Notes on: How to Move from Self-Awareness to Self-Improvement

'How to Move from Self-Awareness to Self-Improvement' is an article by Jennifer Porter and and was originally published on hbr.org.

Self-awareness is key to being an effective leader. It is important to understand your strengths, weaknesses, emotions, thoughts, values and principals, and how they might impact others around you, but self-awareness alone is not enough. Whether you are a leader, or simply looking to better control your reactions in any given situation, you need to be aware of your natural reactions, and then move towards managing yourself to change them to more desired and productive reactions.

Self-management is a conscious choice to be aware of our natural reactions or habits, and make proactive effort to control our behaviours to be more productive. The four steps to self management are:

1. Be mindful. It is important to be aware of what is happening in the present moment, and not what happened before, or thinking too much about what is going to happen next.

2. Be self-aware. What are the thoughts going through your mind? How are you reacting emotionally? How are you behaving? What are you observing that is triggering these reactions?

3. Consider your options. What are some possible ways to react to the situation? What are the consequences or those options? Do you need more information? What are some alternative ways to respond (especially ones that are not natural)?

4. Make a conscious choice to react or respond in the most productive way. Now that you have considered all your options as best as you can, you should choose the one that is the most productive, even if this is not easy for you to do and is contrary to how you would normally react.

As an example, imagine someone who has the habit of talking too much in meetings or with friends and family. Practising self-management could look like this:

1. Someone is sharing a story and I have a similar one I want to tell. (Be mindful)

2. I notice myself no longer listening to the story and instead looking for an opportunity to share my own. I am getting eager to share mine while everyone is listening. (Be self-aware)

3. Perhaps I could wait until they are done, then share my story? Or I can not share anything at all and let them have the moment? Maybe I could tune back in and ask a thoughtful follow up question? (Consider your options)

4. Asking a follow up question will help show them I am engaged and help me fight off the urge to share my story when it arises. (Make a conscious choice to respond productively).

Self management takes effort, and that is why it is called 'management'. A lot of times the most productive behaviours are not ones that would come naturally to us. Behaving in ways that is not natural will be uncomfortable at times, as it requires us to learn new skills sometimes and it can change the way we communicate as well.

A habit skips the critical thinking aspect, and creates a shortcut in our brain that allows us to react automatically to a given cue, which saves us mental capacity to focus on more productive things. Behaviours that are not habits, or even go against our habits, require us to put mental effort towards thinking about the situation, considering different options, making a decisions and then reacting accordingly.

It is much easier to default to an old habit than to expunge energy in creating a new one, and that is why change takes conscious effort. The good news is self-management is a learnable skill and this is how you can get started:

1. Decide the areas you want to change the way you naturally react. Reflect on your natural reactions, how you respond, what you say, and what you do in certain situations where you think you can do a better job managing yourself to establish more productive ways of reacting.

2. Pinpoint the cues that are causing the lack of self-management. In the moments when you are not self-managing, think about how you are feeling, how are you perceiving the situations, what are driving your natural reactions? Perhaps you are not being mindful in the moment, or you are too concerned about defending yourself to look good? Whatever it is, many people have a penchant towards action, but it is important to spend time and reflect on the triggers that lead to some of the choices we make.

3. Consider your choices and your reactions to those choices. Instead of your natural reaction, what other ways could you react in the situation? How would you manage yourself? What are some things you are tying to avoid doing? Once you have established the different choices, consider the consequences to these choices, and which one of them provides the most productive outcome?

4. Plan ahead. Now that you have identified the behaviour change, the triggers that cause the reaction, and the desired outcome, you can decide on some concrete steps you can take to self-manage. As an example, in order to talk less, you may challenge yourself to ask questions instead.

5. Practise and repeat. Old habits are hard to break and it takes time to build new neural pathways, but as long as you are making conscious effort and do this repeatedly, eventually you will be able to self-manage easier. Sometimes, your plan may not work out right away, and you may need to reflect some more on the triggers, or come up with new ways to react more productively, then it would make sense to repeat the process until you feel you have got it right.

To becomes as effective as possible, leaders need to go beyond self-awareness and take action with self-management. Our preferred, natural ways of reacting may not be the most productive, but they are the easiest to execute. In order to improve our reactions to others and the way we collaborate and communicate, we must first be aware of what needs to change, and the triggers that cause them. Self-management can help us go beyond awareness to action in order to be the more productive.