Self-Awareness: A Point of Departure

Self-Awareness:
A Point of Departure
Why Increase Your Self-Awareness?
Avoidance of Self-Awareness:
• Desire to protect, maintain, and enhance self-
concepts.
• Fears, inadequacies, self-doubt, and
insecurities hinder honest self-appraisal.
• Fear of rejection leads to hiding vulnerabilities.
Facade and Exhaustion:
• Building protection around the inner core to
hide vulnerabilities.
• Pretending to be something else, even to
oneself, is exhausting.
• Unsustainable maintenance of a facade.
Balancing "Need to Know"
and "Fear of Knowing":
As reasoning beings, Recognition that no one is

individuals balance the perfect, and acknowledging
need for self-awareness strengths and weaknesses
with the fear of discovering is crucial for personal
uncomfortable truths. growth.
Importance of Self-Awareness in
Interpersonal Skills:
• Fundamental for improving interpersonal skills.
• Emotional intelligence, empathy, and authenticity are
linked to self-awareness.
• Understanding oneself enhances the comprehension of
how others perceive and respond to an individual.
Role in Leadership
Development:
Leaders need to know Self-insights are

Self-awareness is a
and understand determinants of
key precursor to
themselves before career and personal
effective leadership.
leading others. success.
Impact on Leadership Styles:
• Leaders with accurate self-awareness adapt
suitable leadership styles.
• Empathy allows sensitivity to the effectiveness of
current leadership styles.
• Internal self-awareness facilitates challenging
underlying assumptions for improved leadership.
Purpose of Self-Assessments:
• Not intended for psychoanalysis but to increase
awareness of behaviors.
• Helps individuals gain insight into themselves and
their impact on others.
• Provides the option to drop ineffective behaviors and
experiment with new ones.
How to Increase Your Self-Awareness?
Solicit Feedback:
Seek honest feedback from trusted individuals.
Consider 360-degree feedback programs for a comprehensive perspective.
Participate in support groups for diverse and authentic feedback.
Reflection:
Regularly review and learn from experiences.
Embrace solitude for deep self-reflection and rejuvenation.
Use practices like meditation or yoga to facilitate personal reflection.
Write in a Journal:
Maintain a journal that goes beyond daily events.
Include reflections on interpersonal experiences and critical aspects.
"Think on paper" about readings or personal experiences.
Keep a Blog:
Transform journals into blogs for interactive feedback.
Utilize online platforms to share entries and receive comments.
Leverage the benefits of e-technologies for self-discovery.
Self-Performance Appraisal:
Analyze goal achievement performance by comparing expectations with actual results.
Track strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.
Identify bad habits and areas lacking competence.
Self-Assessment Inventories:
Take and interpret self-assessment questionnaires.
Check results with feedback from others for validation.
Explore a variety of inventories for a more comprehensive self-understanding.

Learning Style
Horizontal Axis: Modes of Gathering Information
RO (Reflective Observation):
Passively observing others involved in experiences.
Making sense of observations by reflecting from different
perspectives.
AE (Active Experimentation):
Jumping into experiences and initiating activities to see what
happens.
Vertical Axis: Ways of Evaluating Information
CE (Concrete Experience):
Generating learning through experiencing feelings while
dealing with concrete reality.
AC (Abstract Conceptualization):
Generating meaning through thinking about and analyzing new

information to form abstract concepts, generalizations,
hypotheses, models, or plans.
Four Learning Styles:
Diverging Style:
Combines CE and RO.
Prefers learning through reflection on experiences.
Characteristics:
Highly imaginative.
Excel at brainstorming.
Enjoy gathering information.
Like group involvement in generating creative ideas.
Often found in human resource management or service roles.
Assimilating Style:
Combines RO with AC.
Prefers understanding a wide range of information and creating theoretical models.
Characteristics:
Engages in abstract ideas and theory.
Prefers learning through lectures, reading, and research.
Attracted to careers in science, information technology, or strategic planning.

Converging Style:
Uses abstract concepts as the basis for AE.
Enjoys practical uses for theories and concepts, solving problems.
Characteristics:
Prefers working with technical tasks.
Engages in AE and problem-solving.
Attracted to careers involving practical application of theories.
Accommodating Style:
Involves AE and carrying out plans to produce CEs.
Focuses on "hands-on" experience and adaptability to new situations.
Characteristics:
Enjoys engaging new challenges.
Adapts quickly to new situations.
Willing to take risks.
Tends to act spontaneously on "gut" feelings.
Prefers learning through group assignments or fieldwork.
Dominant style in action-oriented business roles like sales and management
Implications for Organizations:
Organizations benefit from understanding and accommodating diverse learning styles.
Encourage adaptive flexibility among employees.
Foster a learning environment that supports a variety of learning preferences.
Recognize that individuals may have different dominant styles and strengths.
Tailor training programs to cater to diverse learning needs.

MANAGERS’ APPLICATION TIPS
Team and organizational leaders need to value and draw on the
differing capabilities of people with diverse learning styles.
Many managers tend to be strongest on the accommodating
style of learning, focused on active experimentation and
concrete experiences.
Managers with an accommodating style tend to make fewer
inferences from data and are less consistent in their actions
than, say, researchers with the assimilating style. Collectively,
the four styles are complimentary and all are needed to
optimize performance throughout an organization.

Self-Awareness: A Point of Departure

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Self-Awareness: A Point of Departure

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Self-Awareness: A Point of Departure

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Self-Awareness:

As reasoning beings, Recognition that no one is

Leaders need to know Self-insights are

Analyze goal achievement performance by comparing expectations with actual results.

Track strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.

Identify bad habits and areas lacking competence.

Take and interpret self-assessment questionnaires.

Check results with feedback from others for validation.

Explore a variety of inventories for a more comprehensive self-understanding.

Generating meaning through thinking about and analyzing new

Combines RO with AC.

Prefers understanding a wide range of information and creating theoretical models.

Engages in abstract ideas and theory.

Prefers learning through lectures, reading, and research.

Attracted to careers in science, information technology, or strategic planning.

Organizations benefit from understanding and accommodating diverse learning styles.

Encourage adaptive flexibility among employees.

Foster a learning environment that supports a variety of learning preferences.

Tailor training programs to cater to diverse learning needs.

You might also like