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What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It)
52 Plays7 months ago
Dr Nia Thomas is a thought leader in self-aware leadership and practices self-aware leadership every single day in her role as Director in a Children’s Charity.
She has an allergic reaction when she hears the phrase ‘you shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks’.
We talked about the perils of heeding that advice and how to avoid going the other way and becoming a total people pleaser!
Topics we covered:
- How to become aware of your blind spots.
- The pros and cons of 360 feedback.
- The cautions around self-awareness. How to avoid overthinking every encounter you have with your team.
- How you can be an authentic leader whilst taking others' opinions into account.
- How to judge when constructive feedback is useful or noise that should be disregarded.
- How can leaders navigate the fine line between caring about others' thoughts and maintaining their authenticity?
Find out more about Dr Nia Thomas: https://knowingselfknowingothers.co.uk/
And connect with her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nia-d-thomas/
Get your free copy of my Leader's Guide to Increasing Your Impact, Influence & Free Time here: www.visibly-different.co.uk/increasing-your-impact
And if you enjoyed the Podcast, please share with someone who might benefit and leave a rating and review.
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Transcript
Valuable Feedback vs. Noise
00:00:00
Speaker
How do you tell the difference between constructive feedback and noise that really should be disregarded? I think you have to make the decision about your trusted colleagues, your trusted advisors who you want to have that feedback from. I think there's the meme that does the rounds on LinkedIn ever so often that says,
00:00:23
Speaker
only accept feedback from the people that you admire and that you respect. And I think that's right, but not to the point where it's an echo chamber and that you're only having the feedback from the people that you know are going to tell you wonderful things. I think you have to be discerning about who your trusted advisors are and know that they are going to be the people that will tell you the tough things.
Introduction to 'The Visible Leader' with Nia Thomas
00:00:50
Speaker
Welcome to The Visible Leader, the podcast that challenges conventional leadership and inspires you to create a workplace culture that empowers your team. Join me as I talk to thought leaders and changemakers about practical ways to apply new learning and rethink the status quo. Get ready to become a visible leader in your organization.
00:01:20
Speaker
Surely nobody would disagree that being a truly authentic leader is what we should all be aiming for. But what if authentic you interrupts people, dishes out advice instead of asking questions, or is incapable of saying no?
00:01:35
Speaker
The leaders I coach want to be more effective, but how do they decide what they might need to change or develop? In this episode, we talk all about self-awareness, how to develop it, the dangers of overdoing it, and how to get the balance right so you don't become a dreaded people pleaser. I really hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed my conversation with Nia.
Journey of Dr. Nia Thomas
00:02:03
Speaker
Dr. Nia Thomas is a thought leader in self-aware leadership and practices self-aware leadership every single day in her role as director in a children's charity. She's on a journey to develop kinder, more respectful and creative working relationships through her blog, her Knowing Self, Knowing Others podcast and her forthcoming book, which we will hear all about. She has an allergic reaction when she hears the phrase, you shouldn't care what others think.
00:02:33
Speaker
And I kind of made that up, but I think it's probably that severe. And today we're talking about the perils of heeding that advice and what to do instead. So welcome to my podcast, Nia. Thank you so much. It's lovely to be with you.
Balancing Authenticity and Perceptions
00:02:50
Speaker
So we shouldn't care what people think. So we should care, but we don't want to all become people pleasing door mats, do we?
00:03:00
Speaker
No, absolutely. And it's that balance. So you're absolutely right. When I see that phrase, I do think, oh, are we doing ourselves a disservice? Because I'm a firm believer that what goes around comes around and what we put out into the world, we get back. And if you think about the behavior of leaders, when leaders have such
00:03:25
Speaker
an opportunity to influence people around them, that if they are not behaving in a way that's cognisant of that ricochet effect, then that has both an impact on the people that it hits on the way out and the people that it hits on the way back. So I think you have to be conscious. If you're using that phrase, I don't care what people think. I don't care what some people think is probably the direction that I go, because I think if you want to be
00:03:56
Speaker
If you want to be in the world of work and you want to be a leader, you absolutely have to care what other people think because we are social animals and that is how we operate.
Impact of COVID-19 on Relationships
00:04:07
Speaker
We operate between each other. We have relationships. We have partnerships. We have some more that affected than others.
00:04:14
Speaker
But that's the way the world goes around. And I think through Covid, it really made it that that relationship very poignant because social distancing really took us away from everybody. And I think it made it very clear just how much we need others. And we depend on that relationship with others. And therefore, if you don't heed what those others think, you're putting yourself at risk of
00:04:42
Speaker
misinformation or being misinterpreted or viewed as the enemy when you're really not.
