A+ Lady Leader - Self-Awareness

Do you ever feel like you don’t understand someone? Worse, do you ever find that you can’t fathom why on earth you did what you just did? Many of us don’t understand why we reacted the way we do, feel the bizarre emotions that we can’t seem to control and struggle to make sense of how we tick.

That my dear is why you need to increase your self-awareness!

​Leadership Competencies
Over the last few weeks in the Excellence in Leadership series, we have been focusing improving yourself so that you can be an A+ Lady Leader. I’ve asked you to consider the skills you need to work on, to have the impact you desire. These skills hail from The Leadership Circle Profile. This assessment is a 360 tool I use with my Lady Leaders who join the Women with Grit Program.
 
The Leadership Circle measures a set of well-researched competencies that gauge how leaders achieve results, bring out the best in others, lead with vision, enhance their own development, act with integrity, and encourage and improve organizational systems.

Are they crazy or are you crazy?
​We spend a lot of time trying to figure other people out, why they drive us crazy, and how to motivate them. It seems that many of us spend less time trying to grasp what is happening inside of us and how that sways our outer performance, and then how all of that circles around and influences our feelings and moods.  Taking the time to do this grows your self-awareness and is a vital skill that effective leaders hone.

You're not crazy - You just need to be more self-aware
To increase your self-awareness, The Leadership Circle has identified four competencies. Developing yourself in these areas will help you to acquire high-level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Yes, this work does require a commitment to ongoing growth and development. If you are up for that, then let’s look at the four areas.

​Selfless leader  
Have you ever heard the term servant leadership? That is primarily what selfless leadership is. It is focusing on serving others, the clients you work with as well as your employees over and above yourself. 

When you are a selfless leader, you see your relationship as a key component in helping you serve your people and the mission. You often share the role of leadership, knowing that it’s not about you receiving all the glory, but about making sure the work that needs to be done gets done. Therefore whoever is best suited, does it. Additionally, you have deep compassion as you connect strongly to the human element of the work you are doing. It’s not just about budgets and stats. It’s about making a difference. 

To focus on developing yourself as a selfless leader, do more of the following:

• Look for ways to collaborate both internally and within your community
• Focus on the mission and vision of your team or program
• Connect to your why – this is your reason that you do this work

Concentrating on the meaning behind the work requires you do the inner work of actually understanding why you do the job you do. This internal work comes back to understanding your values, vision, and purpose. Yours. Not the companies. Both are important. However, it starts with knowing yourself. 


Balance  
Self-aware leaders maintain a balance between both work and life, but more than that they’re able to do that along with high-performance leadership and the subsequent level of tension and pressure that comes with that. 

Many of us have struggled with stress and burnout. I know that my health and my personal life both took a hit as a result of my intense focus on leadership over the years. I worked too many hours and put too much energy into solely my job. Learning to balance that is not an easy feat. It’s not simply about living a Zen life. 

To truly deal with the pressures that come with leadership, while achieving the results and sustaining balance demands that you:

• Find adequate time for reflection
• Commit to focusing on both diet and physical health
• Pay conscious attention to your well-being
• Develop good time management skills and get good at prioritizing
• Become very self-aware so that you can respond to your mental, physical and spiritual health to keep the balance while dealing with ongoing leadership expectations. 

Composure 
Leaders relentlessly get hit both from the left and right. Just when you think you have something figured out something else comes along sending you a curveball. Many of us have been hijacked in those moments. Snapping with a sarcastic comment, rolling our eyes, or losing it on someone are not things you want to do as a leader. 

Being able to remain composed in the face of tension, stress, and surprises takes work. If you have ever felt yourself become hostile, sarcastic find yourself withdrawing and hiding out under pressure you need to work on your composure. Rather than regressing to less than effective ways of dealing with pressure, your role as an effective leader is to have a calming influence on those around them when chaos hits.

To be the one to settle things down, you need to increase your emotional intelligence.  When you do you will be able to do with the following:

• Be decisive
• Stay relaxed
• Keep perspective
• Handle stress and pressure well

Personal learner 
I believe this mindset is probably one of the key components of all of the skills and traits we’ve been talking about over the past few weeks. To be the most assessment leader, you must have an active interest in both personal and professional development. You must work at the stuff all the time!

To reach your full potential as a leader, you must seek to know your self.  You have to be committed to a lifelong journey of going within, digging around a little bit, and seeing what’s there. It is necessary that you be willing to reach out and ask for feedback and help.

You must 

• Increase your knowledge
• Grow your self-awareness
• Allow this to feed your insight
• Apply what you have learned to gain wisdom

When people stop growing, they tend to lose their zest for life. Being stuck or feeling stagnant or frustrated is often a sign you haven't done enough learning lately. Self-awareness is growing from the inside out. To build your self-awareness, create habits of self-reflective practice such as:

• Reading
• Reflection
• Journaling
• Meditating
• And praying

When you do, you will begin to better understand what makes you tick, why your buttons get pushed and how to manage all of that, maintaining composure and balance, while serving your purpose and leading the life you want!

Want to learn more?
You can learn more about increasing your self-awarness by listening to this session.
​​
Then, consider where you need to start by doing the mini assessment found when you download the guide here

Weekly Facebook Live Session
Join me most Thursdays at 12:15 MDT for a Facebook Live session.
​
Ask me questions and gain insights as you learn to lead and live with more balance and enjoyment.

If you aren't sure how Facebook Live sessions work, learn more here.