THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-AWARENESS

In the Above and Below the Line model, people are presented with a challenge that they could or should take responsibility for. They then make a choice to either avoid responsibility using Below the Line strategies such as defensiveness, blaming, making excuses, deflecting responsibility and denial.  

Conversely, Above the Line responses lead to accepting responsibility and ownership and working actively to resolve the issue. The model identifies the first step in the Above the Line chain of responses as ‘awareness’- it’s not possible to take responsibility or ownership for an issue that you’re unaware of, and it’s the antithesis of the Below the Line behaviour of denial.  

As a people leader you will accelerate your leadership journey by proactively seeking opportunities to expose yourself to areas of your leadership (and life) that you could be taking more responsibility for in terms of self-improvement. The term ‘self-awareness’ is something of a misnomer, because often self-awareness comes through the valued input of others who can often see what we’re unable to see- effectively our blind spots. The Johari model explains this well with four types of knowledge:  

1. What we know about ourselves that others know about us (common knowledge)

2. What we know about ourselves that others don’t (our private lives)

3. What neither we nor others know about us (God knows!)

4. What others know about us that we don’t know about ourselves

It’s this last quadrant in the Johari model that offers us the greatest opportunity for growth- our blind spots that others can see that we can’t. This requires us having people in our lives, work and personal, whom we trust and respect. They are able to give us objective and meaningful feedback in a safe and caring manner that can help us, not only become more self-aware, but offer some accountability in those areas that require self-improvement.

Self-awareness can also come from:

• Reading and watching material that exposes us to higher level thinking e.g., autobiographies, business texts, leadership material, audio books, TED talks etc.  

• Watching others through a critical lens. Not critical in the sense of critiquing them to put them down, but critical in the sense of looking at people through an active, rather than passive lens and asking questions like: “What can I learn from their behaviour? What is it that is so effective or ineffective about how they communicate? What aspects of their conduct may reflect on my behaviour and how it could or should change?”

Leaders that lack self-awareness are hard work. They’re not easy to respect, and nor are they easy to trust. A journey of self-awareness is not always an easy one, and confronting weaknesses and personal demons can be uncomfortable, even painful. But that short-term pain will lead to the long-term gain of effective leadership and easier relationships, whereas avoiding self-reflection may be a short-term gain, but you’ll pay for it in the long run.

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