Leaders with Leverage: Adopting a Negotiator Mindset

Self-awareness: A tool to stay objective!

June 25, 2024 • Susie Tomenchok • Episode 94

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What if self-awareness could be your secret weapon for career advancement? Join me to unpack all there is to know about having self-awareness, which isn’t a natural gift but a cultivated practice. Discover how understanding your emotions, values, and behaviors can profoundly impact your leadership and enhance your emotional intelligence and job satisfaction.

We’ll delve into the nuances of internal versus external self-awareness and reveal how the best leaders harness both to inspire their teams. Gain insights on techniques like journaling, reflective practices, seeking feedback, and taking assessments to develop this indispensable skill and learn why viewing situations from multiple angles and remaining open to feedback can propel your personal and professional growth.

In this episode, we'll cover:
1. What self-awareness truly entails and its importance in professional growth.
2. Techniques for cultivating self-awareness.
3. How self-awareness positively affects leadership effectiveness, career progression, and overall job satisfaction.

The Negotiator's Toolbox is now available!
Get $100 off when you use code TOOLBOX at www.negotiationlove.com

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Speaker 1:

Do you know how to increase your job satisfaction, the relationships, be a better leader and increase your emotional intelligence? Stay right here. I'm gonna tell you more. Welcome to the Leaders with Leverage podcast. I'm your host and negotiation expert, Susie Tomichuk. It's time to be your own advocate and confidently navigate what you want out of your career, Not simply the next role or additional compensation. I want to show you that negotiation happens every day in plain sight, so you need to be ready to opt in and say yes with confidence. This happens by adopting a negotiator's mindset, and I'll show you how, Together with other business leaders, you'll learn the essential skills and shifts in mindset you need to know. You will be empowered to naturally advocate for yourself and grow your professional skills, and while you're practicing along the way, you'll increase your confidence and gain respect, All while you're growing into that future leader you're poised to be, and when you face a high stakes situation, you're ready, no matter how high those stakes are. So let's do it. Let's lead with leverage. Hey, I'm so glad you're here, friend. We're gonna talk about a really important topic. I talk about this a lot with teams and every time I talk about this, people say I need to practice this more. This is so important.

Speaker 1:

I never really realized that my perception of self-awareness is different than reality. And what do I mean? People believe that you're either self-awareness is different than reality, and what do I mean? People believe that you're either self-aware or you're not. But research shows that only about 15 to 20% of people are really self-aware, and it isn't something that you're just born with. It's something that you need to cultivate. And, to make insult to injury, the research shows that as you go up in an organization, your self-awareness goes down. So it's important to think about your self-awareness and I want to talk about what it is, because people don't really understand truly what it is. Self-awareness is about being able to see yourself in a situation and understand that the way you're showing up your emotions, values, everything about you can be interpreted differently than what your intention is. So it's like seeing yourself in a situation and being able to zoom out and look from a balcony and understanding the impact that you're having in that situation. Self-awareness allows us to kind of separate ourselves from just being convinced in our own head, whatever that means for us. It gives us some perspective on how other people perceive us. Self-awareness is so important to practice because it gives us a lot of different views of us where we need to develop. It helps us understand ourselves better. It's something that is essential for all professionals to practice and, like I said, to cultivate it.

Speaker 1:

There's things that you can do. Journaling is one of them Looking back and reflecting on what went well and what didn't, Having this ability to zoom yourself out so you can see what's working for you. It's getting feedback from others. It's soliciting that feedback, Understanding what it feels like to be outside of you. It's taking dedicated time to take a step back and understand where you are, how it feels to be around you. It's making that time for you, and I can see this. You know people pay me to work with them one-on-one and just having me on their schedule makes them become self-aware, because they know they're going to be talking to me. So they think about what they want the conversation to, where they want to take the conversation, because I am not the agenda holder. The person on the other side is what's important to them. What feedback do they need from me? So just by having that time scheduled with me makes them more self-aware. So when you schedule time for yourself, even that time will give you some. You know, some things happen in our head and we don't pay a lot of attention because we're just moving on to the next thing Journaling, reflecting, helps us understand a little bit more about how we're observing the different situations that we're in.

Speaker 1:

That's a piece of self-awareness. Taking an assessment, like insights or strengths. That's another piece of data for us to understand ourselves. So self-awareness is collecting artifacts about us. It's understanding how we're showing up. It's internal and external, as we create this body of work, about what it's like to be us. It helps us show up more objectively in situations that might be high stakes, that might be important, that have important outcomes. So practicing self-awareness is essential. So what I mean by that is really thinking about that time for you and reflecting on it.

