4.1 Self-awareness
To be an effective communicator, you need to be self-aware. Watch organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich explain what our self-awareness is, why it’s important and how we can develop it further in this short video.
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Transcript: Video 3
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TASHA EURICH
Do we know who we are? That is one of the most important questions we can ask. And our research shows that 95% of people think that we know ourselves, we think we're self-aware, but the real number is closer to 10% to 15%. So what I talk about in my work is, that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's something we should be really cognizant of and really try to improve as much as we can, because most of us have a lot of work to do.
The reason I call self-awareness the metaskill of the 21st century is that everything we need to know how to do in today's world is entirely dependent on our level of self-awareness. So you think about communication or influence or collaboration, all types of skills that we need in the workplace, we can only be as good at each of those as we are self-aware. And so if we work on self-awareness, it has a ripple effect to almost everything in our lives.
So I would give three tips to increase self-awareness. Number one, we have found in our research that people who are self-aware tend to have a really open and curious mindset about themselves. They're less likely to beat themselves up and more likely to say, well what went wrong? What can I learn? So I think that's one piece.
The second thing is to do what I call a daily check, and those are really easy, but it can really lead to a lot of insight. So at the end of every day, ask yourself three questions. Number one, what went well today? Two, what didn't go well? And three, what can I learn to be smarter tomorrow? So that's number two.
Number three is something I call the Dinner of Truth, and since we're talking about leaders and organisations, maybe I'll call it the Power Lunch of Truth. And what you do is you find someone that will tell you the truth that you trust will be honest with you, that you know has your best interests at heart, you take them to a meal, and you ask them, what do I do that's most annoying to you? And then you sit back and bask in the insight, try to not be defensive or to be as non-defensive as possible, and use that as a way to catalyse even more feedback.
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Video 3
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Increasing your self-awareness allows you to communicate more honestly, with greater openness to the feedback you might receive. As a consequence, you will communicate more effectively with those around you.