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Self-awareness

A collection of 22 posts

Taking Swift Action Is Powerful

Taking Swift Action Is Powerful

The theory behind ‘jump first, ask questions later’ is that when your thinking ability kicks in, your fear and instinct to back down is stimulated. Thinking about making a decision has its merits, but acting without thinking too much is powerful. Your brain is instinctively wired to kill an idea

Ways smart people undermine their success

Ways smart people undermine their success

At most jobs, you need more than raw intelligence to get ahead. And if smarts is your strength, only focusing on your greatest strength, rather than also addressing your weaknesses, tends to be self-sabotaging. When intellectually gifted people don't achieve as much as they'd like to, it's because they're subtly

Celebrate the incomplete-human-leader

Celebrate the incomplete-human-leader

Drop the myth of the complete leader at the top who's got it all figured out. Only when leaders embrace seeing themselves as incomplete are they be able to make up for their missing skills by trusting others. No one person can stay on top of everything. But the myth

Decisions determine our reality

Decisions determine our reality

The decisions we make determine our reality, and we make about 2,000 of them every waking hour, so inevitably, we all make some poor decisions every single day. But if we are aware of the enemies of good decision-making, and take steps to outmaneuver them, we can make better

Become your best self

Become your best self

Receiving affirmation is a powerful way for us to grow, particularly when it comes in the form of stories describing moments when we are at our best. Research shows that people benefit significantly from positive feedback about their strengths and contributions, and it helps to strengthen the quality of our

Improve your thought patterns

Improve your thought patterns

To see how your mind can lead you astray it’s not enough to look at what you’re thinking; you need to examine how you’re thinking, too. First, ask yourself, is most of your thoughts positive and optimistic, or negative and pessimistic? A significant amount of our well-being

Efficiency can limit your success

Efficiency can limit your success

Great leaders balance task-focus (getting things done) with people-focus (inspiring, developing, and empowering others). They recognize that it’s not about being efficient, it’s about being effective. Ironically, an intense focus on efficiency can make leaders less effective overall. The ability to execute and get things done is essential,

Overcome fear of failing

Overcome fear of failing

It's easy to hedge against failure to avoid risking blaming yourself for failure, and it won't make you successful. Paying lip service to the noble concept of trial and error also isn't enough. You need to face your fear of screwing up and push beyond it to succeed. Here are

Discover your best self by judging, yes really

Discover your best self by judging, yes really

What you desire, and what you do not desire, defines who you are in a unique and personal manner. When you do activities that match up with your motives, your career and life journey becomes more compelling and satisfying. And if you misjudge or ignore your motives, your progress will

How you do things matters

How you do things matters

How you do anything is how you can do everything. President Andrew Johnson would speak proudly of his career as a tailor before he entered politics. On the campaign trail, a heckler once tried to embarrass him by shouting about his working-class credentials. Johnson replied without breaking stride: “That does

Build better self-awareness

Build better self-awareness

A study on self-awareness revealed that 95% of us think we are quite self-aware, but only about 10-15% of us are. The good news is that great teams can help with our self-awareness. To improve our self-awareness, we need feedback to help match our internal view of ourselves with the

Become a better listener

Become a better listener

We are facing more distractions than ever before, and our attention span is reportedly down to 8 seconds much thanks to social media, smart devices, emails, instant messaging, apps, etc. With that, it's never been more important to practice attentive listening to maximize your success at work. With that in

Learn to mistrust impressions

Learn to mistrust impressions

As leaders it's important to recognize that not all illusions are visual, there are lots of cognitive ones that can fool us each day unless we pay attention and distinguish between impressions and beliefs.

You may be smarter than you think

You may be smarter than you think

Academic degrees do not necessarily make a person smarter, and the most intelligent people are not always the people with the highest degrees. Below are some signs indicating you're smarter than you think you are: 1. Other people seek you out for your advice. 2. You enjoy solving puzzles and

Fix your blind spots

Fix your blind spots

Great leaders are believed to know what their organizations and teams need intuitively. But no one is perfect, and most leaders have blind spots such as: 1. Overestimating strategic ability - Thinking that you're more strategic than you are. 2. Valuing being right - Holding fast to being right to

Master of self-awareness

Master of self-awareness

Self-awareness is not part of the curriculum in most management programs. Although strategy and MBA-logic are essential, so is self-awareness. Lacking it may be blinding and lead to suboptimal long-term financial and cultural results. To clarify, an MBA is useful in leading an organization. But if the MBA-trained logic becomes

Become a compelling speaker

Become a compelling speaker

The ability to communicate effectively can make or break a person’s assessment of your intelligence, competence, and authenticity. Expertly employ Tumlin’s three musts for powerful and persuasive communication: 1) Be still: Avoiding erratic movements while talking, whether in a meeting or on stage, will give the impression that

Motivation: It’s all in your head

Motivation: It’s all in your head

Don’t think about what you want to get done in terms of something you “have to do.” Begin thinking in terms of getting your work done because you “choose to” or “want to” accomplish something. Science has established that motivation comes from a small section of the brain where

Falling prey to bias

Falling prey to bias

Humans evaluate information in a biased manner. For instance, we often fall prey to confirmation bias; the tendency to focus on evidence that confirms our beliefs and assumptions rather than looking for information that contradicts it. Making matters worse: 1) We often do not realize that such biases weaken our

Learn who you are

Learn who you are

Always striving to learn more about who we are, and remaining open to how we view ourselves, allows us to remain humble and accepting of others. The alternative of having a strict belief on who we are limits our ability to learn and grow due to bias of our own

Things that matter more than IQ

Things that matter more than IQ

Four super important things for aspiring leaders: 1. Develop an ability to understand what's going on with people around you and stop stressing about being the smartest person in the room. 2. Learn how to see differences with others as opportunities rather than obstacles. 3. Be disciplined about turning down

Want your team to trust you?

Want your team to trust you?

People who feel trusted typically turn into higher performers and tend to put more effort into their work. So how do we ensure that we build trust? Start by trusting your team! Research suggests that leaders who struggle to get their teams to trust them: 1) Lack self-awareness, i.e.