Complete Leadership - Creating Self-Awareness

Probably the greatest barrier to achieving peak performance,
and the biggest cause of blindsided career derailment,
comes from leaders lacking the courage to discover
the profile of their automatic behaviors and thought patterns.

We develop thinking-self abilities and match existing auto-self characteristics to the needs of a job. Often, our automatic activities fortuitously assist our success needs without any involvement from our thinking-self. For example, if someone enjoys interacting with other people, he may become a successful salesperson without planning all the needed moves. If someone else enjoys working independently on tough technical problems, she may be able to create fantastic new designs without having to force herself to spend long solitary hours working on tedious activities because she enjoys the details. However, when such successful people attempt a different assignment, comfort priorities may no longer align with success needs. A salesperson may not succeed in a marketing position because he keeps spending too much time socializing, where he derives his pleasure. An introverted engineer may not succeed in a larger project that requires frequent cooperation with others because of her aversion to spending time in personal interactions and negotiations. And, put either of these people into a management position and their comfort priorities may not align with the leadership needs of this new role even though they receive significant training.

Despite our best attempts to select a profession that matches job needs to our comfort priorities, some aspects of the job will inevitably create demands that pull us in a direction contrary to our comfort priorities. Lack of self-awareness exposes us to blindsided derailment as the business environment changes, the company evolves, and job requirements increase with career progression.

We need to establish penetrating self-awareness to achieve needed performance improvements. In Executive Development: Finding and Growing Champions of Change (In Discontinuous Change: Leading Organizational Transformation, David A. Nadler, et al), Ketterer and Chayes discuss this need for leading culture change. “Increased self-awareness … is especially critical for senior managers … The more insight managers gain about themselves, the better able they are to act consistently with their intentions.” But, what exactly is it that we are unaware of that blocks our improvements?

The Center for Creative Leadership's Handbook of Leadership Development asserts, "The most effective leaders are self-aware, while a lack of self-awareness is strongly related to derailment." It goes on to state, "Our research and experience, as well as the research done by others, show that self-awareness is a key attribute of effective leaders." We are already aware of what we say and actions we deliberately perform. What is missing?

We have now laid a foundation that enables us to add teeth to these assertions about the need for empowering self-awareness. We need not concern ourselves about our awareness of our thinking-self's activities. We unavoidably recognize our thoughts and our explicit knowledge. Our strategies, plans, and task lists inherently require focused awareness. When leadership researchers argue for increasing self-awareness as a forerunner to improving performance, they really mean awareness of our auto-self's automatic behaviors, thought patterns, and leadership skills.

If we don't achieve a realistic understanding of our auto-self characteristics, we forfeit the opportunity to recognize when our uncontrollable activities no longer match the needs of our organization and our position in it, and deteriorating results often follow.

We now understand that improving the auto-self provides the greatest leverage for sustaining success because our automatic activities have eluded deep understanding and therefore systematic improvement. We identified the properties of the auto-self, explained why self-help works so poorly, argued that using external help provides the best way to improve automatic activities, and described some effective techniques to use in transforming the auto-self. However, the greatest barrier to sustaining success comes from a reflexive resistance to discovering the details of one's own auto-self characteristics as a prelude to launching an auto-self improvement activity.

Because we each have a self-image that we involuntarily struggle to maintain, we can delude ourselves. While some people harbor a self-image that underestimates their actual value, many successful businesspeople enjoy an oversized self-image. Either way, people often have inaccurate self-concepts, which interfere with their ability to maximize their effectiveness and satisfaction in business and in life. Most people prefer self-deception to self-discovery because they cannot overcome the discomfort of discovering possible deficiencies in their auto-self. The thought of plumbing the murky depths of their embedded self-image terrifies most people. I have witnessed powerful personalities cower at the prospect of meeting their auto-self. The Comfort Imperative prevails at a debilitating cost.

