E039: Self Awareness

now on to this episode.

Hello. This is James and Jane, and here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. Here we are in series five. What are we talking about today? Jane, so

series five has been all about the individual, and it's all about understanding yourself and developing yourself cool. So we had our first episode, which was about happiness, which I really enjoyed, and I think it's a really interesting series. We've had lots of feedback around the episodes where we've helped people understand themselves a little bit better. They tend to be the episodes that we get most downloaded. And so we really wanted to look at how we could examine a couple of things. So we're looking at things like self awareness, self regulation. We're covering a bit of stuff around procrastination and personal effectiveness, which is particularly ironic given we're sitting here in my kitchen, and I have a task list I haven't finished and I should have done. So yeah, so I think there's lots of things. And today we're talking about self awareness. Yeah,

that's right. We're gonna look at what self awareness is, why it's important, some hints and tips around how you can develop it, and all that kind of stuff. So it's a good subject, isn't it? I mean, it's an important thing.

Yeah, it is. And I think, I think we've talked about how much we end up talking about self awareness in coaching and mentoring sessions that we run, or in workshops that we run, or indeed, like I end up talking about quite a lot with people that I work with I'm supporting, yeah, management, development, leadership development, coaching. I mean, it comes up in so

many different places, and let's not forget the Korn Ferry survey that I'm obsessed with when we did an episode on coaching, which we looked at some research that showed that amongst 200 executive coaches in America, the most common thing for C suite people to be searching for support one was around self awareness. Yeah, that's really interesting, isn't it? That's one of the reasons we're doing this episode. Because after that, we had a whole conversation about, well, if it matters to them, doesn't it matter to everyone?

You know, maybe we should redo a survey like that of our own. At some point we want to do stuff. We maybe we should try and do a survey like that and see what for coaches. But we know we're focusing on with our leaders. That's a really good I'll be really that. Yeah, okay, we'll add it to find 200 coaches. Yeah, we'll add it to the to do list, and then we can procrastinate about it. I think that's a good thing to do. No, James, don't add to my procrastination list. All right,

so that's what we're talking about today. It's quite an exciting topic. Before we get into that, let's do some usual stuff, getting in touch with us. What's the best way to get in touch

with us? Oh, you know the best. It's always on Twitter, at the well podcast. But we also have what is no longer our new website, but I feel like it's still new, which is www, dot, World of work.io, and as always, we're on all the other social So, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you can get in touch with us in all those places as well.

Yeah, that's good. Where we're up to speed with that we, you know, we get back to people reply all the time, so it's kind of nice to do that, really. Yeah,

and we do about once every couple of weeks. We do a poll on Twitter as well, which is quite entertaining. They're usually a little bit light hearted, although occasionally we go high brow, yeah, well, we had one on Shakespeare the other day, and accidentally high brow, which confused everyone. Cool. So, yeah, yeah. So

that's us. So today we're going to do the usual run through for the episodes that we do. We're going to do a definition discussion up front, a bit of a research round up after that, then have a list of a week, some tales from a keyboard, some top tips and final thoughts. And then we'll be checking out and saying goodbye and getting on with the rest of the episodes in this in this series. So that's us, isn't it? So um, how have you been, what you've been

up to? I can't remember. Isn't that awful? Oh, you were a bit poorly, weren't you? I was a bit poorly, and that feels like a long time ago overnight, and really felt better yesterday. And also, I feel like a total con merchant, oh, right, like a fake, a phony, because I wasn't really ill, but I feel like I had the before and the after of the illness. So I feel like I was coming down with something, and then I was ill for what, one night, yeah, and then, but I took, like, three days to recover. So I feel like a total phony. Everyone's like, well, you weren't ill, yeah. Felt really awful for one day. Where were the symptoms? Now I'm just really tired,

so I but I have to say, just call it out. We're recording this on the second day of what I think might finally be summer. Yes, so we've had rubbish for months, and I've gone outside yesterday and it was I had to put my short t shirt on. I was so excited, and some are set to staying for like the next two or three days. Do you

realize how sad the rest of the world. Everyone else involved. Can we just remind everyone we are on the same latitude on the globe as, like, Moscow, yeah, exactly like we are way north. We're, like Central people think

Scotland is really cold, yeah. So there is currently sunshine streaming in through my kitchen window as we sit here, and I've already been up a big Hill this morning, so I'm pretty

happy. Lovely, cool. Well, the only big thing that's happened since last time we spoke was we went down to Carlisle at the weekend, stayed there and went for a lovely run on the on the west coast. It's really nice. So that was a big, exciting trip, and the weather was lovely the whole time.