Risks of Being Too Self-Aware
00:04:49
Speaker
Absolutely. We've evolved, haven't we, to be part of the group and to care. But like you're saying, there's a balance here. There's a balance to be taken. So sometimes I've worked with leaders who've never really done any 360 feedback. They've never tapped into perception of others.
00:05:14
Speaker
And I noticed occasionally, it doesn't happen that often, but occasionally they will go quite into it and then they start really overthinking. They become super aware. So they're hyper aware in meetings and they're overthinking every encounter. Have you encountered that as well? Is that something you've noticed?
00:05:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's
Model of Self-Awareness
00:05:35
Speaker
a question that I'm asked being a proponent of self-awareness. People say, well, is there a point where you can be too self-aware? And I don't think you can ever be too self-aware. However, when self-awareness tips into rumination, that's when the challenges can arise. And rumination and overthinking can be really self-destructive. So I think when we're thinking about self-awareness and self-aware leadership, there always has to be this
00:06:03
Speaker
underlying momentum that pushes it forward. So the point of being self aware, my model of self awareness is about reflection, recognition and regulation. So it's reflecting on your hard and relational skills, recognition of your impact and regulation of your behavior. And that cycle has to continue. And if you get stuck in reflection or recognition, that can be quite damaging to you.
00:06:27
Speaker
So yes, definitely it's something that people talk about.
360 Feedback and Its Limitations
00:06:31
Speaker
And it's interesting that you're saying that there are lots of people who haven't done 360s and then they almost discover it and get to a point where they can't let it go or they can't move on with it. And I think sometimes when you have something new and something novel, it's about being rational in that discovery and saying, this is just one of those tools that I can use. It isn't the be all and end all.
00:06:57
Speaker
And also self-awareness is a journey. So once you've used your 360 tool, it doesn't tell you everything because tomorrow you will have a different experience and somebody new comes into the office that you've never worked with before and the situation changes.
00:07:13
Speaker
So we are always evolving. We have births, deaths, marriages, children, moving house, etc. All of that changes us. So just doing it once and being fixated or becoming an overthinker on that one occasion is really damaging. So it's about that momentum and keeping that self-awareness moving forward.
00:07:33
Speaker
Love that. It's a snapshot, isn't it? And it's one data point, or some data points, and actually your own perceptions and your own reflection are just as valid as a comment that you may have received from somebody. So it's getting it into perspective, isn't it?
00:07:53
Speaker
Absolutely. I have a list of assessment tools that it's an ever-growing list of assessment tools and some are academically developed, some are quizzes, some are things that you see in magazines.
00:08:08
Speaker
But all of those things are just tools that you can use. And one might suit you better today than it will next year. And when you come back and use the same tool in three years time, it might tell you something different. So absolutely, it's a snapshot. And the tool that you're thinking about this particular moment in time is just one of those tools you can use.
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's good to get it into perspective because I think having licenses to deliver several of these different tools over the years, there's some that become a little bit cult status where everything is through that lens. I really shy away from that because we're so much more complex than that. Absolutely. It's useful, but it's always useful to understand the limitations and to trust your own instincts with it.
Professional vs. Personal Authenticity
00:08:57
Speaker
So authenticity, you shouldn't care what people think, but you could just say, you should be authentic. You should, you should be an authentic leader. And that comes with, I am who I am.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yes. And I think you have to make the decision about who you are in what situation. And I think authenticity, I talk about this a little bit in my book, we have moved from being authentic to authenticity with a capital A. And I think that there's a sort of difference between turning up to work and showing all your warts and all in the office.
00:09:39
Speaker
without really thinking about what that says about you. And I think you have to have a measured approach and you have to make a very conscious decision about which board am I going to be showing to my office colleagues, because this one on my arm might be fine, but this one on somewhere else might not be fine. And I think it's about making those very clear decisions about how you're going to share and what you're going to share.
00:10:05
Speaker
But I also think that authenticity is about delving deep into your values and your beliefs. And I think you can still live to those values and beliefs, even if you make a decision that you have a professional authentic you and a family authentic you, and your family sees a different you than your work colleagues will see of you.
00:10:27
Speaker
So I don't think it means that you're not living to your authenticity. I think you have to make a very clear decision about how you're going to be perceived and what you want your reputation to be in that particular circle, because we move in different circles. And I think we'd be naive to think that all of those circles view us the same. And I think particularly when you're in a leadership role, you have to make the decision about what your brand is as a leader.
