The Self-Aware Leader
Self-awareness isn’t as easy as it might first appear.
By nature, we are not self-aware creatures. Babies scream for their food and children throw temper tantrums in the most inappropriate places. I watched children sitting in a church services express their desires to their parents in ways that drowned our the person speaking at the front.
Sometimes kids don’t grow up.
“Loud-phone-conversation-in-public” guy is one of those kids.
The self-aware leader has learned to think of others. She has learned to ask how people perceive her — not in an insecure, people-pleasing way. She knows how she comes across.
Self-aware leaders recognize their own emotional state.
As this publishes, I will be en-route to Southeast Asia. 30+ hours of travel wears on more than the emotions. It wears on the soul. It’s at those times that self-awareness is even more critical.
How am being perceived by this person across the counter with me?
Am I being overly aggressive?
What emotion is coming across here?
Learn to read yourself.
Stop and consider what you’re feeling and why you’re feeling it.
And how this affects the people around you.