So just for those of you who don't run like me, when James says, lovely run, he means half marathon, and when he says, oh, a bit more stretching, he tends to mean marathon. Whereas, whereas in this household, a lovely run is like, maybe three kilometers we're in, we're in admiration of you doing that.

Oh, thank you. It's um, it's something I really enjoy doing. So cool. All right. Well, let us jump into the episode. Do you want to take us through some definitions? I

absolutely do. So for this episode, we thought the four words that would be most useful at looking at or terminology is self awareness, mindfulness, self reflection and observations. And I'll explain a little bit why on a couple of those in a minute, but starting with the one that we've actually said that we're focusing on for the episode this week, it's self awareness. And we've taken the Colin's definition here, the quality of being conscious of one's own feelings, character, etc. And I really like this one because it's straightforward, it's simple, and it's it says what it does on the tin. As my mother would say, it is a quality, and it is a quality you have to work on, and it is something that you have to exercise. And ultimately, awareness itself doesn't do anything, because ultimately, you can be aware of what you're doing, but you still need to take action. So that's why self awareness is only one part of the jigsaw, albeit a really important part. The second one we've got is self reflection, which goes hand in hand, and it's the activity of thinking about your own feelings and behavior and the reasons that may lie behind them. Ultimately, you require self reflection in order to build some level of self awareness totally. And, you know, just suddenly snap your fingers one day and wake up being some come self aware. Is that you snapping? Yeah, I can do better. My journey to self awareness was deck. What is well, first there was, there was a there was a couple of decades where it took me to figure some stuff out. And then we have mindfulness, which we've put in here, because I think it's a really useful term. And I know mindfulness has been rising in popularity. There's lots of training and group sessions and books, and they're all great. But I think it is really important to just clarify what mindfulness is for the terms of what we're talking about, because it can sometimes become synonymous with relaxation classes, and people sometimes think it's about clearing the mind, and it's really not so Psychology Today, refer to it as the self regulation of attention, with the attitude, with an attitude of curiosity, openness and acceptance. And what they're really saying here, I think, is people who are being mindful at that moment are regulating their attention so they are choosing what to focus their mind on and what to allow in and out of their mind. And it's not about having a blank mind. So there's loads of books like mindful coffee making, I think, and mindful you said, I think you said, when we were talking about before, that was probably mindful orangey, yeah? Mindful knitting and mindful like coloring in mindfulness.

Coloring in block is a big thing. And the point is, it's about focusing your attention onto one task and not allowing the noise in, yeah, and and not feeling like that's a stretch. So that's really great. Mindfulness is when you can choose what you're focusing your attention on and for me, and I don't know enough about it to understand the background, but for me, it goes hand in hand with some of the other stuff that we talk around when we talk, for example, about low level anxiety and things like that. Because that ability to control and regulate what you're thinking about is really helpful to some, and it's not, not always possible, but where you can exhibit it, it's really helpful. And then the final one is observations, and you need to be really observant to begin to understand yourself, because you need to be able to see how people react to you and what other people are doing and how other people are reacting to them. But also I wanted to call out this definition, because I don't think we think about observation nearly enough. No, so Colin's refer Collins is having a knockout week. Colin's refers to observation as an observation is something that you have learned by seeing or watching something or thinking of and thinking about it. And no, it sounds like I'm. Teaching grandma to suck eggs to a lot of people listening to me today, but we have to do this right. We have to sit and look and watch and think and listen and think some more, because that's what's going to help us build a better understanding of ourselves when we really try and put effort into it. And I often think it's funny. I often think that I never improved my self awareness more than when I was single for a long period, because I was in lots of places where I was silent, yeah, and I was in lots of places like I was in my local coffee shop quite a lot, and I was in museums and libraries and stuff like that. And I would observe people while I was doing, you know, while I was sitting there and taking a break from reading or whatever I would watch, and I think, I think that's massively shaped me. So I think it's a really great, great call out around observation and understanding the impact and the relationship it has with your own self awareness.