00:10:56
Speaker
and therefore you have to make those decisions about which of your authentic layers you want to show.
Aligning Leadership Behaviors
00:11:02
Speaker
And absolutely, if you do want to show warts and all, that is absolutely fine too, as long as you've made that decision from a place of awareness. And I think that's one of the challenges that I have, and my husband's always telling me off about this because I say, don't say that or be careful because people can hear you, because if it's out of context,
00:11:24
Speaker
then it's not helpful and it's other people's views of you. But if you make the comments and you share the information and you behave in a particular way from that place of awareness, then I'm more than happy with that and that
00:11:40
Speaker
in terms of my role as somebody who is an ambassador for self-awareness. I've discharged my role as much as I can do and I've helped you develop your self-awareness and you are now making the decisions about what that means for you and you can make informed decisions about what authenticity looks like for you in that particular situation.
00:12:03
Speaker
When I think about authenticity and then I think about behavioral change because when I'm coaching people, they're often looking to make shifts and changes to meet
00:12:17
Speaker
whatever success looks like for them. So it may be that there is a part of how they show up as a leader that they want to develop, shift, stop even. It might be that they say, yes, but quite a lot, or they've got into the habit of
00:12:34
Speaker
interrupting people, or they're actually not great listeners, or they can be a bit arrogant, all these things, which might be very authentic for them, but that's not really going to get them where they want to be. And that's not really the leader they want to be themselves. So it is about being inauthentic in some ways to try out
00:12:55
Speaker
a different way of showing up. So I always have a bit of a thing about it because I think, yeah, you are actually you're trying to change something and that's not easy and you are sometimes faking it to make it practice a new skill.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think authenticity is, which layer of ourselves do we want to show authentically? Is it the values and beliefs that are at our core, or is it the the frippery at our periphery that we want to show? You know, I can weigh lots of sequins, but does that really mean that I'm showing you my authentic self?
00:13:36
Speaker
Or does that mean that I'm simply showing you what I like to wear on a Saturday night? You know, there are different parts of us that we can show and demonstrate the authenticity of. Yeah, we're complex beings, Nia, aren't we? Yeah, we are indeed.
Valuing Tough Feedback
00:13:52
Speaker
A big part of self-awareness is the feedback. We talked about 360s. How do you tell the difference between constructive feedback and noise that really should be disregarded? How do you navigate that as a leader? I think you have to know your people.
00:14:14
Speaker
And you have to follow your gut. I think the gut instinct is very important in this situation because you may have people around you who appear very generous, very kind, but six months down the line they turn out to be the office bully because some people are very good at being inauthentic.
00:14:34
Speaker
So I think feedback, you have to make the decision about your trusted colleagues, your trusted advisors who you want to have that feedback from. I think there's the mean that does the rounds on LinkedIn ever so often that says only accept feedback from the people that you admire and that you respect. And I think that's right.
00:14:58
Speaker
but not to the point where it's an echo chamber and that you're only having the feedback from the people that you know are going to tell you wonderful things. I think you have to be discerning about who your trusted advisors are and know that they are going to be the people that will tell you the tough things.
00:15:16
Speaker
So I had a podcast conversation with Tracy Myhill and she had been a chief executive in the NHS in Wales in a number of different organizations. And she said that having people around her that could say to her, Tracy, I think maybe you need to go for a walk because you're not
00:15:34
Speaker
acting like yourself today or I think you need to stop and have some food now because I can see things are changing in the way you're speaking to people. And I think that takes a lot of trust in relationships to be able to give that kind of feedback and growth as a leader because you have to be able to receive that constructively as well. So I think it's both the people and the way you receive it in terms of constructive feedback.
00:16:03
Speaker
I remember a Harvard Business Review I read years ago, which was about taking the coaching from criticism. It really made a difference for me because it had the steps to follow. This was a long time ago. I think I trained as a coach, but it was all still fairly new. It was about understanding your own reactions to criticism.
00:16:29
Speaker
I'm really understanding them and noticing when it happened. And it was just, you know, when you can't unknow something. So if I heard criticism, I'd be like, oh, and I think, oh my God, yeah, I do have that reaction. I do have that. And over the years I have, I've probably developed a thicker skin. Okay. I definitely have, but also I have invited feedback.
