AWARENESS: Touchy-Feely or Mission Critical for Your Business?

Oliver Nyumbu

Introduction

It can be truly challenging for business leaders to ensure you are paying adequate attention to the right things in such a rapidly changing business environment. Awareness can be something of a superpower which enables you to achieve more than you hoped or planned. In this article I want to introduce you to the wonderful work of Tasha Eurich.

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS:

It is very difficult to take timely action in relation or in response to something about which you aren’t properly aware. For a business this partly refers to environmental awareness. International Businesses that are closing or suspending operations in Russia are a case in point. What about your business? How effectively are you able to ‘read the signs’ whether they be ominous or indicating opportunity?

SELF-AWARENESS

At the level of the individual leader, self-awareness is absolutely crucial. Indeed this can enhance opportunities (or set a leader’s upper limit) for success. But I am not thinking of self-awareness as hype in a motivational guru’s talk. As indicated in the slide below, there’s good robust research that has investigated the subject for a long time.

BENEFITS:

Tasha Eurich and her research team have identified two kinds of self awareness: internal self-awareness (how well you know yourself) and external self-awareness (how well you understand how others see you). Now to the benefits. The benefits the research team lists includes:

So what are the benefits of you as a leader investing time and effort to raise your self-awareness?

1. Greater confidence

2. More creativity

3. Sounder decisions

4. Building stronger relationships

5. Becoming a better worker

6. Running a more profitable business

What right thinking leader would not want these benefits for him/herself and for those around them?