Welcome back, our topic for this lesson is self-awareness, a key quality for all leaders to develop. As you will see, self-awareness is especially important for inclusive leadership. The dictionary defines self-awareness as conscious knowledge of ones own character, feelings, motives, and desires. Self-aware individuals try to learn about various aspects of themselves, including their strengths and weaknesses, their limitations, their skills, their values, and their biases. They pay attention to their behaviors and they are alert to their emotions. They realize that many aspects of themselves that they seek to understand are not permanent. They know that they can change and they are committed to growing. They are open to finding out things about themselves that may be difficult to face. Basically, they want to be better human beings. Organizational psychologist, Tasha Eurich, cited two types of self-awareness. Internal self-awareness means clearly seeing our own thoughts and feelings. External self-awareness is clearly seeing how others see us. Self-awareness matters to leadership in general because it impacts how leaders behave as in how they interact with others. As leaders increase their understanding and work to develop themselves, they can become more effective in their roles as leaders. One study concluded that self-aware leaders impact business results. Leaders who are self-aware are more likely to be high performing to meet their business goals and save on turnover costs. For example, a global leadership firm reported that leaders who master empathy perform more than 40% higher than others in decision-making, coaching, and engaging others. Recall that our definition of leadership is a process of social influence which maximizes the efforts of others toward the achievement of a goal. Self-aware leaders can improve a variety of skills needed to maximize the efforts of others such as listening, communicating, making decisions, managing conflict, accepting feedback, and giving feedback. A crucial element of self-awareness is paying attention to emotions, a popular topic of leadership research. Studies have shown a strong relationship between leadership and emotional intelligence or EQ. EQ refers to the ability to, a, identify and manage ones emotions and, b, identify an influence others emotions. Since the 1990s, EQ has proven to be vital for effective leadership. A research study of 2 million employees at 700 companies found that employees whose managers had high EQ were four times less likely to leave their jobs than those whose managers had low EQ. Psychologist Daniel Goleman, a leading expert in EQ, listed self-awareness as one of five elements of EQ. Goleman concluded that emotional intelligence is twice the indicator of leadership success as intellectual intelligence IQ, and technical skills combined. These areas can be consciously cultivated to create work environments where people can be more productive because their emotions will not rule their reactions. Whenever I receive constructive feedback, I try to monitor my emotions. When an employee told me that I paid more attention to men than women in a staff meeting, I felt irritated and I wanted to defend myself. I also was ashamed that I might have done something that I teach others not to do. However, I did not let those emotions control how I responded. I stayed present in the moment and focused on the employee instead of myself. Later I asked myself how I might benefit from the feedback. I became more determined to work on gender bias and to help others. Self-awareness is especially important to inclusive leadership. Recall that inclusive leaders strive to value and respect everyone, members of dominant and non-dominant groups. They help people from all backgrounds to have a strong sense of belonging and to be known for their unique characteristics. They are advocates of equity and nondiscrimination. To achieve these goals requires leaders to be more or very self-aware especially toward individuals and groups who are different from themselves. How leaders engage with others in diverse workplaces has a major impact. They can improve how they value and respect others by paying attention to what they say and do and adjusting as needed. On the other hand, a lack of self-awareness can alienate others. Leaders may say and do things that can make others feel devalued and disrespected. They also may overlook ways that other people devalue or disrespect individuals. Even though these behaviors may be unintentional, they can constrain creating an inclusive culture. Administrative leaders at the university where I worked sometimes invited students to be members of committees. During one of those meetings, I noticed that the chairperson did not ask for the student's input. As we were concluding the meeting, I turned to this student and invited her to share her thoughts. This situation often occurs as leaders increasingly try to include representatives of under-represented groups. I will talk about how to be inclusive during meetings in another lesson. How do inclusive leaders engage in self-awareness? They try to be fully present. They focus on both internal and external dynamics. That is, they actively work on both seeing themselves clearly and getting feedback to understand how others see them. They monitor their emotions. They seek to understand the impact of their emotions and actions on others. They acknowledge areas of bias. They are honest with themselves and others. They ask for feedback and they receive it with grace. They act upon feedback to improve themselves. They seek contributions of others to balance their limitations. They engage in formal learning to enhance their strengths and strengthen their weaknesses. They accept themselves as they are even as they work on self-improvement. Yes, that sounds like a lot. It's because it is and it's worth it. Here's an example, right after I assumed an executive leadership role, an office that I supervised began accepting applications for a vacant positions. A few individuals in the organization stated that I was going to influence the hiring committee's decision. That definitely was not true because I am dedicated to fair hiring processes. This accusation hurt and angered me because it challenged my integrity, one of my key values. I wanted to protest loudly and to enlist others who know me to validate me as an ethical person. As I processed my feelings, I wondered why someone would think that about me. I checked with longtime employees who told me that there was a history of favoritism in hiring from top administrators. I also learned that the office where the position was open had experienced a variety of challenges in recent years. These could account for my colleagues' defensiveness. When I try to put myself in the critics shoes to take their perspective, I realized that I might have been skeptical too. I knew that these individuals cared deeply about the mission of the office to serve under-represented students. They may have been afraid that someone who did not care as much as they did might be hired. I also figured that they might feel the same no matter who the supervisor was. In other words, their concerns were not necessarily about me. With that understanding, I did not protest or try to prove that I'm a good person. I reassured them that I would follow protocol. I invited their recommendations for whom to include on the hiring committee, and I accepted some of their ideas. I revised the hiring process to solicit input from diverse groups, and I considered that feedback to decide whom to hire. I heard that the persons who had complained were pleased with the outcome. Overtime, they grew to trust me. During a presentation at a university event, one of the persons who had complained about me, praised me for my commitment to the office and its mission. This is an example of how self-awareness can be valuable in the workplace. In the next lesson, I will continue to describe benefits of self-awareness for inclusive leadership. I also will share ways that you can cultivate self-awareness.
