What are your strengths and weaknesses? This is an important question for you, as a leader, to seriously consider. Digging into this issue will help you to become “self-aware”. This increases your ability to be a stronger leader.
What does self-awareness look like? Self-awareness is the ability to monitor your own emotions and reactions. When you realize how you react to what you are thinking and feeling, you will understand the impact your strengths and weaknesses have on your behavior. Tasha Eurich writes in the Harvard Business Review about the importance of and balance between internal and external self-awareness. She uses a matrix of four groups:
- Introspectors know themselves but don’t look for feedback from others
- Seekers don’t know yet what they stand for or how their teams see them
- Pleasers are so focused on how they appear to others that they overlook what matter to them
- Aware know who they are, what they want, but also seek out and value the opinions of others.
Reflect on your decisions. Whether the decision was to add a new client, change a policy, or even fire an employee, ask yourself how that choice impacted your business. Are you confident that you made the best decision? Why did you decide to handle the issue that way? Would you make a different choice today? By taking the time to reflect on your decisions, you allow yourself to create a deeper understanding of your choices.
The way you see yourself and how others perceive you may be very different. Schedule one-on-one meetings with your employees. Ask them what you could do to be a better leader. Ask open-ended questions and be willing to accept criticism. We all like to hear about the good but we cannot improve if we are not willing to learn about our weaknesses. Feedback is critical to the workplace because you need to understand how your skills impact those around you.
Want to learn more about your strengths and how they impact your business? Other business leaders are benefitting from their membership in a Raven Roundtable. To learn more, contact Linda today.