Identity Leadership: Developing Self-Awareness

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With our busy schedules it might be difficult to find time to think about who we are our strengths and weaknesses, our drives and personalities, our habits and values.  Besides, many of us just aren't inclined to spend much time on self-reflection.  Even when personal feedback is presented to us, we're not always open to it, because honest feedback isn't always flattering. Consequently, many of us have a pretty low level of self-awareness. That’s unfortunate, because self-awareness is an essential first step toward maximizing management skills.  Self-awareness can improve our judgment and help us identify opportunities for professional development and personal growth.

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                 Key Areas for Self-Awareness 

Human beings are complex and diverse. To become more self-aware, we should develop an understanding of ourselves in many areas.  Key areas for self-awareness include our personality traits, personal values, habits, emotions, and the psychological needs that drive our behaviors. 

Personality:  We don't normally change our personalities, values and needs based on what we learn about ourselves.  But, an understanding of our personalities can help us find situations in which we will thrive, and help us avoid situations in which we will experience too much stress.  For instance, if you are a highly introverted person, you are likely to experience more stress in a sales position than a highly extroverted person would.  So, if you are highly introverted, you should either learn skills to cope with the demands of a sales position that requires extravert-type behavior patterns, or you should find a position that is more compatible with your personality.  Awareness of your personality helps you analyze such a decision. 

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 Values:  It's important that we each know and focus on our personal values.  For instance, if your first priority is "being there for your children" or "your relationship with God," it's very easy to lose sight of those priorities on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis.  During the workday, so many problems and opportunities arise that our lists of "things to do" can easily exceed the time we have to do them.  Since few (if any) of those things pertain to what we value most, it's easy to spend too much time on lower priority activities.  When we focus on our values, we are more likely to accomplish what we consider most important. 

Habits:  Our habits are the behaviors that we repeat routinely and often automatically.  Although we would like to possess the habits that help us interact effectively with and manage others, we can probably all identify at least one of our habits that decreases our effectiveness.  For example, if you are a manager who never consults your staff before making decisions, that habit may interfere with your ability to build your staff members' commitment to the decisions and their decision-making skills as well. 

Needs: Mostly people have identified a variety of psychological needs that drive their behaviors such as needs for esteem, affection, belongingness, achievement, self-actualization, power and control.  One of the advantages of knowing which needs exert the strongest influence on our own behaviors is the ability to understand how they affect our interpersonal relationships.  For instance, most of us have probably known people who have a high need for status.  They're attracted to high status occupations, and they seek high status positions within their organizations.  Such people also want the things that symbolize their status.  They insist that they be shown respect, and they want privileges and perks that people of lower status can't have.  Sometimes these people fight for things that others see as inconsequential--like a bigger office.  Needs cause motivation; and when needs aren't satisfied, they can cause frustration, conflict and stress. 

Emotions:  Emotional self-awareness has become a hot topic of discussion recently because it's one of the five facets of emotional intelligence.  Understanding your own feelings, what causes them, and how they impact your thoughts and actions is emotional self-awareness.  If you were once excited about your job but not excited now, can you get excited again?  To answer that question, it helps to understand the internal processes associated with getting excited.  That sounds simpler than it is.  Here's an analogy: I think I know how my car starts--I put gas in the tank, put the key in the ignition, and turn the key.  But, my mechanic knows a lot more about what's involved in getting my car started than I do--he knows what happens under the hood.  My mechanic is able to start my car on the occasions when I'm not because he understands the internal processes.  Similarly, a person with high emotional self-awareness understands the internal process associated with emotional experiences and, therefore, has greater control over them.

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                                             How Self-Awareness Makes You More Effective 
Self-awareness helps managers identify gaps in their management skills, which promotes skill development. But self-awareness also helps managers find situations in which they will be most effective, assists with intuitive decision making, and aids stress management and motivation of oneself and others. 