00:16:51
Speaker
I think it's so important for me as a coach to demonstrate that that is what I do. But I still feel the knife in the lips every now and again where I'm like, oh, that was a bit harsh. But it is still a gift, even though it can be hard to hear. But I think it's really useful if you're self-aware enough to go, this is going to potentially feel this way. My reaction might be like this. What I have a tendency to do is
00:17:20
Speaker
this thing when I feel like I'm being attacked. And that sometimes is happening in my mind as I'm hearing things.
00:17:27
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I was talking to somebody on another podcast and we got around to talking about feedback and I'm very open and I say that I really struggle with difficult feedback and I know, I've built my self-awareness to know that sometimes you just need to give me two days and I need to go away and think about it, but you're right.
Constructive Criticism Challenges
00:17:51
Speaker
When you have that self-awareness and you can step back
00:17:54
Speaker
and think about, actually, this has the potential to make me a better person, a better leader, a better manager. And I think it's about, exactly as you said, taking that coaching out of it and saying, actually, if I use this in a constructive way, it benefits me. Because as I said at the very beginning, it's about that behavior that goes out. It ricochets back on me. So if I can behave in a different way, ultimately, my working life is
00:18:24
Speaker
a better situation. And I liked what you said about inviting feedback. It's something that I talk about again in my book. It's about that juggernaut of feedback is coming at you whether you like it or not. So you have an opportunity that you are either going to stand on the side of the road out of its way and you're going to guide it into the service station or that thing's going to run you over.
00:18:50
Speaker
So it's your choice as to how you deal with feedback. And I think inviting it in and having your face to the oncoming traffic is far better position than when that thing knocks you on the back of the shoulder and tips you over.
00:19:04
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, I'm glad you're the same as me and that we both admit that we struggle with it. But I admit that I struggle to hear critical feedback only because I'm a human. And I think if you lost that humanity and that people would say what they wanted and it wouldn't touch the sides, I think you'd be so thick skinned that actually you're probably losing touch a bit.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yeah, and they probably aren't the kind of leaders that people really want to be around. The people that are so thick-skinned that any kind of criticism just bounces off and they make no change to their behaviour. But we don't want those around us either.
00:19:48
Speaker
I'm just pulling you away from this episode because I want to share with you how you can get a copy of the free guide that I've created in which I share with you several of the techniques that I use with my coaching clients today and that you can use too, which will help you create more of an impact as a leader, have more influence and the holy grail, have more time away from the doing.
00:20:17
Speaker
You can use this time for key things like focusing on strategic thinking or go for a bike ride. If you want to grab the free guide, check out the show notes and click on the link.
00:20:36
Speaker
I think people pleasing is really common and it really stops people being able to step into leadership roles.
People-Pleasing in Leadership
00:20:45
Speaker
Or they're in the roles, but they are struggling to have conversations. They're struggling to be direct and straightforward and that gets in the way for people. Any thoughts about people pleasing? It's a huge challenge and I think when you step
00:21:03
Speaker
from management roles and the leadership functions are now starting to sit with you. I think that is a point of transition and you have to develop that self-confidence in your own ability, which often comes from practice, especially when you're having difficult conversations.
00:21:23
Speaker
But it's about developing those trusting relationships in those peers and your senior colleagues around you to know that you have psychological safety, you've got backing within those teams to be able to have the difficult conversations, to feel that emotional response because you're a human. But I think that practice
00:21:46
Speaker
does help most definitely. So yes, I think we all want to be people pleasers. None of us want to offend our colleagues, yet we do have to have difficult conversations when we're in the world of work.
00:21:58
Speaker
I think developing your skills through practice really does help. I know I don't like having difficult conversations, but the growth that you feel as a leader and as a manager when you have had that is significant. I know that I feel like I've grown three inches when I've had those conversations. The difference that I see in the individuals who
00:22:23
Speaker
maybe like me, have gone away for two or three days and mulled it over and seen what that means for me and the constructive nature of that feedback and how it makes me better. I think that is really valuable as a leader. You can see that growth, you can see that nurturing. So if listeners and watchers are thinking about this and you know you've got a difficult conversation to have, you really don't want to have it. Have it anyway.
00:22:49
Speaker
because I think we all grow from having those conversations and you learn so much about yourself. And we have seen the car crashes that happen when those conversations are routinely not happening and it's just it's a tragedy really because I think everybody suffers
00:23:10
Speaker
trying to protect somebody from something and actually it's doing them such a disservice really. Yeah most definitely and you you'll probably read lots of Harvard Business Review articles talking about how people have got to
00:23:28
Speaker
fever pitch within their organizations and Lehman Brothers and Boeing and various organizations where things have been left unsaid either about behaviors or technical expertise or safety and it can bring organizations down and it can harm people's lives.