Yeah, I really like that last one. So I think when I'm when we talk a lot about leadership development or personal development, or coaching, or all of these sort of broad areas, one of the themes that comes up a lot is the importance of taking some time to step back and think about things. So many of the different tools and techniques that people have fundamentally are about trying to concentrate and pay attention to what it is, what you're doing. And I think observation plays a key part in that. So I think that's a really great, great thing to think about whenever you're looking at developing anything, but it's particularly important when you're looking to develop self awareness, I would say as well.

So do you like those definitions?

I do. I do. I was trying to figure out what other words I'd have in there for this subject, but I'll maybe, I maybe think about that and decide at the end, you can come back in later. We can check it later. I am but yes, I do. I like the subject generally, so I'm biased.

All right, well, should we do a bit of a round up on some research? Tell us what you've Yeah, rounded up. Yeah. I've got a lasso out and done some rounding up of knowledge, or something like that. We'll see. Sorry about that anyway, so I was just gonna gloss over that lassoing.

Okay, so if we start out then a couple bits that I thought I'd touch on, I'm gonna run through what self awareness is. We've touched on it a bit, but a little bit more, a little bit about why it matters, a little bit around how to develop it. A quick look at the Johari Window, which is a tool that people use. Then I wanna touch on the importance of narrative and sort of stories within our own lives, which is something I'm not an expert on, but I think it's interesting. And then there's a little quote at the end that I think might be useful as well, so we'll touch on that. So if we start out about self awareness, well, what is it? Well, you know, as you said, it's sort of knowledge and understanding of who we are, right? And it's an understanding of who we are, what we believe, what we value, what motivates us, and really having a clarity about all those different things now, all those things are shaped for us as individuals, to some extent, by our journey through life, our family, the societies that we live in, our careers and work experience, our peers and our friends and and also by the identities that we've shaped for ourselves. So this understanding of who we are, what we believe and what we value and what we motivate is is really important. It's really a bit of a snapshot as to who we are and understanding it's a useful thing. When people talk about self awareness, they sometimes talk about it as being made up of three different things, and those things are the self image, self esteem and the ideal self. So I guess the first is, who do we think we are? How do we imagine ourselves being? That's our self image. Our self esteem is esteem with which we regard ourselves, and to some extent, the respect that we give ourselves. And then the ideal self is a little bit of an insight into where we're trying to get to as people, and what good looks like for us. So that's a lot of overview of self awareness. When we think about self awareness, it's worth thinking about the fact that we're really focusing on the honest underlying person within us, not the way we present ourselves. Sometimes we think about the way that we present ourselves and their tools that do this, but really here, we're focusing on who we really are and our awareness of who we really are, regardless of how we present ourselves to the world. So why does it matter? Why do we care about self awareness? I guess we care for several different reasons, but ultimately, because the better our understanding of ourselves about our self awareness, the more likely it is that we'll be able to fulfill and be happy as individuals, and also we're more likely that we'll be able to perform well or to the level of what we want and do the things that we want, and that actually make us feel more fulfilled and effective at what we do. And I guess about two different streams that help us do this that I've thought of. The first is that if through your self awareness, you understand the types of things that you value, to some extent, your your ideal self, and the things that motivate you, things like that. If you if you have that sense of what you value, then what you can do is you can use that to help make sure that you define goals that are meaningful for yourself, and to help make sure that you take actions that actually align with the things that you value. You, and that, of course, leads to more fulfilling outcomes and performance and happiness at the same time, if you're aware about, I guess, how you work and how you think and the way that you work in different circumstances, and you'll be better at managing yourself in different circumstances and working well with others. And, you know, just having sort of, I guess, better relationships and work and out of work, and those factors will again support this improved fulfillment and performance. So that's why it matters. Have you got any thoughts on why it matters? Jane, any more than that?

