Gauge Your Awareness
September 9, 2007
Howard Book (hbwork@netsurf.net) is an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and an organizational consultant.
Self-awareness is the key emotional intelligence skill behind good leadership. It’s often thought of as the ability to know how you’re feeling and why, and the impact your feelings have on your behavior. But it also involves a capacity to monitor and control those strong but subliminal biases that all of us harbor and that can skew our decision making.
Consider, for example, a vice president who complained to me recently about his new hire, the head of sales. He found her to be unassertive, indecisive, unsure – hardly leadership material. When I talked to her, however, it turned out she felt her boss was sabotaging her career. The vice
Whereas cognitive intelligence is fixed by about the age of ten, emotional intelligence increases with age.
president had been hired only five months before she had, and he was oblivious to how his anxiety to please the CEO was causing him to micromanage. In doing so, the VP was undercutting the sales director’s independence and confidence. His lack of self-awareness directly impaired her performance.
Experience and literature on the subject suggest that while both nature and nurture influence emotional intelligence, nurture is the more important factor. Indeed, this emphasis on environment is one of the hallmarks that
differentiates emotional intelligence from cognitive intelligence, or IQ. Whereas cognitive intelligence is fixed by about the age of ten, emotional intelligence increases with age. So you can actually learn emotional intelligence skills like self-awareness. One simple way to measure your self-awareness is to ask a trusted friend or colleague to draw up a list of your strengths and weaknesses while you do the same. It can be an uncomfortable exercise, but the bigger the gap between your list and your helper’s, the more work you probably have to do.
Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
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