Speaker 1:

I will give you tips. I'm going to give you some examples of self-awareness and how important it is in negotiation and in everyday situations. So stay with me. We'll come back and I'll share a few stories that will help you get some context of why this is an important thing to put into your regular schedule. Stay right there. Hey, Suzy, here Thought I'd pop in. I wanted to let you know I've been an executive coach for over a decade I work with executives and they call me their silent partner because I help them increase their confidence when they're facing really difficult decisions. If you'd like to see if we're a good fit, head over to suzytomichukcom and fill out an application. I'd love to hear from you. Okay, welcome back.

Speaker 1:

I love this topic so much and it's really interesting to me because I work with teams and individuals on a regular basis. So I see a lot of very self-aware people and, frankly, I see a lot of not self-aware people that believe they're self-aware. I had this guy who told me how self-aware he was. He didn't even understand what it was and he was very close to development for himself. He thought he had made it and I can just see it so clearly. I actually don't really like to work with people who aren't self-aware because they're so closed mindset. They have a scarcity mindset about themselves. Maybe it comes from not being confident, but self-awareness and seeing yourself and understanding how it feels to be around you is super important.

Speaker 1:

So I want to tell you a story about a guy who he's at an executive level and I was doing a session with his team, his peers, his peers team and his boss. So it was a room of about 80 people. The room would talk about some of the topics that I was presenting and it was a very big discussion. And what I noticed about this guy was his peers would make a comment and then, you know, each one would kind of give their voice on that topic and he every single time went like three or four times longer than his peers and kind of rambled on and didn't give a lot of context to his point. So it was kind of it was hard to follow him and I talked to him afterwards and he did not understand how different he came across. He wasn't seeing how people were reacting to him. He wasn't paying attention to how his peers were presenting it. He wasn't thinking about the questions that were being asked of him. He was just so in his head about what he wanted to say and it took some time he and I talked about.

Speaker 1:

I had to be really honest with him and tell him what the perceptions of him were and what he needed to start paying attention to. And it was that conversation that helped him understand that as a leader, he needs to think about the cadence of time he's taking, when you take more than what your peers are taking. People tend to turn you off because they get used to this cadence or how much time they're going to be listening and they find what you're saying to be valuable. So having self-awareness is important, and maybe it is listening to the feedback from other people. In that moment he wasn't self-aware, but he took to heart the feedback that I had and I've since seen him really understand how to show up because he was open to that. So he started practicing and seeing himself reflecting on and looking at himself from a lot of different perspectives instead of just from his head. That's the thing of self-awareness. Is we're so in our head most of the time, right, Because that's where we live that being able to take this ability to zoom out and see how our interaction is going for other people. It is so essential in negotiation.

Speaker 1:

And I learned this early because my skill of negotiation, in my view, was very unsettled. I didn't know what I was doing. I felt not confident, I kind of just pretended in those first negotiations. And I had a client one time who said to me can we just get to the meat of the matter? Because you're such a skilled negotiator, I don't know how in the world. He thought that it must have been just in the position I was in. That was his perception of me. So having him say that made me more confident. It made me understand that he expected me to be a seasoned negotiator. He expected me to push back a little because that's how he viewed me. So my ability in that moment even though I wasn't self-aware, to understand how he saw me, I was able to make that adjustment quickly to make my contribution in that moment the most effective for the job that I was in Self-awareness is zooming out.

Speaker 1:

I have clients that think about the concept of once I talk to them about self-awareness, of the zoom out. Get out of your head, get on the balcony, look at the situation and understand how you're coming across. Understand how you're seeing the situation is different than how the person next to you is seeing it. Great leaders, there's two different types of self-awareness Internal, where you can really kind of see, however, that people are perceiving you, and external, and it's how people interact with you. So great leaders understand how they're showing up and how that's affecting their team so that they can shift that for the benefit of those team members. This is a critical skill and I'm going to give you some tips on how to practice it, identify it and move through it.

Speaker 1:

There was research that showed that successful CEOs the one piece, that the ones that had successful business results were the ones that had self-awareness. The ones that got out of their head, understood how they were coming across made those shifts in the moment and practice self-awareness on a regular basis. Their business results were better because it becomes less personal. You are able to zoom out and see it from a lot of different perspectives. So this is super important. It's super important as you move up in your career. As I mentioned, it goes down as you go up in the organization, because people learn where you're open to hearing and you can unintentionally close down the feedback streets, the things that people are saying about you can shut that down by not being open to it. So practicing self-awareness is really important for your career.