Sorry, that was a really big sign, far biggest side that I meant to give it. I No, I don't. I think you may. I think, I think you've summed up Cool,

all right, just thought it was worth checking in. Let's have a look at how do you develop self awareness then? And I've called out, I guess, five or six different things in here to think about. And these are ways that people can go about developing self awareness and and things that everyone can do, and they're not in any real order. This is just a list you know people might want to prioritize them in different ways. The first thing that I want to call out, though, is feedback. So if you can get honest feedback from people, be that in work or in your personal life, you know, friends, family, colleagues, bosses, direct reports, whatever it happens to be, feedback will help you understand how you are, to some extent, perceived by others, what their sense of who you are is, as well as how you behave in different circumstances. And all those things will help you develop your self awareness. They'll help you gain insight into what you actually do, how you actually behave, and all that kind of stuff, which is obviously helpful in developing self awareness. It's not always easy to get feedback or to find feedback, but it's worth doing. Next I called out a mixture of, I guess, coaching and self reflection, but really this is about taking time to assess how you feel, reflecting on different stages of your journey through life, and doing things potentially, like keeping a journal or meditating or creating a personal vision, or, you know, doing some personal values work and stuff like that, that'll help you reflect on what's important to you, and that, you know, you can get some insight by doing that and really focusing, and again, stepping back and thinking through things that have had an impact on you and how they made you feel. I put coaching in there as well, because this is the type of stuff that a coach or mentor could help you with in a useful way. Then I've called out things like personality assessment and a bit more detailed work on personal values, lots of questionnaires out there that'll help with personality type work. Personality assessment. The best is probably the big five or ocean model, but there are lots of other ones that are out there as well, and these can help provide insights into the way that I guess, potentially, you think and some of your behaviors and emotions. And the same with things like personalities, sorry, personal values assessments, they'll help you prioritize different types of values that could be important for you. And we've done episodes on those, I think back in both in series one, we did something on personal values and another episode on personality testing. So it might be worth listening to those. I'd say the emotional intelligence one as well. Yeah, that's true. Emotional intelligence really helpful for this, and then observing others is a good way to develop your self awareness. It sounds kind of strange, but watching or observing others would help you develop your own self awareness. But I really think it does so. If you observe a way that others behave, then what you might find is that some of the ways that other people behave and some of the things that motivate them and drive them might really align with you. You might see things and go, Oh, that really makes sense to me, and that'll give you an insight into yourself, or at the same time, you might observe the behaviors or actions of others and find them really discordant, or that they make you feel uncomfortable, or whatever sort of negative response like that you experience, and that, in itself, would be very helpful for your personal value assessment as well and for your self awareness. You might think, well, actually, that's really not like me. Those behaviors jar with my self image and with my sense of ideal self, so I don't really want to behave like that. And again, that's an insight into yourself. And then the last thing I wanted to call out around developing self awareness is life experience in itself. So I said earlier when I talked about what self awareness is but things like your life journey contribute to your sense of who you are, and that helps you with self awareness. But for developing self awareness, doing different things and having different experiences is really powerful, right? We don't know how we're going to respond to things and how we behave and who we are in different circumstances, sometimes, until we've been through those circumstances or experienced these things. So broadening your life experiences is a useful way to develop your self awareness. And this can be all kinds of things, right? I mean, this could be trying new things, doing new activities, challenging yourself. It could even be things like going to a museum, looking at art, reading something different. All those types of things contribute. To your your you know, your opportunity to envisage yourself in different situations and environments and respond to new things, and that helps with developing your self awareness. It's just seeing yourself and in a different light and thinking about things in a different way. So those, I guess, were a handful of simple things that we thought could help with developing self awareness. Have you got any experience of those ones, Jane, or any other thoughts on Yeah, I