Skill development:  Improvement projects should normally begin with an assessment of the gap between the current situation and the desired future situation.  Having an accurate sense of who you are helps you decide what you should do to improve. Often, self-awareness will reveal a skills gap that you want to work on. 

                                                Knowing your strengths and weaknesses 

 Self-awareness helps you exploit your strengths and cope with your weaknesses.  For instance, if you are someone who is good at "seeing the big picture" that surrounds decisions, but not as good at focusing on the details, you might want to consult colleagues and subordinates that are more detail-oriented when making major decisions.  Cooperation between big-picture-oriented decision makers and detail-oriented decision makers can produce high quality decisions. 
        

                                               Developing intuitive decision-making skills 

Leaders with well-developed emotional self-awareness are more effective intuitive decision makers.  In complex situations, intuitive decision makers process large amounts of sometimes unstructured and ambiguous data and they choose a course of action based on a "gut feeling" or a "sense" of what's best.  This type of decision making is becoming more important for managers as the rate of change and the levels of uncertainty and complexity in their competitive environments increase.  Managers who are highly emotionally self-aware are better able to read their "gut feelings" and use them to guide decisions. 

Stress:  Jobs that don't suit your personality tend to give you more stress than jobs that are more compatible.  This is not to say that you should never take a job that conflicts with your personality.  However, be aware that you will need to work extra hard to develop the skills for that job, and there are jobs that would be less stressful for you. 

Motivation:  It's very difficult to cope with poor results when you don't understand what causes them.  When you don't know what behaviors to change to improve your performance, you just feel helpless.  Self-awareness is empowering because it can reveal where the performance problems are and indicate what can be done to improve performance.  In addition, awareness of your psychological needs can increase your motivation by helping you understand and seek out the rewards that you really desire such as a sense of accomplishment, additional responsibility, an opportunity to help others, or a flexible work schedule. 

 

Leadership:  When we understand "what make us tick"--what gets us excited, why we behave the way we do, etc.--we also have insight into what makes others tick.  To the extent that other people are like you (and, of course, there are limits to the similarity), knowing how to motivate yourself is tantamount to knowing how to motivate others.

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                                                                  Practicing This Management Skill 
        You can become more self-aware by seeking feedback from the people who know you, completing self-assessment surveys, and hiring an expert like a professional counselor or executive coach. 

Ask somebody:  If you have open, trusting relationships with the people who know you, you can ask them for feedback about your personality, habits, needs and values.  Research shows that your coworkers, friends and family members CAN provide  assessments of your

 

Personality:  But, they do NOT ALWAYS provide an accurate assessment.  Analogously, if you mismanage your time so that you spend too much time on things that don't matter much to you, other people will have a very different perception of your values than close references.Unflattering feedback is the type that has the most potential for helping you develop your management skills, but it is also the most difficult to give and to accept.  People aren't very likely to give you unflattering feedback if there isn't a high level of trust in your relationship with them ... unless they don't mind harming the relationship. 

Questionnaires:  One of the ways to improve the quality of the feedback that you can receive from other people is by asking them to fill out a psychometrically sound inventory of your personality, values, needs, or habits as they perceive them.  Those surveys are composed and structured in such a way as to maximize the accuracy of the feedback they generate.  With the help of a facilitator, the surveys can be completed anonymously.  You can also fill out surveys yourself as a means of self-assessment. 

Seek professional help:  Professional counselors and executive coaches can be a great source of feedback to help you develop your self-awareness.  Of course, not everyone who calls herself a coach is qualified.  You should evaluate the training and certifications of counselors and coaches.  Nevertheless, executive coaching is a great resource, and it's a growing area of management consulting.  Coaches not only help you get a better picture of who you are; they also guide you through self-improvement.  Often coaches collect anonymous evaluations of their clients from their subordinates, superiors or anyone else who is in a position to provide helpful feedback.  Good coaches know how to effectively collect and digest the feedback.  Professional counselors, such as guidance counselors and clinical psychologists, are also great resources.  Guidance counselors can provide inventories of your personality and interests.  Clinical psychologists can help you understand and work on aspects of your personality and habits that interfere with any facet of your life, including work.