Speaker 1:

All right, I think I have made that point very clear. I'm going to give you some tips on how to practice self-awareness, how to cultivate it for yourself, make it your own for you, and think about how are you going to make this a priority so that you are investing in your future self. Stay right here. Hey, Suzy, here. I thought I'd pop in. You know, when I was a little girl, I always thought I wanted to be on the stage. I thought I might be holding a microphone and singing. But I'm now on the stage a lot and I love it because it's not about me and that experience. I love to move people, give them an impactful message that really makes them feel confident so that they change their actions.

Speaker 1:

If you know somebody in your network internally that hires speakers, I would love a warm introduction. Just send them to suzytomachukcom speaker page. I would be so grateful. Okay, we're back. You know, the best way to really practice self-awareness is to have a coach or mentor, and that can be a great way because you find that time for you. But having said that, I'm going to give you three tips that you can do on your own. It's something that make this a habit. So one is make that time for you, Make the time that you need to set in your calendar that you can do one of these things whether you reflect on the week before the interactions you've had, you write it down, you could meditate, just spending time to see what comes up for you.

Speaker 1:

Take an assessment where you take out insights or strengths. Where you take out insights or strengths and if you've taken one of those CliftonStrengths or StrengthFinders, reread it, think about it, identify some of the stories where they come up for you. It's looking at data about you and understanding it a lot of different levels. So make that time and practice one of those things journaling, writing down your goals, getting feedback. How can you get more feedback? Don't just say I'm open to feedback, Say can you give me feedback on this? So cultivating, making that time to really think about what is it about you? What are the things you need to be an observer of? It's super important. So make that time in your calendar. Do not allow yourself to schedule over it. Make that time and just have it a reflective time for you. Don't question it, Just do it.

Speaker 1:

Okay for tip number two, I'm actually going to go into feedback a little bit more. If you want accolades, ask for feedback after an event or after a meeting. Say to somebody, how did I do in that presentation, how did I do in that situation, and you're going to get accolades. If you want great feedback, ask people specifically what you want feedback about and give them the opportunity to observe you so that they can be thoughtful about the data they want to give back to you. Feedback is really important and just simply saying I'm open to feedback is not enough. You need to solicit it. You need to ask good questions, to gather it, write it down, reflect on it during those times where you make that time. For you, Feedback is data. It's also observing what meetings that you're getting invited to. How open are you when people give you feedback. How do people ask you for advice? That means they trust you. So even being an observer and how people interact with you is feedback for you.

Speaker 1:

So the second one is feedback. Think about it. And the third is also what I mentioned before is keeping a journal and when you do that reflective exercise, read it. Go back to it. What are you learning about yourself? There's a Comcast, a guy that's in charge of all CX his name is Tom K talks about how he has a leadership journal that he writes in on a regular basis, and the reason I mentioned you specifically who he is is he has thousands of people in his organization. He has been a leader for years and years and years and he still sees the value in his leadership notebook. He writes down quotes that people say great books, that people tell him advice, that people give him reflective things that he wants to keep track of, and he goes to it on a regular basis. He goes to it on a monthly basis and he keeps it with him all the time. So have a journal. So the tips are make time for yourself. Find some reflective way of looking back at yourself. The second one is getting feedback. Get meaningful feedback. Understand this. Feedback is a lot of different things besides feedback from people specifically, but it's gathering data about what it feels like to be outside of you, but it's gathering data about what it feels like to be outside of you. And then the third one is keep a journal, write things down, look back. That's a part of that too.

Speaker 1:

Self-awareness is such an important thing to cultivate and continue to explore, because as you move through your career, as you get higher up, don't be a stat. The stats say it goes down. As you get higher up, don't be a stat. The stats say it goes down. If you're intentional about it, it will go up for you. So when we come back, we're gonna really put the pedal to the metal right. What are you gonna stop, start and continue today so that you will start practicing and cultivating self-awareness for you, for your future self. Stay right here.

Speaker 2:

Ooh, oh, I got in. Hey everybody, I'm James. I'm Susie's co-host on her other podcast, Quick Take. If you're enjoying this podcast, you're going to love our podcast Quick Take even better, Mostly because, well, I'm there, which is infinitely more entertaining. But hey, you'll love it if you join us. Please subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1:

All right. This is where you don't just listen. This is where you need to think about how am I going to apply this for me, because it's great to see the experiences of other people, but until you apply it, you're not going to be able to benefit from it. So what are you going to stop, start and continue and I want you to think about as I go through these what are you going to commit to you? How are you going to cultivate your self-awareness? So, the first to stop. What are you going to stop doing? I am going to stop rebooking my self-awareness time. It is the thing that I will just say, oh, I'll do that later and it doesn't get done. So I'm going to stop doing that. What are you going to stop doing? I'm going to start. You know I'm going to do the leadership journal.