think, I think that they're all all of them help in different ways. My advice would be, whichever one feels most uncomfortable is probably the one you need to work out. Yeah. And I would also say there's two things that I found really useful. One is when I read books or articles, reading other people's comments of them and discussing them with other people before I said how I felt about them, to get a sense of whether my views were the norm, were a little bit sort of more empathetic, or were less empathetic. Was I viewing things more from an organization point of view or a personal point of view? So reading the same material and then finding what people think of it is really helpful, whether it's online, whether it's talking to people. So and I read a lot. I read a lot. I don't read whole books because I'm really bad at finishing a book. I used to be not fiction. This is non fiction. Yeah, non fiction. I'm really bad at finishing it, but I like reading the first three chapters of everything. But I read a lot. I read things of people I disagree with quite a lot, because I'm trying to understand that's a great thing to do. Yeah, and I don't have it easy, but it's definitely, it's definitely helpful. And I would say the other thing around feedback, particularly, is if you make it as as comfortable, or as at least not uncomfortable as possible for people to give you feedback, they'll give you much more feedback. And you have to be ready, true, and it's really uncomfortable. But if you can start the conversation with rather than, what did you think, yeah, which is so where you want, because you want someone to tell you, right? Yeah, is to say this is how I felt about what how I did today. Would you did you get a sense? Is that inaccurate? Or did you see it differently? Is often really, really helpful, because particularly if you have some level of criticism in there, it gives people permission to criticize you. Yeah, it gives you're saying to them, this is how I saw it, and you can't be fake about it. Can't be like, Oh, you tell me I'm great. It's like, you know what? I feel like I probably talked over someone today, and I'm not sure I got to the heart of steering that meeting correctly. Someone's much more able to say, actually, I don't get that second point, but I do understand what you're talking about the first Yeah, yeah. And the more that you can open up the dialog, the more that you are going to people are going to get used to you being someone who's going to come and seek their feedback?

Yeah. And you should value that feedback as well. If you value it and respond to it and are clear that you're doing it for the purposes of self awareness and self development, people will be more willing to give it. I think that's a really good point. Yeah.

And I think, I think sometimes it helps with context. So if you you know, if you if around feedback, if you're saying, even if it's not even it's an exaggeration. Sometimes I will say things like, I'm specifically trying to get better at managing meetings. I might not be. I might actually be trying to get better at generally, all my comms, but sometimes it helps people if I say I'm just specifically thinking about when I'm in meetings, because then they don't like go off on one about all my bad habits. Yeah, focused, but, but, you know, and I know we go on about it, it's an effort, right? It is, yeah, this stuff is, is an effort, and it takes time, and it takes patience, and it takes effort, but it's so worthwhile. The payoffs are good. Oh, the

payoffs are huge for your own ability to do all the other stuff we've talked about, we're going to talk about are going to talk about this series, or have so to be happier, to be more content, to have better self personal effectiveness, to have better self regulation, to manage things when they go wrong, better. All of these things come from building this self awareness, which is kind of why we wanted to do it early on. You know, last week we did happiness, and the why we should try and do this stuff. And now we're talking about, here's the sort of building block. Yeah, it's