Mirror, mirror on the wall... People maintain a self-image that resides at least partly in auto-contexts. Sometimes auto-self images of one's abilities and value do not align with the realities observed by others or demonstrated by actual performance. When self-images underrate actual or potential performance, people tend to underachieve. They fail to take needed actions because they lack self-confidence. For high-level managers, the opposite often prevails. Past successes have constructed a grandiose self-image that may mask severe flaws. This hides the reality that successes may have come in spite of, rather than because of, some personal characteristics. Either way, people often have inaccurate self-concepts, which interfere with their ability to maximize their effectiveness and satisfaction in business and in life. Most people prefer self-deception to self-discovery because they cannot overcome the discomfort of discovering possible deficiencies in their auto-self. The thought of plumbing the murky depths of their embedded self-image terrifies most people. I have witnessed powerful personalities cower at the prospect of meeting their auto-self. The Comfort Imperative prevails at a debilitating cost. The inability to embrace self-discovery deprives people of the opportunity to recognize their shortcomings mixed among their excellent characteristics, which often leads to blindsided career derailment. In common with other auto-contexts, our self-image resists change through avoidance and denial. Unfortunately, this often creates a blockage to traversing the first step of auto-self improvements.

Blockage to self-discovery is part of human nature driven by the Comfort Imperative. We can't eliminate the discomfort associated with discovering and changing undesired automatic characteristics, but we can employ techniques to counteract our natural resistance to self-discovery in order to enhance our chances of success.

Discovery stage	Action on auto-characteristics	Evasion mechanism
1	Receive feedback	Avoidance
2	Accept received feedback	Denial
3	Commit to transform	Rationalization

Auto-self characteristics, or auto-characteristics, are the attributes or details of an individual's auto-behaviors, auto-contexts, auto-skills, and auto-expertise. Once people receive details of their auto-characteristics, accept this feedback, and commit to improving undesirable or inadequate auto-characteristics, they have traversed the biggest obstacles to performance improvement. After that, methodical processes can guide them to transform their auto-characteristics to improve performance.

To shorten this material, we only discuss Stage 1 (openly receiving feedback) here.

Armed with new insights about the auto-self, we now can identify two distinct forms of self-awareness that open the path for deep self-improvement. We have focused on how to overcome debilitating obstacles to discovering the profile of an individual's personal set of auto-self characteristics. We call this static self-awareness because we recognize that we have our own distinct set of stable or static auto-self characteristics such as compulsively micromanaging or habitually failing to give adequate performance reviews. This makes it possible to reflect upon and initiate corrective actions on one's own automatic activities. As touched upon in the section on transformation techniques, we also must learn to notice auto-self characteristics dynamically while we enact them. This dynamic self-awareness creates the possibility to substitute desired behaviors or contexts for ones that interfere with intended performance.

	Recognizing we do it	Noticing while enacting it
Thinking-self	We know what we know	We notice our explicit thoughts and intentional actions
Auto-self	Static self-awareness (of an auto-self characteristic)	Dynamic self-awareness (of an auto-self activity)

Gordon led a 1000-person business unit for an international business operation I headed. His exceptional talent enabled him to deliver solid results. However, I received feedback from my HR VP that Gordon bullied and intimidated people in his organization. When I investigated further, others in Gordon's organization confirmed that he indeed intimidated many people. Gordon produced excellent results, but he needed to change some aspects of how he achieved them to develop his team and enhance long-term success. When I presented this feedback to Gordon, he grimaced. He denied he intimidated people even though I had contrary evidence from multiple sources. Some people intimidate deliberately because it gives them a sense of power, because it helps them overcome feelings of insecurity, because they naïvely believe it is the best way to get desired actions from others, or because they lack interpersonal skills to motivate. I knew Gordon well enough to believe he did not intend to intimidate. However, he claimed more; he asserted he did not intimidate. Besides working independently of our intentions (Property #1), the auto-self normally operates outside our awareness (Property #2). These two properties of the auto-self caused Gordon's denial. He did not intend to intimidate, and he did not notice when he did it. Therefore, he mistakenly believed he did not do it.

