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Greetings from Barcelona☀️
🙌Many thanks for reading The Quest.
If you are joining for the first time, welcome to our deep dive into facilitation, learning, and how to live a creative life.
In this week’s edition 👉The surprising truths about how to increase your self-awareness.
Let’s jump right in!
Two tadpoles are swimming in a pond.
Suddenly one turns into a frog and leaves the pond. Upon the frog’s return to the water, the tadpole sees the frog and asks, “where did you go?”
“I went to a dry place,” answers the frog.
“What is ‘dry’?” asks the tadpole.
“Dry is where there is no water,” says the frog.
“And what is ‘water’?” asks the tadpole.
“You don’t know what ‘water’ is?” the frog says in disbelief. “It’s all around you! Can’t you see it?”
Self-awareness is like the tadpole’s water.
This famous allegory from Zen Buddhism captures why self-awareness is so hard to develop. It’s literally the water we swim in. We are so immersed in it that we can’t see it.
This is especially true for facilitators.
Your self-awareness can make or break your efforts to build trust and psychological safety with your group. And you can bet your last sticky note that your group members can see your blind spots even especially when you can’t.
Self-awareness is mission-critical for leading groups.
It helps us build stronger relationships. It unlocks our creativity. It’s a super skill of effective leaders, colleagues, partners, parents, and human beings.
You can develop self-awareness.
If you are like me, looking into the mirror can feel, well, uncomfortable. Fortunately, there are practical ways that you can increase your ability to see yourself and how others see you. And survive the exercise.
The problem is that without knowing it, you might be doing it wrong.
🤔What is self-awareness, and how can we build it in ourselves and others?
That’s our Quest for this week. 🔎
👉Insight and the surprising truth about self-awareness from Tasha Eurich
👉5 tried-and-tested ways virtual facilitators can build self-awareness
👉Why there is always a limit to what we can see
📘Insight: The surprising truth about how others see us, how we see ourselves, and why the answers matter more than we think
A book by organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich. It unveils the secrets about self-awareness – what is and how to build it. Talk about great titles – this one hooked me right in.
“Self-awareness… is the ability to see ourselves clearly – to understand who we are, how others see us, and how we fit into the world.” Tasha Eurich
She argues that “self-awareness is the meta-skill of the 20th century. She spent 4 years interviewing thousands of people to understand what it is and how to develop it.
Here are some of the surprising truths she finds (are you ready 😅)
👉95% of people think they are self-aware but only 10-15% of people actually are.
👉To be truly self-aware we can’t only understand ourselves, we also need to know how others see us.
👉Other people tend to see us more objectively than we see ourselves, but they are often reluctant to share this information.
Here’s the good news: self-awareness is a developable skill.
Developing self-awareness can be long, difficult, and messy. And it never really ends. That’s where Eurich’s practical tips come in.
Here are 3 self-awareness strategies that jumped out:
👉Ask “what” not “why”. Asking “why” (why did I do this?) keeps us stuck in trying to “figure” out our behaviors and actions. Asking “what” (what can I learn from this?) keeps us open to discovering new information about ourselves.
👉Reframe. Try to look at things from many angles. For example, losing your job. Instead of focusing on “what am I losing”, focus on “what might I gain.”
👉Regularly seek out feedback. Proactively ask for specific and focused feedback from people who will tell you the truth.
Check out the book 👉 here.
Watch the TED Talk 👉 here.
💡5 tried-and-tested ways virtual facilitators can build self-awareness
If you lead virtual groups, there are specific ways you can develop self-awareness that will increase safety and trust in your groups.
Here are 5 tried-and-tested strategies for facilitators.
Read the full thread with tips and join the conversation on Twitter here👇
 Gwyn Wansbrough 🚢 |
1/ Learn from others
2/ Take time to debrief
3/ Watch your recording
4/ Get external feedback
5/ Take action
What else would you add?
🔎 There is always a limit to what we can see
 Aidan December 1st 2021 20 Retweets 128 Likes |
💌Thanks for reading The Quest
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🙌Special shout-outs to Connie and Lian in Toronto, Joan in Mansfield, Michaele and Barry in Bracebridge, Gillian in Kingston, Monica in Barcelona, and Berta in Sant Cugat.
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Creatively yours,