Speaker 1:

I write things down, but they tend to be on sticky notes here and there. I sometimes put it on Google docs. I'm not the most structured person, so having it in one place is a challenge for me. So I'm going to start. I actually have a journal right here that I have, that is sitting right here, and this is and this is my commitment to you. I have it, it's a blue journal right here and this is going to be my leadership journal where I collect things and really putting it in place. And then what am I going to continue doing? I'm going to continue to really explore how the feedback that people give me and thinking about even the conversation, not just the good stuff. I love to hear the good stuff, but when they say, when they ask a question, that they didn't understand cause I didn't describe the instructions well enough, I'm going to pay attention to that because that's feedback. I'm going to pay attention to what does it feel like to be outside of me? Because that's where I need to understand and increase my ability to see myself from the outside. I get really passionate about this because I can see the shifts in my clients, because they work with me and that is a practice of self-awareness, and I can see it because I can see their shifts. So I know it works and they know it works. It's so funny when I ask questions of my clients one-on-one especially. Sometimes I'll just it's a curiosity question. It won't feel like a really empowerful question, but their reaction to it, the shift that it makes for themselves when I ask that and they make the space to answer it. They think I'm genius, but all I've done is I've made them take the time to consider something and dwell on it, think about it, take time and space. It's funny to me.

Speaker 1:

So many leaders say what do I need to do to invest in my team? What do I need to do for them? And I think, as leaders, we need to show our teams that we invest in ourselves, because we are a product that's always changing. We're always shifting, we're always growing and if we believe that we're at the pinnacle which I know I have worked with people that just believe they're just everything to everybody. They're the best leader. They have no place to grow. Those are people that don't have self-awareness. If you are a leader, you hear this. You still have room to grow. We all do. Self-awareness is something that allows that growth to accelerate. So spend the time, invest in you. Show people that you're willing to hear the feedback, that you take the time to really understand what it feels like to live outside of you. It will make you happier. Remember at the beginning I said it increases job satisfaction, it improves relationships, it expands our emotional intelligence and it makes us better leaders. It seems like something that shouldn't do all those things. But we're so busy. We all know we go back to back to back to back just to get done in our role. We all know we go back to back to back to back just to get done in our role. Be thinking about how you can expand into your future.

Speaker 1:

The last segment that the last episode I did it's getting clear. Go back and listen to that. Get clear about where you're going. Reflect on that on a regular basis. And our next episode is with a guest of mine, gemma Toner, and she's a CEO of her own company and was a very successful senior leader, and she's going to talk about self-awareness and how important it is to make that time. That's how important this topic is.

Speaker 1:

You have to make time for you. It helps you become a better leader and helps you illustrate that to the people around you. We're a work in progress and we have so much to learn about us. It's like the back of our head. We know it's there, we can feel it, we see it in pictures, but we'll never see it in real life. And that's like us we can never understand what it's like to live outside of us. So it is an exploration that will never end. Self-awareness helps you understand that just a little bit more. So find what you're going to do and commit to it. Do not reschedule yourself. Make sure you make time for yourself. It's that important.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for being here. I'm going to say that differently. I am glad that you invested in yourself by being here today. That's what's important. By spending time, I made you think about something that you needed to think about, so you took from this what you needed today. So I'd love to hear from you. Head over to negotiationlovecom that's how you can hear about me, get on my email list or just reach out to me. I'd love to hear how are you practicing self-awareness and what did you hear today? And remember negotiation is more than a skill. It is truly a mindset.

Speaker 1:

Thanks, thanks for listening to this episode of Leaders with Leverage. I am so honored that you chose to spend your time with me. If you're ready to accelerate your professional growth and invest in defining the career you want, I have more resources for you. You can join my newsletter, where your inbox will love a Monday minute. It's an easy read where I share stories of how others are adopting a negotiator's mindset so that you can use these tips so that you can find success every week. And if you want to read my book, the Art of Everyday Negotiation Without Manipulation, I have a special offer just for my listeners. These links can be found in the show notes and if you want to work with me, there's more information there as well. I'd love for you to be a part of this movement to adopt a negotiator's mindset, because those who do create opportunities for themselves and they believe the investment is completely worth it. Head to the links in the show notes and just remember that. I appreciate you.

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Susie Tomenchok

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