The Self-Awareness Spectrum Turning Vulnerability into Strength
“‘Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” CG Jung Self awareness has been described as the meta skill of the 21st century. Tasha Eurich wrote about this in her book ‘Insight,’ and offers a fascinating perspective into the power of self-awareness. It prompted me to write about the spectrum of self-awareness and how we can take a vulnerability in our business and turn it into a game changing strength. Self-Awareness and why it matters Last week I had the chance to listen to a panel of Private Equity fund managers discuss their approach to running and investing their funds. If you’re unfamiliar with Private Equity, think of it like this: I have a pool of money (hundreds of millions of dollars) that I need to invest into small or medium-sized businesses. My goal is to use this equity infusion to help these businesses grow in value so that when I exit as a partner, we do so for a business worth much more than it was when I invested. My ‘fund’ represents the 8-15 businesses I will invest equity into from the pool of money I have to work with. One of the best takeaways I had from the panel discussion came from what a manager said about good ownership vs a good business. Specifically, he said, ‘I’ll take good ownership over a good business.’ When pressed further he elaborated and said, there’s plenty of good businesses with bad ownership and for us, I’d rather have a bad business with good ownership than a good business with bad ownership. The takeaway being that the quality of ownership is of much higher importance to a business’s valuation today and in the future than the quality of the business itself! It drives home just how important it is for an owner to invest consistently into themselves and not just into their business. One of the best investments into ourselves is into a greater understanding of our own self-awareness making one of the most meaningful skills an owner can have into a strength. What is self-awareness? Self-awareness needs to be broken down into two dimensions: internal and external. Internal self-awareness is an understanding of my own behaviors, reactions, and responses. It’s what most of us think about when we think about self-awareness. External self-awareness is an understanding of how others perceive me. External self-awareness is less well known but an equally critical element of self-awareness for a business owner today. It’s considered a meta skill because it deeply influences a MASSIVE array of business abilities from decision-making to leadership to relationships with employees, customers, constituents, and stakeholders. While we could work on any of these individual skills directly, by investing our time and working on our self-awareness we can work on a skill that underlies all of these other skills, thus leveling up our development exponentially and gaining some real productivity by doing so. As a business owner, self-awareness plays an even greater role when we consider that self-awareness is crucial to understanding our own strengths and weaknesses allowing us to navigate challenging situations adeptly. It plays an integral role in our strategic decision making and it strengthens and empowers the entire organization starting from the leadership team all the way down to the least seasoned employee. When taken together, I’m not sure there are many skills as important as self-awareness for a business owner to develop. Poor self-awareness is a vulnerability One of the great ironies in the world today is that for most of us, we often consider our greatest weaknesses our greatest strengths. In short, we all think we rock at self-awareness. Unfortunately, study after study proves this to be the exact opposite! 85% of us believe that we are self-aware, yet conversely, only 10-15% of us are. Why is it that so many of us think we’re self aware when we aren’t? It’s because it’s very difficult to know ourselves! Funny enough if you thought the answer were simply to be introspective, guess what? Those that spend more time on introspection tend to be even less self-aware than others. This is largely in part due to the fact that we have never been taught how to properly be introspective and we end up using confirmation bias to end up with the wrong conclusions steering us even further off track than if we had never put the time and energy into trying to become more self-aware. Poor self-awareness shows up as a vulnerability in businesses in many obvious ways and some less obvious ways as well. One of the more obvious ways it may influence us is through overconfidence or via self doubt. We have all met someone that is confident when they should not be. To be clear, I’m not discussing self-efficacy (the belief that I have capacity to do something), I’m discussing confidence (the belief that I can do something). Imagine being confident at playing tennis at a high level having never picked up a racket, yet some people really do believe they can compete with professionals or even amateurs with thousands of hours of practice racked up. An owner with overconfidence will jump into action without properly weighing their true ability to accomplish what they have set out to do. Likewise we have all met someone who expresses self doubt and deals with imposter syndrome even when they have proven to be more than capable and effective at the work that they do. People struggling with this may have symptoms they struggle with like overthinking and paralysis by analysis. In both instances, whether it’s overconfidence or self doubt, we can point the finger at poor internal self-awareness as a common culprit. Self-awareness can also be a vulnerability less obviously. Blindspots are common and often derive from poor self-awareness. One blindspot many people and owners have is misunderstanding how they come off to other people. An owner stretched for time, for example,