Avoidance is the main evasion mechanism used in self-discovery Stage 1. Some people passively avoid discovering their auto-self characteristics as Gordon did. Other people actively avoid receiving information about their auto-self. They try to fool themselves and others by masquerading their "excuses" for not participating in an organized feedback process as "reasons." I have heard many such excuses, and I bet you have also. "It's a good idea, but this is not the right time – I am too busy." "The process is too expensive." "I want to do it, but it's too disruptive right now. Let's do it next year." They delay, hoping the initiative will atrophy, which it often does. If you want to observe self-confident leaders who normally soar like majestic eagles act like terrified mice scurrying for a place to hide, ask your leaders to participate in a self-discovery process. To lead effectively, leaders must root their self-confidence in realistic self-awareness in order to guarantee their auto-self characteristics align with success needs.

If we inventory someone's auto-characteristics, we can create a profile of those skills and behaviors the person displays automatically and the hidden assumptions that frame the person's thoughts.

The two most common mechanisms to reveal auto-self characteristics within organizations are multi-rater leadership surveys (such as a 360° survey using boss, peers, and subordinates to rate a person) and performance reviews. Multi-rater surveys, including computer-based instruments and interviews, can produce valuable profiles of auto-self characteristics. Although many people avoid leadership surveys out of fear others might discover their weaknesses, normally only an individual’s boss and the senior HR person see the results, and they already recognize the person's strengths and weaknesses. They want the leader to participate in the survey to pinpoint the underlying auto-characteristics linked to the observable weaknesses in order to maximize benefits of any intervention. The sad irony is people who avoid 360° surveys hide the information primarily from themselves. After all, the people they try to hide the information from are the ones providing it to them. We don't notice our own uncontrollable activities, but those around us see them and often experience them painfully.

Most performance reviews fail to provide adequate auto-self feedback. Few companies train leaders to identify behavior patterns that would indicate auto-self characteristics, and the discomfort created by giving candid feedback blocks many managers from communicating the insights they do have. Informal one-on-one feedback, such as I gave to Gordon, helps in the work environment as well as outside of work while aiding a friend, family member, or colleague. Other techniques for helping people discover troublesome auto-characteristics include asking them to recall what they did when they had to say they were sorry and to remember failed New Year's resolutions.

We expect executives to be bold and strong. We expect leaders to have the courage to step into difficult situations and take charge. Effective leaders normally act like powerful oaks that produce awe in their presence. However, when faced with the opportunity for self-discovery, many "leaders" appear more like weeping willows. We experience discomfort when we come face-to-face with the characteristics of our auto-self. We all have deficiencies in our involuntary activities. Courageous leaders work through their internal reality wars and take action to overcome their deficiencies and leverage their strengths. For reasons peculiar to human nature, the anticipation of discovering details of one's auto-self creates such discomfort that it blocks many people from willingly participating in a leadership performance survey. If you are a leader or an HR professional responsible for performance improvements, the most important developmental act you can take is to guide those who you are responsible for developing to overcome their self-discovery phobia. You will need to become adept at inducing feelings to guide leaders through their discomfort when confronted with the perceived perils of self-discovery. Use counteracting techniques to get them past their fear. By the way, one good approach is to walk the talk and take the lead on self-discovery yourself. Courage does not occur in the absence of fear. Courage means recognizing fear and refusing to let it control one's actions. Be a mighty oak; don't be a weeping willow.

Paradigm-breaking innovation requires that we think outside "the box." The seminal work on this topic appeared in the 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn that popularized the terms "paradigm" and "paradigm shift." In our terminology, it means conceiving a topic that is outside a current auto-context. That is, it challenges what appears to be the way things really are. Dramatic examples include Copernicus' 16th century challenge to the assumed geocentric (earth centered) universe, Charles Lyle's early 19th summary of the work many had done to undermine the assumed young age of the earth, and Darwin's mid-19th century identification of the processes of evolution.

