How Self Awareness Can Help Organisational Leaders Boost Productivity

Charis Raji
3 min readDec 4, 2020

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Self-awareness is the conscious knowledge of one’s character and feelings. It’s the ability to focus on you and also on your actions, thoughts and emotions if they do or don’t align with your standards (internal and external)

According to Dr Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist, researcher and a New York best-selling author stated in a Forbes article that 95 percent of people believe they are self-aware.

Meanwhile, in reality, only 10% to 15% merit the “self-aware” badge. Dr Tacha and her team carried out 10 separate pieces of research with 5000 participants.

Findings show that when employees are self-aware, they can identify who they are and why they work the way they do. Using this information, leaders can then play to their strength while understanding their areas of developmental opportunity.

Is Self Awareness Important?

Of course, it is!

Self-awareness helps us know our internal states, emotions and intuitions. It doesn’t end there.

Self-awareness also allows us to understand the emotions of others around us better. We can’t control 100% of our lives, but we can control how we react to things we can control.

That’s the key to self-awareness. Leaders who aren’t self-aware will encounter obstacles, at times the same challenge repeatedly and won’t understand why. While those who are self-aware examine themselves honestly to get to the root of their problems.

This implies that self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand the impact of one’s behaviour on yourself and other people. Leaders who are self-aware know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. They also understand the consequences of their actions on other people.

Self-awareness is a critical factor in your productivity.

How Self-Awareness Boost Personal Development

No one can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere about dealing with himself

John Maxwell

As aforementioned, self-awareness helps us know our internal states, emotions and intuitions. When you are self-aware, you know what’s good for you and what’s not god for you, you will know what you want, you will know what to feed your mind with, you will also know your loopholes and how to work on them (it allows you to take control of your actions so you can make the necessary changes to the outcomes you desire).

Being self-aware also helps you know your personality trait- if you are an introvert, an extrovert- because you know who you are.

Get more findings here.

How Self Awareness Boost Productivity

  • When you are self-aware, you can focus on priorities. Most people become easily distracted, constantly shifting from one task to another. As your attention wanders, time slips away and your productivity suffers.

When you practice self-awareness, you will learn to focus your mind and energy on the task at hand. You can start by making a list of tasks for the day or week, then prioritize them based on complexity or upcoming deadlines. By focusing your mind for 30 minutes or more at a time, you’ll be able to concentrate and accomplish real work while resisting the urge to multitask or get sidetracked.

  • Know your strengths and weaknesses

By becoming self-aware, you become a better judge of your abilities.

  • Make Better Choices
    Once you are aware of the patterns of your behaviour, you can improve your decision-making skills.
  • Management Skills
    Stress is not only bad for your overall health, it’s a productivity killer. As you begin to train your mind for better self-awareness, you’ll learn how to recognize when you’re battling stress, and how to let it go. Deep breathing, focused mental relaxation and a re-evaluation of priorities can help you deal with stressful situations
  • Engage with others more effectively.

Benefits Of Self Awareness

  1. It allows you to choose your mindset and turn it into something positive despite negative external factors.2.
  2. You get to be the real you.
  3. Improves critical thinking skills and decision making.
  4. You genuinely love yourself.

Now, what would life look like if you took the time to be self-aware?

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