6. The ONE Quality ALL Leaders Need and How To Cultivate It
I don’t speak in absolutes very often, because they typically don’t exist. What I mean by this is that I try to avoid using words like “never,” “always,” and “must.”
But I’m making an exception for today’s podcast topic, because sometimes exceptions exist! ;)
I believe that leaders can and should come with a variety of skills and traits. It’s what makes each of us unique and able to create impact in the world in different and powerful ways.
But there is ONE quality that I believe ALL leaders absolutely must have and that’s self-awareness.
Without this one quality, we can easily sabotage ourselves, our businesses, and our teams. Which means we might not be able to bring the big dreams and goals we have to life.
A lack of self-awareness can make growing and leading our teams incredibly difficult.
Since leadership is all about humans working with other humans to accomplish big goals together, it’s important to develop our self-awareness as leaders, otherwise we may find ourselves doing business all alone.
Join me for a powerful conversation in this episode all about self-awareness, the leadership journey, and how to cultivate greater awareness today!
In this episode, you’ll learn:
The ONE quality ALL leaders need,
A short activity to help you ID you degree of awareness, and
How to cultivate greater self-awareness with 5 simple strategies
Mentioned in This Episode:
Transform Your Stories
If you’re ready to overcome your toxic stories and create the impact you really want to have in this world, click here to grab a free sample of my book, Transform Your Stories!
Transcription for Episode 6 - The ONE Quality ALL Leaders Need and How To Cultivate It
Ashley Cox 0:04
Welcome to episode six of the impact ripple podcast the go to source for hiring and leadership made simple, doable and fun for visionary female business owners. I'm your host, Ashley Cox, author, certified HR expert and founder of sprout HR. And I believe you don't have to change who you are to be a great leader, because you already are one. Join me as we kiss uncertainty and overwhelm goodbye, and say hello to the tools and support you need to grow a profitable, sustainable, impactful team with more confidence and ease.
Ashley Cox 0:41
On today's episode, I'm introducing the one quality that all leaders need in order to be successful, as well as five ways to help you develop this quality. You will often hear me talk in absolutes when it comes to leadership skills. And what I mean by that is statements that use words like always, never must. But I do make an exception when it comes to this one quality that I think all leaders truly do need. This one quality can quite literally make or break your success when it comes to leading a team. What is it? Self awareness.
Ashley Cox 1:19
Have you ever worked for or with someone who completely lacked self awareness? I have an it's challenging, at best. You know, the manager who changes their mind so often, that things are constantly in flux. And we never feel like we're accomplishing anything meaningful. Been there done that, or the manager who would say highly inappropriate things, but was either completely unaware that what they were saying was not okay, or they just couldn't read the room that they were making people incredibly uncomfortable, even though those people were visibly cringing in there too.
Ashley Cox 2:02
These are both examples of a lack of self awareness because self awareness actually consists of two factors, internal and external factors. Internal awareness focuses on knowing who you are and what you want to accomplish in the world. Where external factors focus on understanding how your behavior impacts others, and seeking out opinions that differ from your own.
Ashley Cox 2:31
Self awareness is one of the core components of emotional intelligence, which is your ability to understand not only your own emotions, but the emotions of other people. And when you're leading people, emotional intelligence is a skill that you absolutely want and need to hone. Because folks come with a lot of emotions, whether we want them to or not, and that includes ourselves. Emotional Intelligence, including self awareness allows you to engage with your employees in deeper and more meaningful ways, ensuring that each person feels seen and respected. And it can even help you proactively avoid interpersonal drama in the workplace, or navigate it with more grace, compassion and ease when it does arise.
Ashley Cox 3:25
Self awareness is also the first step of my leadership impact model that I introduced back in episode two, which is a tool that will help guide you on your journey to reach your full leadership potential and impact. And it is a really great, very powerful tool. So if you haven't listened to episode two yet, be sure to go back and do that.
