Our Self-Awareness Journey Is Truly A Team Effort
Today at 11:33 am…
I want to get this article drafted, so I start brainstorming on what I want to write about.
At 1:24 pm…
I talk with a coworker, and ask her permission to repurpose some great stuff she wrote about for some clients who subscribe to our Monday Email. She gives me the green light to use her fabulous content.
2:49 pm…
I pretty much have completed the gist of what we will post for next week’s bi-weekly LinkedIn article.
3:00 pm…
Me and one of my closest friends – EVER – jump on the phone to catch-up.
3:24 pm…
After a lot of general “catch-up,” my best friend drops a bomb on me:
I had surprised him with some of my behavior a few weeks ago
I had disregarded some information that he had given me
I had not really considered some of his thoughts like he had expected
Because we were such close friends, I listened – without getting really defensive; BUT, I was rallying up a list of logical rebuttal points in my mind to offer up to the conversation once he paused, and gave me some space to respond. And then,
3:33 pm…
He said, “You kind of hurt my feelings…”
3:33, and about, 27 seconds, pm…
It hit me. None of my logical rebuttal points really meant that much. None of it really mattered. I, after absorbing what he said, realized that I had – indeed – hurt his feelings. Not just because he said so, but because he felt it. He. Felt. Hurt. And I didn’t even know it – until he told me. I was totally unaware.
We all want to learn, grow, get tools and be
highly skilled at what we do; however, when it
comes to how we interact with each other,
none of that matters if we do not give
the time and attention to growing
our self-awareness.
Without self-awareness, it's difficult to regulate our emotions and feelings and see how our behaviors and actions affect others.
Let me start by properly defining the term self-awareness. According to Daniel Goleman, author of the book "Emotional Intelligence," self-awareness is:
"[...] the ability to recognize and understand your emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs, and drives as well as their effect on others."
The more we know about ourselves, the greater our capacity to truly lead ourselves and others well. When you understand why you behave the way you do, you are more able to bring your best — and help others to contribute fully.
To develop more self-awareness it is important to take time to audit ourselves: How am I doing? How do I feel? Why am I been triggered? What modifications, additions, or subtractions do I need to make so that I’m growing mentally, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and physically? And then we must take steps to act.
Let's look at the following self-awareness model known as the 4-paned Johari window. The premise behind the square (window) is that there are certain things that we know and things we don't know about ourselves. Similarly, there are certain things others know and don't know about us.
Though this matrix has four quadrants, the size of each is not necessarily equal. Each window pane will vary depending on:
How well we know ourselves
How much we share about ourselves with others
How well others know us
For me, in this situation with my dear friend over the past few weeks – and culminating with today’s phone call, I was bulldozing him. He knew it, and he felt it. His feelings were really hurt. This particular real-life situation was in my “blind” quadrant (the upper right quadrant of Johari’s window). But with my friend having the courage to bring it to my attention, he brought this into my top left quadrant, the “known” quadrant. Which, to state the obvious, was great for our relationship. I was able to apologize. Really apologize. To really ask for forgiveness. Because once he pointed out to me what was going on in the top right quadrant of my “cluelessness,” all of those logical refutations that I had stacked up from 3:24 to 3:33 and twenty-seven seconds evaporated. I could walk back in my mind a few weeks ago and see the missteps I had taken with him; where – even if I had good intentions – I could now see with 100% acuity were behaviors that came across as selfish, strong-armed, and hurtful.
Furthermore, beyond the shift from the “blind” to the “known” for me in this particular situation, it was ILLUMINATING (in the moment, in conversation with my best friend) how I was behaving like this in other relationships and in other situations. Right now, in current life, as I type this. To be clear, I’m not being an Ogre to everyone about everything in my life right now; but I am a bit stressed over a few life things, and the stress has triggered some negative behaviors that were hidden from my consciousness. Until today. By having this conversation with my friend, not only did we have an opportunity to repair some sloppy conduct of mine, but it is helping me to audit other actions and relationships that may not be where they need to be.
We have an advantage even when there are things that we don't know about ourselves if we are (1) willing to admit there are things about ourselves that we don’t know; and (2) we are intentional about discovering those unknown things about ourselves from friends, colleagues and coworkers. It would be to our advantage to invite other people in if we want to grow past the 50% that we know (the known) and learn/grow from the stuff about ourselves that we don’t know (the hidden quadrants).
It takes self-awareness from being a solo act to having a supporting cast. Dealing with the mess inside of us is teamwork and not an unaccompanied endeavor. But we have to be willing to take the courageous step to be exposed to those hidden and unknown things about ourselves. And it takes inviting other people into this process. You already know this, but sometimes we (me too) need to be reminded: We become better versions of ourselves when we allow other people in our lives to help us grow. This is why having a mentor, a coach, and close relationships is essential. Our self-awareness journey is truly a team effort.
3:42 pm…
I told my friend how grateful I was for him having the guts to tell me what he did. I told him that not only did I learn what I did wrong with him a few weeks ago, but how I can now see with better acuity some other things I’m doing at work, at church, and with my family that needs some tweaking. I apologized. My buddy forgave me. It was true forgiveness; and a mutual feeling that we didn’t just want our deep friendship, but we needed our deep friendship. We not only thought this, but we said it out loud.
3:54 pm…
“I love you brother.” He said, “I love you too Doug.”