How To Become More Vulnerable
Vulnerability is shown to develop stronger relationships. Those of us that can practice vulnerability are able to overcome our bodies natural physiological response to the risk of opening ourselves up. Not only does it help develop our relationships with others, it allows us to strengthen the internal relationship we have with ourselves. In this blog we’ll explore some helpful tips that make us more comfortable with being vulnerable. Before we open up about vulnerability… did you know that 70% of businesses will fail? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! Be Brave It might sound silly, but vulnerability requires us to be brave. We’re doing something that leaves us open to attack and judgement and that’s not easy. If you’re struggling to be vulnerable, find some small ways you can be brave. Take it one small step at a time and given some consistency you’ll see great progress towards overcoming the fear and anxiety that often come from being vulnerable. Be Selective If vulnerability is something you struggle with then there are some great people to be vulnerable with and there are…others. By being selective with whom we share our vulnerability with we can help protect ourselves from our primary concerns and anxiety. Finding someone who is already able to express their emotions, is non-judgmental, and simply listens is a great starting point for being vulnerable. Practice Self Awareness Vulnerability requires us to be able to express our emotions, yet for many of us, understanding our emotions isn’t easy. Practicing self-awareness and becoming more aware of your emotions is an essential requirement to successfully developing comfort with vulnerability. Take stock in your emotions when you feel yourself reacting. Remember, feelings are often describe with a single word such as: anxious, attacked, defensive, scared, courageous, happy, sad, etc. How do you get vulnerable? Let us know at info@jbandthedoctor.com Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Be Transparent and Be Relatable
We all matter. We all want to be heard. Every one of us has a different perspective from everyone else. How do we make sure that our message is being heard? One of the best ways to be heard is to be transparent and be relatable. Before we discuss how to be relatable, did you know that 70% of businesses will fail? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you you can access it right here. In our most recent podcast, we chatted PR and personal branding with Liana Zavo of ZavoMedia Group. One of the top takeaways from our conversation is that people want to relate. They want to identify with you and they want you to be open with them. Many business owners struggle with finding their voice and then once they have found their voice, finding ears to listen to it! If you’d like to learn how to have more people hear you, you’ll want to listen in to our conversation with Liana. Liana went from a single mom, college drop out to CEO of a global PR firm and a large part of her story focuses on transparency and relatability! You can listen to the episode here. In The Entrepreneur Mastery Lab community, we have tremendous professionals like Liana available to connect with directly. If you struggle with branding, finding your voice or getting your message in front of others you’ll want to get involved with our group. To join our awesome community of rockstars like yourself, request access here! Best of all, it’s free! As business owners and professionals, it’s often difficult to be transparent. After all, being vulnerable is scary. When you find yourself in this struggle, ask yourself what is more scary for your prospects and clients. Is it more scary for your clients and prospects to work with someone that is willing to fully put themselves out there, or is it more scary for your clients and prospects to guess about what you’re truly like? The thing is, people are smart. They know you’re not perfect. They know you have a past. Heck, they can go google it in a matter of minutes and learn all about your background if they’d like to. The hard and simple truth is you can be up front with people from the get-go and you can be honest and you can be relatable, or you can choose not to be. But if you look at it from your clients and prospects perspectives, chances are you’ll recognize that you’re letting your own fear take center stage of addressing a fear of your clients and prospects. Putting yourself in front of the people you serve is almost always a mistake and will almost certainly hurt you more than it helps. If you’d like to earn the trust of your clients and prospects you need to be transparent and you need to be relatable. The next time you struggle with this, remind yourself that it’s not about you, it’s about the people you serve. What is most important to them? It might just help you take that extra step to be even more transparent and relatable. When you do that, you’ll start getting heard even more! If you’re working on being heard and relatable, we can help! Our unique 2 on 1 coaching marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 external regional sales manager. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science