21^st Century Leadership

Self Awareness – the key to increased personal and organisational performance

What distinguishes truly great leaders from those who are just mediocre is their level of Emotional Intelligence, according to Daniel Goleman, one of the world’s leading authors in this field. From research carried out in 1995 he found that emotional intelligence was twice as important as IQ and technical skills; “.. the higher up the organisation you go the more important Emotional Intelligence becomes”.

And just last year Malcolm Higgs & Vic Dulewicz (two professors at Henley Management College) concluded that chairmen and CEOs have higher levels of emotional intelligence than other directors, who in turn have higher levels of emotional intelligence than their line managers.

According to Goleman, perhaps the most important emotional competence is that of Self Awareness – knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources and intuitions. Or as another psychotherapist puts it “bringing to the conscious mind an understanding of the compulsions that push us around”.

I simply call it, “the art of waking up”. Of realising who you really are and why you do the things you do, in the way you do them.

For all of us, we grow up in life learning to cope as best as possible with less than perfect formative environments – provided through parents, teachers, significant others etc. And these coping mechanisms, some good, some not so good, get us through to adulthood one way or another. But for most people these mechanisms then move with us into adulthood and push us around in much the same way as when we were children. So the ‘good little boy’ who grew up believing that the only way to elicit loving strokes from his father was by succeeding at whatever he did, becomes a highly trained achiever – successfully running many different projects, departments, businesses; acquiring much material wealth through his material successes, projecting an image of success & achievement, to the point of not really knowing why he is doing this – simply to gain his positive strokes; to feel worthwhile. He lives by the inner rule which says that the task must be accomplished, at any cost.

“But what’s wrong with that?” you might ask, “many organisations are run like that!”. On face value, not much I suppose. But now let’s consider the fact that his burning drive for success leads him to contract some serious illness, a break up of loving relationships and the signing of the ‘deal of all deals’ which ends up breaking the business; let alone the many broken business relationships along the way. Now you may start to ask “why did he do it? Why didn’t he stop at the 3^rd multi-million pound venture?”

The truth is that he probably was not aware of what he was doing. And so, he couldn’t stop. He had no choice. Like many of the things we do, we simply don’t know why we do them; we just carry on doing them.

Increasing our own levels of self awareness therefore, empowers us to make different choices. Not that we will automatically do things differently. After all, some habits die hard! But over time, as we build up these levels of catching ourselves doing things, we will have the choice to alter our behaviour, eventually, before the next repetition.

Don’t expect however, to go on a course and suddenly become self-aware. Like most things in life, it is a journey upon which we can embark; a journey of self-discovery and if we want, powerful transformation. It really depends on how brave we are. After all, we will probably find out things about ourselves which we don’t really like and may choose to deny.

But imagine being able to make better decisions, get more out of the people we work with, communicate more effectively by tailoring our message to the deeply held convictions of the other person, and being more creative.

Imagine an organisation where its staff members are able to take responsibility for their own ‘problems’ and move to a place of not automatically reacting in the same old inappropriate manner as before, so doing away with hidden agendas, power politics and the like. By supporting it’s employees in their journey of self-discovery, the organisation becomes free-er, fairer and more creative.

In the example of the successful person above, this might translate in the way he steps on his team members’ backs in order to get the job done – achieving the task (although probably not as effectively as it could have been achieved with collaboration), but leaving a trail of dead bodies along the way.

Surely 21^st century leadership calls for a new type of leader who understands him/herself well and can call others into a higher state of being, rather than the old style leader who simply knows how to manage finance, sales and marketing processes. It calls for leaders who can engage the hearts and minds of all members within the organisation, facilitating the psychological contract, so important for winning the market wars.

But how can this journey be started? And what tools are available to assist? Queue, the Enneagram.

Described by one chief executive in the education sector as “the most powerful transformational tool [she has] ever come across”, the Enneagram gives you the chance to invoke your true reservoir of talents and skills, instead of operating out of habit from comforting convictions.

A centuries old eastern wisdom, the Enneagram has the power to help you make this journey. A tool which not only helps you uncover the real you, but then calls you out on to a higher plain, from where you become more real, more content and often, more effective in whatever you do.

For Dave Connelly and Johann Diaz, co-founders of ExecutiveAwareness.com, the Enneagram has been both a powerful personal transformational tool, but also one which they have used to support many people become more effective at work and at home.

“The Enneagram describes nine basic worldviews and nine ways of doing business.  Each of the nine personality types is something of a pathway through life, with likely obstacles and pitfalls along the way.  Each style has its own natural gifts, limitations, blind spots, its own distinctive ways of thinking, acting and being” (Michael Goldberg).

The Enneagram builds upon the law of attention, which states that:

1. energy follows attention
2. to move attention and energy requires self-observation
3. self-observation never becomes habitual

For ‘energy’, read ‘what you do’ / your behaviour.

So in order to transform what you do, you must first become aware of where you place your inner attentions - what you are feeling and thinking, often para-consciously. The more you do this, the more natural and habitual it will become, and the more you will give yourself the chance to truly change your behaviour.

The Enneagram is both a very simplistic tool, describing nine world views, but it can also be a very complex tool, allowing for the fact that no two people are exactly the same. And here in lies one of its main differentiators from many of the other more common personality profiling tools. Not only can you fall generally within one particular personality profile, but the system accepts that you will have shades of at least four other types within your make-up, plus one of three sub-types. So two people of the same basic type can act quite differently.

And not content to leave you rumbling around within your basic personality type, the self awareness program developed at Executive Awareness is designed to lead you out of these shackles, by way of simple self-awareness exercises which you can use at any time of the day, wherever you are, for as long as you want. You always remain in control.

Soon you will be able to stop yourself doing what comes automatically and change your behaviour to one which may be more appropriate to the person or situation.

The Enneagram obviously lends itself therefore to helping leaders become more effective, but it can also be used most effectively within team development; executive/management teams, project teams, client teams, process teams etc.

Corporations like BP, Motorola, Dupont, Toyota, Cisco, Kodak, Procter & Gamble, HP and Sony already use the Enneagram in one form or another, whether it be in individual work or corporate work.

But beware, it’s not for the faint-hearted. Only those who know they are capable of being much more than they currently are, who want to improve their levels of emotional intelligence, should take the journey.

Dare you embark upon this journey of powerful transformation?

For more information see www.executiveawareness.com.

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