                           

In Summary ... 

To perfect your management skills, the best place to start is self-awareness.  Self-awareness means knowing your values, personality, needs, habits, emotions, strengths, weaknesses, etc.  With a sense of who you are and a vision of the person you want to become, a plan for professional or personal development can be created.  Moreover, self-awareness allows you to motivate yourself and manage your stress better, helps you with your intuitive decision making, and helps you to lead and motivate others more effectively.  Self-awareness is very useful.

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                 ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT  

                  Three Critical Focus Areas

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All organizational change requires competent and simultaneous attention to three critical areas: content, people, and process

• Content refers to what in the organization needs to change, such as structure, systems, business processes, technology, products, or services.

• People refer to the human dynamics of change, including individual mind-set and behavior as well as collective culture. Key elements include worldview, emotions, values, motivations, commitment and resistance, communications, engagement, politics, training, and readiness.

• Process refers to the way the content and people changes will be planned, designed, and implemented. The change process includes all the change-related actions and decisions from the moment of conceiving the need to change to the full realization of the intended business and cultural outcomes.

Leaders usually get the content solutions right because that is where they put their focus. But results do not come from just the new structure or technology. Desired outcomes get produced only when the people embrace those content changes, emotionally own them, and maximize their utilization. Underperformance, breakdowns, and causes of failure in transformation nearly always occur in the areas of people and the change process.

Worksheet: Where Do You Put Your Change Leadership Attention?

1. What percentage of your total change leadership attention do you put on

____content ____people ____change process

2. What percentage of your executive team’s total change leadership attention goes to

____content ____people ____change process

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                        Three Types of Change

Leaders face three different types of change: developmental, transitional, and transformational .Each type has different content, people, and process dynamics. Therefore, each type requires different mind-sets, strategies, methods, and tools to succeed. You must know how to accurately assess the type of change you are leading in order to know what change strategy you will need.

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                      Developmental Change

Developmental change is the simplest effort. From a content perspective, it is the improvement of what is—an existing skill, method, performance standard, or condition. Examples of developmental change include improving a business process, increasing job skills, improving an HR system like performance management, or refining the employee hiring or succession planning process.

The impact on people is relatively mild, usually calling for enhanced knowledge, skills, or ways of operating. Change management tools work well to handle the clarification of change roles, decision making, communications, and training needs. From a process perspective, traditional project management approaches suffice, as the significant work flow variables can be known in advance and managed against time and budget.

In developmental change, leaders can declare the desired outcomes and deliverables, and for the most part, managers can execute through the existing organizational structure and functional work teams.

                     Transitional Change

Transitional change is more complex. Rather than simply improving what is, transitional change installs a new structure, system, business process, or technology (content). It requires a transition to a new state, which is knowable and definable at the beginning of the change process. Examples include building a new plant, migrating to a new performance management system, installing a new structure, and some technology implementations (those that do not radically alter the business model, work designs, roles, or service paradigms).

In transitional change, the change process is fairly predictable and linear, and can also be managed against a tight budget and timeline. Traditional approaches to project management are quite effective, especially when the people affected by the change are fully aware of what is going on, understand their role in the new state, and are committed to making it happen. People dynamics are a bit more complex because people are being asked to journey to a new future. Along with needing new knowledge and skills, staff can also be required to change or develop new behaviors, making transitional changes more personally challenging. But because the future is definable at the start and will operate in a paradigm and worldview similar to the current reality, the stress is not too high. Good change management practices of building readiness, increasing stakeholder engagement, communicating frequently, providing skill and behavior training, and providing coaching plans can help reduce many of the people issues.