Ashley Cox 3:47
Let's switch gears a second and do a little self awareness reflection activity. I want you to pause for a moment and rate your self awareness. So on a scale from one to 10, with one being completely unaware, which I know that's not where you are, and 10 being fully aware, where would you rate your personal degree of self awareness. Even though we may generally have a high degree of self awareness in our personal lives, leading a team can challenge us in new and different ways. So you may want to use this reflection activity in different parts of your life and your work and the ways that you interact with different people. This is really a good exercise because I think of self awareness more on a spectrum. There are situations and times where we have a greater degree of awareness and other times where it may swing a little bit lower.
Ashley Cox 4:51
That's why it's important that we're being mindful of ourselves and how we're showing up in the world, including in our businesses and with our teams. and that we are constantly working to become aware of our level of awareness as well as improving and enhancing our self awareness in various situations. Today, I've got five great ways to help you do just that, regardless of where you rated your awareness on the skill today, or with the variety of ways that you interact with people. And this is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is a really good one. These are strategies that I personally use myself, and that I've used with clients very successfully throughout the years. So let's get started.
Ashley Cox 5:40
Number one, start with your values. I say this for a lot of things when it comes to hiring and leading a team. So you should probably just go ahead and do this. Now. If you've not spent any time thinking about or implementing values into your work, please go back and listen to our values episode, which is episode number five, in case you missed it, it is a fantastic conversation around values and their importance and how we can create them and integrate them. In our day to day business. Your values are a key and helping you to identify when you're on track or in alignment with what's important to you, and when you're not. And when we define our values, we're developing our internal self awareness. So it's really important to understand what's important to me. And how do I know when I'm being in alignment with those things that are important, and when I'm out of alignment, and they also give us some really good indicators for where we can start.
Ashley Cox 6:45
Number two, check in with yourself daily. And this does not have to be some grueling exercise, you don't need to spend a half hour on it, it can be a quick 30 second to two minute check in asking yourself questions like what did I do today that was in alignment with my values, what felt like it was out of alignment with my values? How can I integrate more things into my day into my relationships into my business, that are in alignment with our values or with my values, when we check in with ourselves, we're building a greater degree of internal self awareness again, and we're reinforcing those concepts of, of our values. And those two things really work hand in hand. But you can do these individually. So you can do them together or separately. But I prefer a combination. A really good example of a time where I've used this for myself, is when I've maybe said yes to a project that I'm not super excited about later on. And usually it comes back to it being out of alignment. Maybe it was that I didn't feel like I had enough time to integrate it into my current work schedule, or it didn't really fit with some of the things that we're doing in our business and that we're putting out into the world. And so that can really give us a good tool to also kind of work externally to say, What am I saying yes to what am I saying no to what should I be saying yes, to more of what should I be seeing no to more of. So really, this is a tool not only for self awareness, but also to help you make better decisions about where you're spending your time, and how you're showing up in the world, when you are spending your time doing things. It's a little bit of a side tangent there, but I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep that in.
Ashley Cox 8:39
Okay, number three, ask for feedback from others. Sometimes other people have a bit more unbiased view of us than we do ourselves. Of course, this can often depend on the intimacy of our relationships, those who we are closest to getting the most real and unfiltered version of US and other folks maybe not having as much exposure or familiarity to us. But I think it's important that we ask for feedback. And when we do we get it from multiple sources to understand how we really show up in the world. So here's an exercise for you that I've used myself over the years that I've used with clients. And I've even made some friends use this too, because I think it's a really, really good exercise. So I want you to ask people from various groups, family, friends, colleagues, employees (if you're brave) for three words that they would use to describe you. So for this particular exercise, we're looking for descriptive words or adjectives, like you're warm, you're friendly, you're decisive, things like that. So the way that I would ask someone for this kind of feedback is I'm doing a little self reflection and I want to Understand how I show up in the world to various groups of people that I that I know and that I work with. So give me the first three words that come to mind when you think about me. And the results will be fascinating.
