are the leadership competencies were seeking. Then we hire people with those competencies.

In the decades since McClelland proposed this, it has become standard operating procedure for identifying leadership competencies in most world-class organizations. When I was conducting research for my book Working with Emotional Intelligence, I had access to about 200 competency models that companies use to identify star performers. These are all proprietary since they provide each organization with a competitive edge, but I was able to identify common themes. For example, emotional self-awareness is a leadership competency that shows up in model after model. These are the leaders attuned to their inner signals, recognizing how their feelings affect them and their job performance. They integrate their guiding values into their work. They can deduce the best course of action. They see the big picture and theyre genuine.

I had a discussion about this modeland particularly self-awarenesswith my colleague Daniel Siegel, whos a psychiatrist at UCLA and whose research informs much of my work in emotional intelligence. I asked what his research had to do with the parts of the brain that are self-aware. Ive paraphrased our conversation below.

Whats particularly exciting about this model is how it asks the question, How does emotional intelligence create a bridge between competence creation and the brain?

First off, people hear about the brain and they become glassy-eyed; they think its going to be too complicated. But I think there are some basic statements about the brain that can make us feel much more comfortable Remember that the brain is actually the social organ of the body. Everything that allows us to be social is mediated by certain circuits in the brain. Also, your experiencejust the subjective quality of being alivehas a lot to do with how you use your brain. Lets take self-awareness, as you mentioned. When someone is aware of how feelings affect his reasoning, thinking, and ways of interacting with other peoplehe has self-awareness. This is one component of emotional intelligence. And we know that there are circuits in the brain that allow you to be aware of your mental world that are distinct from the circuits that allow you to be aware of your physical world.

During medical school I knew certain professors who were aware of their internal experiences, and subsequently could also be aware of the experiences of their patients. So if someone was given a difficult diagnosis, they knew to stay with the patient and be attentive to their feelings. Other professors acted as if it was just a diagnosis. And it struck me then that some people could see their minds, and some people couldnt. I termed this ability mindsight.

So as I said, with self-awareness, we know there are certain circuits that map your mental life. These are very different from the brain circuits that map what you physically see, for example. Some people have cultivated these mindsight map-making areas beautifully and have great self-awareness, because its a learnable skill, and other people havent. Some mindsight may be innate, but studies also suggest that your experiences with your parents can generate the kind of reflective competencies upon which self-awareness depends.

Keep in mind that self-awareness isnt just navel-gazing. Its the presence of mind to actually be flexible in how you respond. It allows you to be centered, and know what your body is telling you.

The physiological state of your whole body can drastically affect how you respond in a given situation if you dont pay attention to it. (For example, a study in 2011 indicated that judges hand down stricter sentences when theyre hungry.)

This is also true when were threatened or challenged at work: The brain quickly judges people who are not like us in one certain way, and those like us in another way. If youre not aware of that as a leader of an organization, you may find yourself making all sorts of gut-based decisions that require more reflection.

Read my full conversation with Dr. Siegel in my new collection, The Executive Edge: An Insiders Guide to Outstanding Leadership. Or watch the interview in my video series, Leadership: A Master Class. Apply these concepts with Leadership: A Master Class Training Guide.

The L&D Primer

The Coaching Program

The C-Suite Toolkit

The Competency Builder

The EI Overview

Self-regulation: a star leaders secret weapon

How emotionally intelligent are you?

How leaders build trust

A relaxed mind is a productive mind

See the rest here:
Daniel Goleman: How Self-Awareness Impacts Your Work