00:23:49
Speaker
Okay, so I like us to get to the point where we're going, so what? Like, so what can we do? So we want Nia's top tips on self-awareness is your superpower.
Developing Self-Awareness Tips
00:24:05
Speaker
And you've written a book and I want to hear some practical things that leaders can take away that will make a difference for them straight away.
00:24:20
Speaker
So we've already talked about quite a few. We've talked about self-awareness in terms of feedback. We've talked about trusted advisors. There are a couple of other ways that we can develop our self-awareness. For me, at the very heart of self-awareness, mindfulness is the point where I start. So if you are new to self-awareness, and as you said earlier,
00:24:44
Speaker
some leaders have never done anything with 360 reviews. Start with some mindfulness because you have to start with that introspection and getting to know yourself. At what point do you breathe faster? At which point is your heart beating so fast that you're making you feel unwell? And those very simple physiological awareness of self, I think that is very, very important because I think unless you start there,
00:25:11
Speaker
you can't get to a point where you understand what do you think.
00:25:16
Speaker
What are your values? What are your beliefs? What are your strengths? What are your biases? Your unconscious biases and how do we make them more conscious so that we can understand? So start there, especially if you're somebody that is new to this, start there. Feedback and inviting it in. So there are different ways that you can do this. You can do this on a very small scale. It doesn't have to be a facilitated 360 review. So something that I've done in the past is
00:25:41
Speaker
I've given presentations in meetings and I've written down three words of how I thought I did in the meeting and asked three people that I trusted, some that I worked very closely with, some that I didn't, to give me three words of how they thought that I'd done in that presentation.
00:25:59
Speaker
and the similarities and differences of those words will give you an indication of how self-aware you are. So if you think about self-awareness, the idea is that in terms of other people's perceptions of you and your perception of yourself should be fairly close and that gives you an indication of how self-aware you really are.
00:26:21
Speaker
So if you have your set of three words and somebody else's set of three words, if they're pulled apart in their descriptions, you've got a pretty good idea that your self-awareness needs some work. You need to work on that self-awareness muscle. So there are different ways that you can seek that feedback.
00:26:38
Speaker
I think coaching and mentoring is particularly important. I think mentoring either through a line management or you can seek it via an external mentor if you don't have that kind of relationship. And sometimes it is useful to have an external mentor because they bring a different viewpoint and can respond to you in a different way than somebody who's paid a salary by the same organization as you are.
00:27:05
Speaker
And the same for a coach, the opportunity of having a coach who's external, they don't have those same responsibilities to the organisation and they maybe can give you more unfiltered feedback because of course that's a challenge that we have as leaders, that we have filtered feedback and people just tell us what we want to hear in case they, you know, we sack them at some point. That's the ultimate fear of anybody giving feedback.
00:27:29
Speaker
So there are so many different ways that you can develop your self-awareness, either as a solo activity or something that you do with colleagues. But I think that you have to be in a position where you're ready to invite it in, you're ready to hear it. And as we've already talked about, you have to have an understanding of how you need to receive it to be able to hear it effectively and for it to make a positive difference.
00:28:01
Speaker
Love that meeting one. You don't even have to share what your words are necessarily, do you? You could just take them and do that in the comfort of your own house and go, oh, have a little look
'Feed Forward' Concept
00:28:14
Speaker
and check it out. Love that. That's great. Because so yeah, 360 is a biggie. And I think anonymous feedback is just, it's got its place. But I like the idea of it being a
00:28:27
Speaker
gateway drug to actually having proper feedback conversations in person so that people don't feel the only way I can tell you this is if you don't know who it is. It's just so much nicer. I was actually talking on another podcast where we were talking about one-to-ones
00:28:46
Speaker
And we were talking about feed forward as well as feedback. So feed forward being suggestions. And so you can ask for feed forward about how you, how you chair a meeting and, you know, it doesn't have to be even about you. It could be feed forward suggestions of how a meeting can run better. So you can take it away necessarily from being, you don't do this very well too. These are some things you might want to think about. So it's a great way of building that.
00:29:16
Speaker
skill set. Definitely. And building trust, because that's the whole thing we're talking about here, isn't it? Yes. And as you said, feed forward, it was something that I did. I was the assistant director and I'd been in the role for about six months. And I sent a very simple questionnaire to my colleagues anonymously.