In transitional changes, leaders must take on a more overt sponsorship role. The prospect of success is greater the more visible they are in the organization championing the effort. They often must build a parallel governing structure to oversee, design, and execute the changes, calling in project managers, organizational development practitioners, and change management specialists to support the work. Change sponsors must establish the outcomes and provide the resources, but can mostly delegate execution through the parallel structure, monitoring progress on a periodic basis and holding people accountable throughout implementation.

In most transitional changes, content experts design the future state solution, while the program office designs the implementation process and change managers address the people dynamics. Separating content, people, and process in this way is common practice, never ideal, but feasible in developmental and transitional changes. In transformation, it is nearly always disastrous.

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                      Transformational Change

Transformational change carries very different dynamics and requires fundamentally different change leadership mind-sets, approaches, and methodology.

Transformational change is a radical shift of strategy, structure, systems, processes, or technology (content), so significant that it requires a shift of culture, behavior, and mind-set (people) to implement and sustain over time. The most successful transformational processes integrate content and people right from the start, engaging staff in the case for change and the need for vision and strategy long before the content solution is determined.

The new state that results from the transformation, from a content perspective, is largely uncertain at the beginning of the change process. It is not knowable or definable, but rather, clarity emerges as you proceed. At the beginning, you have a general direction, but the ultimate outcome of your transformation gets clarified as you discover essential facts along the way that you could have never known without first leaving the gate. Because clarity of the future emerges as a product of the change process itself, transformational change is nonlinear, with numerous course corrections and adjustments. Therefore, you cannot manage it in a typical command-and-control way; at best, you can consciously facilitate its many twists and turns. This requires a unique change process navigation system, one that is far more strategic and intelligent than project management methodologies. Project management tools are helpful, but only when used as “rolling plans” of no more than 120 days, which can be course corrected on a just-in-time basis as needed. We use a nine-phase change process model called “The Change Leader’s Roadmap” to inform the strategic navigation of change, and then we add a project management methodology to manage the details.

From a people perspective, transformation calls for a shift of individual mind-set and collective culture. The marketplace drivers, and the content changes required to respond to them, are so substantial that executives and staff must perceive their business, customers, products, profit models, and service delivery differently, often from an entirely new paradigm. If leaders stay stuck in their old worldviews, they do not see what is occurring in their markets.

Transformational change, across industries and the government and nonprofit sectors, is generally moving in a similar direction, away from cultures of command and control toward co-creating, away from separation toward connection and integration, and away from company-centric toward customer-focused. Transformation is generally toward greater empowerment, collaboration, cross-boundary support, innovation, system integration, and customer intimacy. Without these required shifts in culture, new content solutions never take hold and deliver the results intended. People’s mind-sets and the collective culture must transform in unison with the market drivers and the content solutions they demand.

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        Worksheet: What Type of Change Are You Facing?

Instructions: Determine the primary type of change you are leading by answering these litmus test questions. If you answer yes to two or more questions for one type of change, then that is the primary type of change you are facing. Think of the overall change that is occurring, not the sub-initiatives within it. In many cases, multiple types of change will be occurring, but the most complex is always primary, as you must develop a change strategy for it.

• Developmental Change

1. Does your change effort primarily require an improvement of your existing way of operating rather than a new installation?

2. Will skill or knowledge training, performance improvement strategies, and communications suffice to carry out this change?

3. Does your current culture and mind-set support the needs of this change?

• Transitional Change

1. Does your change effort require you to dismantle your existing way of operating and replace it with something known but different?

2. At the beginning of your change effort, were you or will you be able to design a definitive picture of the new state?

3. Is it realistic to expect this change to occur over a predetermined timetable?

• Transformational Change

1. Does your organization need to begin its change process before the destination is fully known and defined?

2. Is the scope of this change so broad that it requires the organization’s culture and people’s behavior and mind-sets to shift significantly to implement the changes successfully and achieve the new state and its desired outcomes? 

3. Does the change require the organization’s structure, operations, products, services, or technology to change radically, even embracing a new paradigm, to meet the needs of customers and the marketplace?