Ashley Cox 10:16
When we ask for feedback from others, we're developing a greater sense of external self awareness by being open to hearing other people's opinions and perceptions of us. So if you like what you're hearing, that can be a bit of a confidence boost, right? But if you're not liking what you're hearing, that can also be a really great tool for you to say, okay, that's not how I I intentionally want to show up in this world. Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up. And that's where we can start really making shifts in the way that we are presenting ourselves to those people who are around us. And you're probably going to get really varying degrees of comments from people that you're really familiar with, versus those folks who may not know you as intimately or know you as well. So put them all together, I used just a simple spreadsheet and I put the person's name, I put the relationship that we had. And then I put their three words. And this way, you can see a visual representation of the themes that show up often. One of the themes that I got when I did this exercise was that I was warm. And several people actually said sunshine, which was interesting, because I would have never described myself in that way. But it was it was really nice to see the ways that people use their own experiences, their own interactions, and their own vocabulary to describe me as an individual. So do it and let me know, I would love to know. So come over to Sprott hr.co, on Instagram, and after you do this exercise, let me know what words are coming up in your various groups, I would I just love this conversation. It's one of my favorite to have. So be sure to come share with me.
Ashley Cox 12:08
Okay, number four, practice gratitude. Gratitude gives us an opportunity to pause and appreciate the world around us. So jot down what you're grateful for each day. And use that as a tool to help you understand where you're putting an emphasis as being things that are important or noteworthy in your world. And where maybe there are areas that you're not feeling as grateful for, and we all have those. So there's no shame, no judgment, this is just for you. I'm not going to ask you to share this with me. But you're always welcome to. But you know, where are we putting that emphasis at. And I imagine that you're going to find some interesting patterns come up with this exercise as well. And this particular strategy really works double duty here, because gratitude can give us clues to developing our own sense of internal self awareness. Again, going back to those two factors, as well as deepening our external self awareness at the same time, by noticing what's going on around us. Who are we interacting with, are we having good experiences, are we having experiences that are less than desirable. And so again, this gives us some really wonderful data to just get to know ourselves a little bit better.
Ashley Cox 13:32
And finally, number five, seek out a coach or mentor. Because sometimes it is just too darn hard to see patterns of behavior that we've engaged in for a long time or even a lifetime, it can be difficult to understand how our good intentions might be falling flat, and creating the opposite kind of impact that we really want to have. A coach can help you identify areas that are causing you issues that are holding you back that are standing in the way like roadblocks to whatever your goals are, your ambitions are that you have in this world. And this is also something that I again, work with a lot of our clients on during our one on one sessions. It's something that I help people with, through my book, transform your stories through self reflection and journaling prompts. So if you're interested in that type of, you know, mentorship relationship, you know, it's a really easy way to get started working with us here at Sprout HR just by downloading a free sample at Sprout hr.co forward slash transform, and I'll put that link in the show notes. And you can go ahead and get some of those reflection questions. You can start journaling, you can start thinking through what are what are the ways that I'm showing up in this world and how can I show up in a way that's really in alignment with who I want to be. So reflection exercises, I really think those are my high power secret tool for uncovering a greater internal and external self awareness for both myself with my own coach, as well as the relationships that I have with our clients. So there you have it five simple, super effective ways that you can start developing a greater degree of self awareness today, so let's recap those quickly they are, start with your values. Check in with yourself daily. Ask for feedback from others. practice gratitude, and seek out a coach or mentor.
Ashley Cox 15:46
As we wrap things up today, it's time for our final segment. Once again, imagine the impact, where we get to envision what it could look like for you to start taking action in this area today. leading others successfully begins with leading yourself successfully first. This comes from developing a greater sense of self awareness. Being a leader requires reflection, humility, and vulnerability. And these things don't always come naturally to us. They're things we have to work on. And over time, as we walk on our leadership journey and things shift and change and evolve in our businesses and our lives will continuously be working on our self awareness. So imagine the impact that a truly self aware leader, one who recognizes and owns both their internal and external awareness and continually works to develop greater self awareness could have on you, your business, your team, your community, and the world.
Ashley Cox 17:00
If you found this episode helpful, we'd love for you to share about it on social media so that we can reach more leaders just like you. Just take a screenshot of the episode on your phone, share it Instagram stories and let me know what your favorite takeaway was. And be sure to tag us at Sprott hr.co so that we can see what you found most helpful or insightful about this episode. Thanks so much for joining me today on the impact ripple podcast. As always, it's an honor to be here with and for you on your leadership journey.
