Here’s what we mean by “self-awareness,” specifically in the context of CEOs and company building:
- How you feel - What’s your emotional response to a given event? Did that conversation yesterday with your co-founder, board member, head of sales, CTO make you feel happy, upset, threatened, angry, confident, proud, or something different? Did it give you energy or sap your energy? Does every conversation with a particular person always make you feel a certain way? Could there a trigger or pattern you’ve noticed?
- What you’re good at - Could you write down your top five skills right now?
- What you’re bad at - Could you write down your top five weaknesses right now?
- What you value - What makes you tick? Is it important for you to be liked? Are you contrarian by nature? Or an optimist? Do you enjoy vigorous debate or do you typically try to avoid it? Do you prioritize results over all else? Do you typically make decisions quickly or mull them over for a long while? Why?
- How you influence others - Do you recognize the weight of the CEO title in your conversations and how it changes the way others act, respond and carry on?
- How others experience you - Do you know whether your views on your strengths/weaknesses align with the way others perceive you? Do others have the right takeaways and context after conversations with you or is there often a disconnect?
The practice of observing and accepting these truths about ourselves and the current state of our relationships with those around us is what we mean when we talk about self-awareness. There are no right and wrong answers, it’s just about acceptance of what you’re like and why, so you can build a team and systems that best suit your personality, temperament, strengths, weaknesses and preferences.
A lack of self-awareness can be a major blocker for CEO’s as they scale in their own roles because they’ll do a less good job at building the team and the systems that they thrive in most, and that their team will thrive in most. If you don’t know and accept what you’re like and why, how can you expect anyone else to?
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