When it comes to our self-image, we have a private "box." Although it lacks the support of a shared auto-context, our self-image creates passionate resistance to change because it resides in auto-contexts that form a fundamental belief about who we are – our self-identity. When we receive information about ourselves that contradicts our self-image, it creates an immediate internal reality war that the Comfort Imperative dictates we must resolve quickly by rejecting the troublesome inputs or traversing the uncomfortable process of aligning our self-image with the new inputs. Most people initially challenge their feedback. However, receiving concurring inputs from multiple sources in different relationships with the recipient makes it difficult to continue the denial. The internal reality war between an ingrained self-image and widespread contrary feedback creates such discomfort that many people have immediately declared to me that they were going to leave the company. Their argument goes as follows, "If that's what they think of me, I don't want to work here anymore." I counteract their flight response to alleviate their internal reality war by pointing out that with so many people identifying the same undesired auto-behavior, they will take it with them to the next job. As the old adage states, "Where you go, there you are." I also focus them on the positive attributes the raters identified, which creates a counteracting positive feeling.

Changing our self-image creates traumatic discomfort because it requires reconstructing a personal auto-context. This auto-context may not be specific. After many successes, most people feel that they do most things well. That feeling often gives the self-confidence to achieve even more. When people find out about their personality flaws, it shakes their self-confidence. Fortunately, we can transform almost all auto-self deficiencies through coaching sufficiently to remove them as an obstacle to greater success. However, people need to reset their self-image before they will be able to launch an effort to make transformational improvements.

Part of our success agenda is to be comfortable. However, if we allow “comfort-now” (the Comfort Imperative) to dominate us, we fail in the long run, which causes greater discomfort later. You may recall the old television commercial with a man talking about preventive car maintenance who said, “You can pay me now or pay me later.” Similarly, we can accept short-term self-discovery discomfort now to enhance long-term success or experience lasting failure pain later. We need to embrace feedback on the status of our personal auto-self characteristics so we can construct a self-image that reflects where we really stand. Of course, trying to talk people into an action that violates their comfort priorities just creates an unfair fight. We must use more-powerful techniques. In particular, we must counteract the discomfort inherent in self-discovery.

How do we entice people to try to improve their auto-self? The key to helping other people achieve peak performance is to get them to cross the chasm of discovering characteristics of their auto-self they don't want to, but need to, recognize. Most people do not want to discover their auto-characteristics because they fear the feedback may shake their self-image, embarrass them, or expose their weaknesses to others. However, they need to know about their auto-self so they can leverage their automatically executed positive skills and behaviors and overcome their auto-self deficiencies to achieve greater success

Terri, the CFO of an East Coast venture-capital-backed technology company, expressed her trepidation as follows, "I knew from the business literature that the path to career-altering change starts with crossing the chasm into self-discovery. However, as I pondered engaging in a leadership performance survey, fear almost overwhelmed me." She described her internal struggle, "I felt like I was hovering at the rim of an abyss. I believed exciting new opportunities awaited me if I could just make the leap, but an eerie fog blocked my visibility to the other side. I wavered at the brink. If I make the leap into the unknown, what will it be like when I land? Will the risk be worth it? Would I be able to make the changes to take advantage of the opportunities on the other side of the chasm?"

Crossing the self-awareness chasm requires a singular act of courage that often reveals a person's true character. It requires people to overcome their fears and suddenly "take the plunge" or "make the leap" into the frightening unknown. Terri described her growing consternation as she grappled with her decision to discover the characteristics of her auto-self. "My anxiety escalated as I struggled with my choice between complacency and cowardice on one hand and courage to face my fear of possible embarrassment and the unknown on the other." Terri vaulted the abyss, and it changed her life. Here is how she later reported her experience. "I delight that I summoned the courage to discover my automatic behaviors. I received some feedback on my leadership survey that shook me – I experienced internal reality wars firsthand. I felt an almost overwhelming need to escape the emotional turmoil that some of the feedback caused me. I initially could not bring myself to believe that I was as aggressive, intimidating, and overbearing as the feedback indicated. I wanted to relieve my distress by rejecting the inputs I just received. However, I knew that would ruin my chance to grow, and I realized that so many people identified these characteristics that I must display them. I recognized the difficulty in changing these automatic activities, but the immediate task was to resolve my traumatic reality war and accept that I displayed these dysfunctional behaviors. I felt some relief when I realized that I did not intend to display these uncontrollable behaviors, so they do not make me a deliberate ogre. As I progressed through the agonizing experience of accepting aspects of my behavior that I did not want to admit or deal with, my internal turmoil began to subside, and I steeled myself to become the 'me' I wanted to be. Or, probably more accurately, I wanted to become the 'me' I thought I was."