one of our first starting points. Yeah, you're not going to get anywhere without this. Let's put it that way. No, that's key. All right. Well, I'm going to jump on quickly to the Joe Hari window now and just do a quick overview of this. This is the type of thing that you can search around on the internet, and you'll be able to find examples of this, but we'll just do a high level overview, and hopefully that's helpful for you. A lot of you might have heard of it before, but in if that's the case, you can think of it as a recap. So the Johari Window, it's kind of an interpersonal awareness tool. It's a way to visualize your sense of interpersonal awareness, of the accuracy of it. The name Johari comes from the two people that created this. That's Joseph loved and Harrington Ingham. You combine their first names and you get a Johari, Johari, which is where the name comes from. So it's called a Johari Window. And it's called a window because it's basically a two by two matrix, right? We see loads of. Sometimes they're called Boston matrices, or whatever they are, but basically four boxes, like a window. And this window, the Johari Window specifically, has got four different panes in it, right? Four different boxes that make up a window. And what it's trying to capture in this sort of visual representation is your understanding and your, I guess, your self awareness, right? And what you do as you complete this Johari Window is you complete four different panes, and these different panes draw out how much you kind of know about yourself and how much others know about you. And that's where this interpersonal relation awareness, description of what a Johari Window is comes from. So if we look at the four panes that are in there actually, let's look at the axes and then the panes. So the vertical axes looks at things about you that are known by others, and you've got things that others know about you and things that others don't know about you. So you know the upper box is known by others, the lower box is unknown by others. Then if we look at the horizontal axis, we do the same, but we just look at stuff about ourselves. So here we've got things that are known by ourselves and things that are unknown by ourselves. And then that that sort of matrix ends up having these four boxes, and the boxes are known as open, blind, hidden and unknown. And sometimes they've got other names, but those are the general ones. So the top left box of a grid, which is things that are known by yourself and things that are known by others are is known as the open box. And this is stuff that's out there in the open. It's sort of personality traits and behaviors and thoughts and expressions of yourself as an individual that you know and are aware of, and that others can see and that they're aware of as well. So that's the open box. Then if we go on from there, if we move over to the right, we get to the blind box. And what this is, is this is things that you as an individual are blind to, which are aspects of who you are, which you know. Were you more self aware, you'd probably know. So these are things that others know about you and can see, but that you as yourself don't know. Sometimes things like phrases like blind spots might be used to refer to this type of thing. So again, things that you as an individual don't know, but others do know. Then if we drop down below open, we get a box called Hidden. So the window pane here is hidden. And this is things that you know about yourself, but that you don't reveal to the world. So they are unknown to others. So these could be, you know, thoughts, feelings, ways of working, emotions that you you don't share with the rest of the world. So that's hidden. And then we get to the bottom right box, which is unknown by self and unknown by others. And this pain has creatively been called the unknown pain. So that's kind of the outcome of a Johari Window. That's the way it's represented. And the purpose of a Johari Window is to help people see these different areas, and to help see, to some extent, how open they are. And some of the premise behind it is that the larger the open pain is, that the more that you know about yourself, that others also know about you, the more effective your relationships with others will be, and the more transparent you'll be, and the better you'll be at building and maintaining relationships. So that's kind of the way the window presents itself. And the way that the Johari Window is used is it's used as an activity. There's a set of steps we'll go through in a minute, but you can use to build out your own Johari window. You can do it as an individual or as a group, and then once you've built it out, it's a case of trying to come up with some actions that help you grow that open window. And you grow the open window predominantly by shrinking your blind spot, so learning about yourself and eliminating your blind spots, and also by eliminating the hidden sorry, by reducing the hidden pain, by revealing more about yourself and being more transparent with others. And as you reduce the blind pain, and as you reduce the hidden pain, you grow the open pain, and in doing so, you become more self aware, you become more open with others, and you're in a better position to build relationships. So a quick activity that you can do to create your own Johari Window, as I said, as an individual, or you can do this as a group. Exercise is the following. So I've pulled out six steps you can do. Firstly, as an individual, you want to identify people to go to to ask them for feedback on you as an individual. So you're going to identify a list of people that you want to work with on this, then what you'll do is you'll find somewhere a list of 56 words that are used as descriptors of individuals. So these are a list of 56 Johari words. You'll be able to find them various different places. And what you'll do is you'll get those and you will then sit down and you'll look through that list of 56 and you'll pull out for yourself maybe the five to 10 words that you think describe you best, and you'll capture those, and you'll know what those are. Then you'll go up to the people that you've identified to get feedback from, and you'll ask each of them to do the same. You'll say, sorry. Can you take 10 minutes to read through this list and pick out the five to 10 words that you think? Describe me the most, and at that stage, what you'll have is you'll have your own reflection of who you are and how you present, and you'll have feedback from others on who you are and how you present. What you'll then do is you'll take those sets of data and you'll plot them, and what you'll do is you'll say, well, all the words that you use to describe yourself and that others use that kind of goes into your open pain. So let's put those words in there and see what that open pain looks like and the size of that. Then all the words that others use to describe you that you don't use to describe to yourself. Let's put that in the blind pain, and that'll give you an insight into some of your blind spots. Then you take all the words that you've used to describe yourself but that others haven't used, and we'll put those in the hidden pane. And fundamentally, the relationship and the size of those different boxes will give you an insight into the relative sizes of the different Johari panes that you have in your Johari Window. And once you've done that, you can start to reflect on the outcomes. You can see how open and transparent you are, and then you can come up with plans for how you can address it. So you know having seen your Johari window. The next questions are, what can you do to reduce the size of your blind spots? What can you do to reduce the size of your hidden spots? And you can come up with a bit of a personal development plan, which is something we'll talk about later. And then ultimately, if you've done this, you can then share the window with others and share your plan with others as a bit of a way to pre commit to to growing your open window and becoming more transparent and self aware. And

yeah, and I guess that's kind of a Johari Window. Have you used it before?

