Category: Articles

People who seem to be unaware of other people and their needs. People who put their feet in their mouths and make tactless comments. Or people that when you say “I’m not feeling too good today” completely ignore this and quickly move on to another topic. How do these behaviors make you feel? Annoyed, upset, angry, even contemptuous at the levels of ignorance displayed.

Conversely, what about those people you warm to, who make you feel good about yourself, who are easily accessible and enjoyable to engage with? What is it about these kinds of people that creates these feelings in others?

In the GENOS International model of Emotional Intelligence after the competency of Self Awareness comes Awareness of Others. Here, on one end of the spectrum is Insensitivity and on the other is Empathy.

Let’s explore the roots of these differences and how you can move from insensitivity to empathy.

If you notice the times when you are oblivious to other people’s feelings you will notice also that you’re spending too much time in your head. By that I mean you’re being overly self-absorbed. It’s hard to appreciate what’s going on with other people when you’re in this state. I’m sure you know people who tend to talk a lot about themselves and their problems. What they say is often about everything that’s wrong with themselves, or sometimes everything that’s ‘great’ about themselves! Either way this is self-absorption in action and not conducive to good relations.

The key to increasing your perceptive capabilities is to choose to put your attention on others and what’s going on around you. This means directing your energy outwards and not inwards. It is a choice. And this is how to listen well. If you find yourself wandering off into your own world of thoughts you can bring yourself back into the moment. Again, you choose to do this. Of course you have to be aware enough to catch yourself in the moment and make that decision to re-engage with the ‘outside’ world. Performers do this. They literally bypass their minds and all the clutter it holds and project their energy outwards.

If you’ve ever done public speaking you know what happens when you worry about what people think of you. You lose connection with the audience. And fail to give of your best. This is because you’re ‘in your head’.

My first job after I left the very ‘heady’ and theoretical world of university was to work on an Adventure Playground in Peckham, South London. The manager there, Willie, had left school when he was 15 and had no formal qualifications. But he was very street savvy and I was really jealous of his ability to ‘read’ people. He was so perceptive: the opposite to me! Then, when I was 25, I had the good fortune to be given the opportunity to bust through the self-absorption borne of years of isolation in a cruel boarding school and four years in academia. Suddenly I was on a par with Willie. I had discovered the ability to go beyond my mind and reach out to better understand others and the world in general.

When sports people talk of being ‘in the zone’ they are referring to what the National Academy of Sports Medicine defines as “complete absorption in the activity, merge of action and awareness, loss of self-consciousness”.

In other words your attention is focused 100% on the ball, the game, your teammates and not on you! In a sense you are everything around you. That’s why Stefan Curry of the Golden State Warriors basketball team has ‘eyes’ in the back of his head when he makes a perfect behind the back ‘blind’ pass. In all human activities, in work and play, that heightened state of presence in the moment and connection to ‘other’ vs ‘self’ makes it easier to be more aware of others and how they are feeling.

Another way to increase your ability to empathize is to use difficult times as ‘empathy accelerators’. Your heart can open if you allow yourself to fully experience such conditions as pain, sadness and loss. This in turn can lead to increasing empathy, compassion and kindness; all key elements of Awareness of Others in the GENOS EI model. Wisdom can be gained from those times in your life when you have been ‘tenderized’. For example, in my case experiences such as kidney failure, financial meltdown and a near death experience helped me in this way. As you open up to yourself you can in turn become more caring and sensitive toward others.

By being sensitized to your own feelings while also taking your attention off yourself and putting it on to others you can become a better leader, manager, colleague and human being in life!

The foundation stone and sine qua non of Emotional Intelligence is Self-Awareness. It is the basis of great leadership. The kind of leadership that creates a safe environment in which people can freely express themselves, learn together and achieve amazing things. The kind of leadership that inspires commitment, loyalty and love. Leadership that engages employees at all levels.

Let’s explore how self-awareness leads to this kind of leadership:

The practice of Mindfulness is popular these days and is about developing the capacity to observe one’s feelings and thoughts as they flow one’s present reality. The Dalai Lama refers to this observing consciousness as the “fundamental innate wisdom of clear light”. The ability to observe yourself in action is central to being emotionally intelligent. Many people are now applying mindfulness to working in the corporate world.

