Coaching leaders in self-awareness to boost teamwork
Play
THE FAMOUS Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu once said: “It is wisdom to know others; it is enlightenment to know one’s self.” What exactly is the meaning behind this quote?
For several years, I have been working with leaders to help them drive higher team performance. One common attribute I notice among those leaders who achieve better team performance is awareness of their own thoughts and emotions when working with other people.
Gary van Warmerdam, author of the book “MindWorks”, defines self-awareness as the ability to understand other people and how they perceive us, along with our own attitudes and responses to others in the moment.
In terms of teamwork, self-awareness enables leaders to acknowledge the way they see and respond to people, which will eventually affect the way people perceive them in their leadership role.
From my point of view, we tend to go astray when developing leaders by often jumping to the desirable or corrective action too early without inviting those leaders to look at the situation with different understanding, perspective and interpretation. In other words, we are not trying to shift the way they think prior to changing the way they do.
The book “Leadership and Self-Deception” uses the simple metaphor of a box to represent the way we see ourselves when interacting with others. Our awareness or “mindset” will be interpreted as the way we see things when we are either “in” or “out of” the box.
To illustrate, when people operate “within their box”, they are likely to see themselves and their benefits only, whereas when they operate “outside the box”, they are seeing themselves from the “observable” standpoint. As a result, they will be able to see the same scenario in an expanding view and be able to include their objective as well as others when working towards the vision.
The question is, how can we help someone develop self-awareness?
There are several methods to do this, but I believe coaching could be one effective approach.
Coaching is a process of asking questions that let coachees connect with their deeper self. A series of questions will be asked to invite coachees to become self-aware, and thus focus not only at the visible level (action), but also the invisible part (intent or desire to act on something).
In practice, this process needs trust and focus between coach and coachee so that the coach can invite as well as challenge coachees to explore themselves from different angles with minimal feeling of being judged.
Let’s put this into a scenario of a leader reflecting on a disagreement between himself or herself and a team member. These are some questions that can be asked to encourage leaders to revisit the scenario but from a different perspective.
l What did he or she do that triggered your negative thought or feeling?
l Then, how did you perceive him or her? (This will invite coachees to be aware of “how” they see others.)
l So how did you respond to someone whom you perceived negatively like that? (In several cases, the coachee will reflect on his or her negative action or behaviour.)
l What was the result of someone being treated like that? (This will invite the coachee to be aware of the “negative feedback” in responding to those negative actions.)
l What else do you think he or she will do to you?
These simple questions as part of the coaching process will invite coachees to see conflict situations at both the awareness and the behaviour level; thus the solution or alternative will be addressed at both levels, which could result in change in behaviour in a more sustainable manner.
Dr Siraya Kongsompong, the writer, is the senior consultant and master coach at APMGroup and is certified by the International Coach Federation. She can be reached at [email protected] or https://www.facebook.com/apmgroupthai.