Jen, no, I haven't. I came across it when I was when we were researching this series, but I haven't actually used it myself. And I think I was sorry I was while I was listening, I was listening, I was Googling and also trying to do the activity. I think it's really interesting. We should do it at some point. Yeah, I think I'm always eager for a different perspective on how I can think about where my blind spots are, or where there are things that I'm not seeing. So yeah, so I can't really comment on how successful it is, but I like it as a tool, and I would like to use it more. And I think I'm already thinking about people that I work with, that I'd like to try it with.

So in my old work, I've used it several times within my team, when I've had a team, and it's a bit of a, you know, you need the right type of people to be willing to do it, but when we've done it, we've actually done it as a group exercise. Wow, we'll get together in a room, and we'll say, like, you know, we've got all these words, why don't we take 10 minutes, we'll do our feedback on ourselves, and we'll all do feedback on everybody else. And we actually kind of did it as post it notes, because, you know, that's what type of team it was. We love a post it note everyone loves, yeah? So we do it, and then each of us, at the end of that exercise would have our set of post it notes up there on the Johari piece. So everyone would write their post. It notes about us. We'd gather in all our post it notes, and we'd put it up there. And my experience is that it's fairly helpful. You do get an insight. Of course, it's not perfect, right? These things are never perfect, and if you do the same thing with different people at different points in time, you'll get slightly different answers, but you'll still get a sense as to the scale of your hidden or your blind or your open areas, and that's fairly helpful. So we found it a useful exercise. It's a great different way to bring in things about feedback as well. You know, it's just a useful tool in lots of ways, but as I said, it's got to be for the right people. Yeah, and I think,

I guess the caveat, and I know we'll get on to top tips and stuff like that, is, but you can't push people into self awareness. Can't push people into wanting self awareness, and you really shouldn't, because they might not be ready. Yeah? And I know that sounds quite, I don't know, grandiose or something, but it's not, it's a choice, right? Yeah, it's a choice, and it's not all great. You don't realize, you know, you don't come out of thinking about self awareness and yourself and what you're good and bad at and go away going, hey, it's exactly what I thought. Yeah, exactly, because you're probably doing it wrong, yeah, if that's the case. And one

of the things that's, I think, true about things like personal or leadership development programs that bring this stuff in is that you need to understand the groups that you're working with. And if you want to get to this stage, you might have to go through earlier stages that open people up and get that people are comfortable with. And it might take you six months or a year to get to a stage where people are comfortable and actually engage and do this stuff well. And some might never get

there. Yeah, and it's not, it's not the sort of thing that you need to have a decent relationship with people. Yeah, to be able to do this exercise, it's interesting. You said group. I hadn't, I guess I'd imagine doing it within a coaching environment or a line management environment, rather than a group environment. I don't really know why, but I guess we've, we I've done things like values work as a group, and this just feels, for some of the people I've worked with, it would feel very intimate,

yeah, and it's absolutely is, yeah. So it just depends on the group, but you know, if it's the right type of group, some of the benefits are, you know, further increase in that intimacy and transparency, particularly if it's a well established group already. Yeah, anyway, interesting stuff. Yeah, interesting. So that's the Johari Window. It's quite old. It's like the 50s or something like that. I wish I had an actual number, because I probably regret saying the 50s. Now, I think it was like 56 or something like that.

I will check while you talk. Yeah, you can check and then correctly, well, you can talk about my favorite