However, being mindful and self-aware is a state of being not doing. How can we apply self-awareness in a very practical behavioral way to leadership? What skills related to self-awareness can be effectively employed in organizational life?

First, whether you meditate or not, the key is to be ‘present’ at any time and in any place, whatever you’re doing. Pay attention in the moment to the feelings you experience in your body, the emotions, body sensations and the thoughts and judgements that are passing through your mind. This is rich data that can inform your choices around decision making and how you communicate with others, how you manage yourself in the moment. You can practice being present and get better at it over time. And the better you get the more self-aware you’ll become.

Greater self-awareness has practical ramifications in organizational life. If your desire as a leader is to enroll your people in collaborating to create a learning environment it’s important to be aware of the thoughts and feelings that may trigger you to cause negative outcomes. Stress can lead to poor communication behaviors unless you are self-aware enough to know how it’s affecting you and how it can bleed out into the way you speak to others around you. Then you can manage yourself accordingly.

In this respect I distinguish between responding and reacting.

When you react, you are out of control, a victim of your feelings, thoughts, and attitudes. When you respond, you responsibly choose the outcome you want and choose what you say and how you say it to be appropriate to your desired outcome (no matter what feelings, thoughts, or attitudes you may have).

The ability to respond rather than react is a crucial factor in creating a trusting, safe work environment. For example, how can employees feel free to express their innovative ideas or their constructive suggestions if the CEO is defensive or aggressive?

So, very practically, you need to make sure that you listen and acknowledge, no matter what you’re thinking or feeling about comments you don’t agree with. In the heat of the moment decide what kind of communication would be appropriate to the situation. Then make sure that what you say is conducive to a positive outcome for both you and the other person or audience. This means making sure that your tone of voice, facial expressions and body postures are congruent with the message and result you want to achieve. This is emotionally intelligent communication. But it would not be possible without self-awareness.

Paying attention to these elements of yourself are crucial to how successful you are as a leader. I remember a CFO in Silicon Valley who instilled fear in everyone resulting in employees avoiding him even when they had important information to give him. Why were they scared? He never smiled! And he was unaware of this. Once he woke up to this habitual affect he started to smile and suddenly everyone found him so much more approachable and easy to deal with. Colleagues said: “He’s a different person now!”

Apart from being present and mindful, feedback is the most important way in which one can develop self-awareness. A very senior executive at a global bank had a reputation for being a cold, insensitive bully and, criminally, none of her managers had ever given her feedback about her impact. Her behavior was causing massive organizational problems affecting thousands of employees. She spent a very shocking and painful day listening to the verbatim feedback comments of colleagues around her. After this transformational experience her PA, who she reduced to tears on a regular basis, called me to ask what magic I had used to change her. She had gone into the office the day after the feedback session and the executive had hugged her and apologized for all the hurt she had caused. And the culture of polarizing fear and breakdowns in communication across divisions began to disappear to the benefit of the whole global division of the bank. No magic: just powerful feedback had cause this shift in self-awareness.

A Vietnamese General Manager of a biotech firm in Silicon Valley told me trustworthiness was his most important value. When he first entered the hotel room for his feedback session he checked to see if the door to the adjacent room was locked and looked down out of the window. When asked why he did this he said it was to check for possible escape routes. When he heard the feedback he was shocked that the majority of the people he led said he was untrustworthy! It was suggested to him that he was no longer in the war. This massive blind spot and its ramifications for his leadership disappeared as he became conscious of how the conditioning of his past had been determering his behavior in the present.

Of course these are extreme examples of feedback and a learning organization is one in which giving and receiving feedback on a regular basis is encouraged from the top down to engender learning and growth.

The leader sets the tone for a feedback rich culture and his/her job is to minimize fear. Co-creation and collaboration throughout the organization only occurs when you can trust that it’s OK to admit mistakes, as well as take up unpopular positions, criticize ideas, policies and strategies held by others especially senior leaders. This requires the leader to be aware of his or her own defensiveness, insecurity and so on and welcome feedback instead of suppressing and punishing. A leader who is self-aware and employs that awareness effectively in service of his or her organization tends to be compassionate, empathetic, humble, authentic and can laugh at themselves. This endears him or her to people and inspires them to give their best.

A high degree of self-awareness in leaders can make a massive difference to organizational culture and performance.