Self-Awareness and Adaptability to Leadership Effectiveness - Nov 09
The Importance of Self-Awareness; Aiding Adaptability and Enhancing Leadership Effectiveness
Raising self-awareness is an important factor in developing stronger self-management, interpersonal and adaptability skills. Sources extol advanced leaders’ ability to adapt their behaviour in the moment because of their abilities to be aware. Due to technology increases and the interconnected nature of economies, changes to the business context are occurring rapidly. Leaders need to be able to have strong self-management, interpersonal skills and adaptability to deal with these changes.
How do you work on heightening your self-awareness and self-management skills enabling increased leadership effectiveness?
Do you attend to the cues your body, mind and emotions tell you about managing yourself and others? Are you like most people in our culture who focus on their minds, ignoring their emotions and their bodies? The emotions and body also give us cues daily to how we need to manage ourselves. We can ensure we are operating more fully when we take notice of all aspects of self; we become better able to manage ourselves and others and adapt as a result.
Attending to self, assists leaders in raising their levels of self-management in effectively dealing with the busyness and complexity of their lives. As one advances in an organization complexity increases. Leaders who attend to themselves are able to tap into their skills and resourcefulness and have not lost their effectiveness in the midst of the busyness and complexity of their lives. They are better able to deal with the increased complexity that leadership brings to their work life.
When a person has attended to self their abilities to be effective interpersonally increases. Coming from a calm, self-aware place, leaders can be in a healthy state of curiosity about the needs of others and their organization. Leaders are better able to be there for others, see what the bigger picture needs of the organization are, and adapt to these when they come from a place of effective self-management.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is teaching mindfulness at Google. He asks participants to focus on their breath as a way of calming their mind and becoming more self-aware. The importance of this practice is that in the midst of all that is occurring in their lives leaders can learn to make a choice to transform their relationship to themselves. They can choose to be calm, and curious about what is occurring to them, they can choose to move into what is occurring in their lives and become more aware. In this way, they can heighten their effectiveness in managing themselves, being present to and relating better to others, and adapting better to the complexity of their lives.
Many leaders at advanced levels of effectiveness have heightened awareness due to attending practices they have been involved in for years. Attending practices include reflection, tai chi, meditation, yoga, and attending/centering practices. They attend to themselves by being involved in these activities and raise their self-management, interpersonal, and adaptability skills. They are able to adapt to changing contexts and manage themselves, others and their organization better due to their enhanced self-awareness and adaptability.
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Tue February 07, 2012