Your Week 2 Essentials summed up:
- What does self-awareness have to do with leadership? Self-awareness is a key leadership competency. It is at the heart of your ability to manage yourself. In short, self-awareness sets you up to make better choices about how you think, speak, and act. Without it, you’re flying blind.
- But what if I don’t want to be more self-aware and I don’t want to know about my blind spots? By shining a light on your blind spots, you enhance your self-awareness about how you show up and about why things are the way they are. Doing this enables better choices, which supports more powerful leadership. It also helps you get better at reality. Are you really going to leave all that on the table?
- A super common blind spot is hiding. Unconscious hiding is a source of trouble and misery for a lot of people because it gets in the way of showing up the way you think you are showing up and it leaves you thinking your contributions are more visible than they actually are. Common ways hiding shows up at work include:
- Acting like the Critic, Clown, or Cheerleader instead of taking a risk and sharing your ideas, opinions, and creativity
- Working in ways that render your contributions invisible, like stalling and overcomplicating things
- Avoiding interactions and projects that have an element of the unknown to them or where you risk “being exposed” as not having all the answers
- Why do we hide? Fear is often at the heart of our hiding behaviors at work. Many of us are prone to hiding from what makes us uncomfortable (like trying something we’ve never done before or not knowing the answer). At times, we hide simply because we have not yet learned another way.
- Truth:
Behind each of the most common workplace fears is an idea. Ideas are just mental constructs we use to make sense of our world. You have the ability to challenge and change these ideas and we’ll look into that more in next week’s lesson. For now, make sure your ideas about yourself and what’s worth being afraid of are current with who you are today!
- Invitation: Could the Challenger be a new North Star for you as you embark on this developmental journey? Remember, the Challenger brings a sense of optimism and personal agency to situations. The Challenger is resourceful, willing to work hard, take responsibility for their actions, and look for solutions.