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Key takeaways:
Self-awareness is a critical element of leadership.
Build self-awareness about your values, preferred communication style, your pet peeves and penchants, and anything else that is important to you.
Develop a Working-With-Me guide with this information and share with your team to build trust and facilitate effective conversations.
Years ago I had two directors in my reporting chain that had to both sign off on proposals in order for projects to be funded. I remember being very frustrated when one of them wanted the big picture and the other wanted a lot of low-level details; one wanted slides, the other wanted docs; one preferred a walkthrough, another preferred to leave comments in the docs. They operated so differently!
Are you the leader or the team member in this scenario? How much more effective would your interactions be if people understood you and how you work?
Wouldn’t it be great if each person came with a user guide of how they operated?
The million-dollar question is: Do you know what makes you tick and how you operate?
Self-awareness is a critical element of leadership. Self-awareness can be broken down into:
Understanding your values: Values are the principles that are core to who you are. For example, my values are: infinite learning, being there for my family, leading with purpose. When faced with difficult decisions, knowing your values can enable you to make choices that you can truly stand behind.
Understanding your preferred communication style:
Concise or wordy?
Feedback is blunt, candid yet supportive, or compliment-sandwich?
Top-down or bottom-up?
Pictures or words?
Knowing your pet peeves and penchants:
Pet peeves: What really irritates you? My pet peeve is related to use of words like ‘irregardless’ or signing off a somber email with ‘Cheers’.
Penchant: What do you really like or do regularly? I really like humor that is smart and clean.
Knowing what else is important: This can include fitness schedules, family activities, hobbies, and such. For example:
My default management style is ＿＿＿＿＿.
I usually take meetings between ＿＿＿＿＿.
My calendar has DNS blocks during school pickup/drop-off times.
I prefer _________ to ＿＿＿＿＿.
You are self-aware; but do others know you?
Based on this self-awareness, develop a Working-With-Me guide or user guide about yourself and share it with your team. With a Working-With-Me guide or user guide, leaders at companies like Google have built high-performing teams that work effectively even in times of rapid growth and change.
Share: What other best practices have you used or seen other leaders practice to build team effectiveness through self-awareness?
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