00:29:35
Speaker
and ask them for feed forward, you know, what are the things that you want me to do more of? What are the things that you'd like me to do less of? What are the things that you'd like me to do differently? And all of those are things that I can do because as listeners who may have read Tasha Eurek's book, Insight, will know that if you're talking about feedback,
00:29:56
Speaker
there's nothing you can do about what you have already done. Whereas if you've got feed forward, it's constructive and you can do something differently next time. And I think that's helpful because I think it does take the sting out of feedback. It definitely does. And that emotional sense and that emotional response that you and I have to feedback. Well, if somebody tells me, can you do this next time? Can you do that next time? I can plan for it. And it's very constructive.
00:30:22
Speaker
So again, if you're new to feedback, maybe approaching it from the position of feed forward is far more helpful. Definitely. It definitely takes the sting and it just opens up the conversation and in a much safer way. Yeah. So I think we're coming to the end of our conversation. It's been great. That's a shame. Is there a question that I haven't asked?
00:30:46
Speaker
that you think would be great for me to ask you now. Something that I've started doing, and I have to say, I haven't done it for a little while. After all of my podcasts, I write a top takeaways review.
00:31:02
Speaker
And I usually have between five and eight top takeaways from the conversation. And the reason that I do that is that my hope is that managers, leaders will take those top takeaways, share them with their team in a team meeting and debate it. Do you agree? Don't you agree? And recently I've started including reflection questions as part of those top takeaways so that managers have that
00:31:30
Speaker
ability to pose that question around the room because what I really want is for us to raise awareness of awareness because I think once you've started that conversation it gives you a vehicle to have further conversations and maybe if you have members in your team who are more self-aware and some who are less self-aware
00:31:55
Speaker
you've got a vehicle for them to tackle how you give constructive feedback and how individuals hear that feedback and do something about it. So I think for me, if listeners really want to explore self-awareness, be a more self-aware leader, and they want to really heighten the awareness of individuals within their teams,
00:32:21
Speaker
use those top takeaways because it's not about necessarily agreeing or disagreeing it's about raising the topic and as we know once you've decided to buy a red car everybody sees a red car and I think once you've raised self-awareness and you've talked about it once people are then going to start talking about it in the next meeting and in the kitchen and when they bump into each other over coffee and
00:32:44
Speaker
So it's raising awareness of awareness. So let's talk a bit more about it.
Promotion of Nia Thomas's Book
00:32:49
Speaker
Yes, I love it. Thank you so much, Nia. I really enjoyed that conversation. And first, the last little piece is, what is your book called?
00:33:02
Speaker
It's called the Self-Awareness Superhighway, charting your leadership journey. And it will be available and on sale in early April, 2024. Superb. And where can we find you in the meantime?
00:33:15
Speaker
You can find me on LinkedIn or Substack or TikTok or YouTube or Facebook, but LinkedIn is where I'm busiest. But I would suggest anybody wants to get in touch with me, if you go to knowingselfknowingothers.co.uk, it will link you to all of my social media and you can see clips and you can read my blog and you can contact me on LinkedIn. Perfect. Well, I really appreciate the conversation. Thank you so much.
00:33:44
Speaker
It's been really interesting. Thank you very much for having me.
Humility and Self-Awareness Journey
00:33:49
Speaker
This episode got me thinking about the type of leaders I like working with. And I realized that even if a leader is quite flawed or has quite large gaps in what they're trying to do, a crucial quality is their ability to have and show humility.
00:34:12
Speaker
And I doubt that I'm alone in that. So where do you start in this journey of self-awareness? Well, it's rare that I do a 360 survey with a leader and they're utterly shocked by what comes back. Generally, it fits with what they already know about themselves.
00:34:33
Speaker
And maybe it fills some gaps as well. So what you can do is tune into how you show up as a leader. What is important to you? What are your strengths? How do you get in the way of yourself? Then go grab some feedback from some trusted sources and use that data to make a complete picture. And remember, their perception is their reality. So take note of it.
00:35:02
Speaker
And remember, it's just a snapshot. And notice how you respond to feedback, especially if you feel like it's criticism. Ideally, you're having these type of conversations regularly and you're growing as a leader as a result.
00:35:21
Speaker
So thank you very much for listening to this episode and I'd be really grateful if you could share this with people that might benefit. Please rate and review and I'll see you next time.
00:35:41
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Visible Leader podcast. To stay up to date with the latest episode, hit the subscribe button. And I'd love to hear what you think, so please leave me a review. If you have any questions or comments, reach out to me. Corinne Hines on LinkedIn.