In common with leadership surveys of other successful people, Terri also received positive feedback. She explained this positive experience as follows, "I discovered strengths that I have had not fully appreciated. The new understanding of my ability to see patterns in numbers that most other people do not see enabled me to leverage this capacity even more. It also improved my patience with others who do not have this expertise. I choose to resolve my self-image reality war by entering coaching rather than by denying the feedback that contradicted part of my self-image. The performance feedback provided a framework that enabled me to overcome some serious limitations, including counterproductive intimidation and aggressive behavior, through coaching. I also became more patient with others who did not see what appeared to me as obvious problems in financial statements. I 'recontextualized' their behavior from being ignorant or lazy to not having the expertise that allowed them to see the patterns." Terri trembled at the edge of the self-discovery precipice; she took the leap, and it led to career-enhancing improvements. She went on to become the successful CFO of a large, high-profile consumer products company.

People helping people improve their auto-self should expect initial indignation and denial when they provide feedback about unflattering manifestations of their auto-self.

A comprehensive leadership performance survey greatly enhances coaching, but many people need some coaching to step up to the survey. It disheartens to see otherwise powerful executives lack the courage for self-discovery. Before a professional coach enters the scene, individuals who develop people within organizations often must coach those they help through the auto-self discovery process. To counteract ingrained resistance to self-discovery, we must fight fire with fire. We must create feelings to counteract the crippling effects of the Comfort Imperative. You can employ virtual consequences to leverage the exhilaration of personal growth and fear of blindsided failure to counteract fear of the unknown and discomfort of auto-self discovery and change. When working as a trusted helper on this topic, you need to guide somebody through a situational blockage to action, which is much easier than permanently transforming an ingrained behavior. The saddest situation for a coach is when someone finally realizes they have issues to address, and the train has left the station. That is, although they improve significantly, they cannot demonstrate progress fast enough to overcome the deteriorating attitudes towards them, so their management or their board gives up on them and replaces them. Help your leaders discover and address their auto-self deficiencies before it's too late.

That people do not intend to act inappropriately does not lessen the impact on their own performance or on the performance of those around them when they do so. Remaining ignorant of one's auto-characteristics avoids modest discomfort now, but it often leads to great pain later, including career derailment and company failure (as well has difficulties in other aspects of life). We need to embrace feedback on the status of our personal auto-self characteristics so we can deal with how the world experiences us, develop a realistic self-concept, and consciously develop auto-characteristics that align with our goals and values. People reach the pivot point in performance improvement when they discover their auto-characteristics and resolve to transform some of them for improved performance.

Finally, these principles apply to all parties involved in transformations, including the helpers as well as those they help. People who help people must burst through their own discomfort associated with the resistance and often hostility they face when helping others cross the chasm to self-discovery. Thus, individuals who develop others and who wish to use the powerful tools developed in these pages must engage in a rigorous process to discover their own auto-selves to maximize their ability to help others uncover their auto-characteristics. People who have the responsibility to improve the performance of others have a duty to guide them through self-discovery. Unfortunately, too many managers, leadership development specialists, trainers, and organization development experts fail to achieve this supreme act of leadership.

The two biggest obstacles to aligning behaviors with success needs are failing to receive and accept valid feedback on auto-self characteristics and falling into the seduction trap after accepting feedback and launching an effort to change. The seduction trap comes from getting psyched up to make a change, encountering the unfair fight, and failing to verify results. People get seduced into thinking they are really changing, but they are not, as often occurs when one is inspired by a self-help program. People who must develop other people can overcome these obstacles by requiring organized performance feedback and providing sufficient help to assure the desired changes occur.