subject. Okay, so now we're going to talk about Jane. No, I'm just kidding. Now what we're going to do is talk about a little side, side piece that we put in which we think is interesting. In my mind, I've kind of named this for tyranny of narrative, which I guess it's maybe because we're getting to the end of Game of Thrones or something, I don't know but, but what I want to talk about in relation to self awareness here is something that I'm in no way an expert of or in relation to, but I've listened to some things on and read a little bit on, but I think it's fascinating, which is around narrative identity. And what narrative identity theory says really, is that individuals, all of us, we're kind of sense making beings. Humans love to make sense of things, and we love to put together potentially random facts or stories or whatever it is into a narrative that we can relate to. And what that means is that we take our life events and we create characters and grow characters and give them characteristics and scenes take on importance and their narrative threads and arcs that run through our life, that that we create and we we build as plot lines into the events that take place all around us, right? So we're always making sense of things, and assuming that things are connected and related, and that there's a story through our lives. And one of the things that's a result of this is that we can do the same as a projection into the future, right? So we can have a story about our past, and we know how stories like this turn out. And what that means is that people like me or people like Jane or whoever it is, you know, whoever we're working with, or, you know, spending time with, we can put narratives onto them that in our mind, we project into the future and almost create predestinies for people and expectations for them, right? So the narratives that we use about ourselves create self awareness for ourselves at the moment, but they also are used to project into the future and now, the thing is that really, these narratives are just about our efforts to rationalize the world around us, but we turn them into something much more than the potentially disparate facts that they are, and really create something from them that creates destiny. And by creating that destiny, we create, I guess, a pull towards the future, right? So I guess an example of this, if we take a negative one would say, you know, my story is that I've always had a hard life. I've never been good enough academically to get to where I want to get to, and that's just the way I am. And because I'm the type of person that's never really been good enough, I've always been like, you know, almost ran in things. And what that means is that, you know, whatever I do, there's always going to be somebody who pips me to the post and gets there before me. And so, you know, because of that, I'm never going to get that job, because I'm not really worth getting that job, because I am. You know, I'm just about second best, and I've seen that story, and we know that. But personally, second best always finishes a bit second best and never quite gets to where they want to, right? So if that's the narrative that I bring to myself, and that's the story. And I project that into the future, then that means in the future, I'll never get there either. And then, by creating this sort of narrative, you can become a bit beholden to that narrative, right? And as I said, I'm not an expert in it, but, but you you can hear stories of people like this in really fascinating places, people, if you look at people who are maybe ex prisoners or substance abuse, people, the whole stories of their lives are wrapped up in these narratives that mean that they know what the future holds, and maybe the future holds reoffending, because that is who they are, or maybe the future holds a relapse to substance abuse, because that is who they are, right. And so the power of these narrative identities make it hard for people to change. So from a behavior change perspective, it's difficult, but also from a self awareness piece, it's important to try and step back and understand that we create these narratives, but that to some extent, these narratives can have power and control over us, and they may be different from our real selves as well. So what do you think about that garbled explanation of what I'm trying to say here. I don't think it was garbled, nothing, nothing you do is Evernote. I think I disagree

in the negative framing. I think that is one challenge with it, is that it can be very limiting. However, I would argue that my understanding of narratives within my own life and where I've worked with others, their understanding of narratives has allowed them to take control of that narrative. Great. And I think when you rewrite your own stories, it sounds fair. I know there's loads of people listening, going, oh my god, what is she talking about? You writing your own story. But when I was I was talking to someone yesterday. I had a friend coming up. At me, and we were talking about our lives, and she she flippantly said, Oh, you're so lucky. Because we were up a hill of sunny I had a dog. It was lovely, right? And she just sort of flippantly said, Oh, you're so lucky. And I said, I don't, I don't feel lucky. I feel like I've made decisions to get here, yeah, and, and don't get me wrong, cards have fallen well, but, but though, that has been driven by a number of choices that could have gone either way, and they've gone this way. And for me, that's really important. That's a really important and it sounds like I'm being like, Look at me. It's not. It's about I always felt like I was passive in my life, and I always felt like I was a, I wasn't like the main player. So people talk about that loads when they're in a movie, and then not the main person. And you certainly looking at life, going, I'm not even the star of my own movie. I'm the Supporting Actress in my own life. How

did that happen? That's, that's not good, right? And so, and so I started, yeah, that's true. Always a speaking. And then, and I so. So for me, there's a really big part of of choosing to correct people, and I sounds horrible. It's not, it's not how it happens, but choosing to assert my narrative such that, going back to that bit of, how do people observe you, and how do people see you and take you having some some role in shaping that with people and saying, no, no, no, no, you've got it wrong. Might look like that to you, and actually, you know to be fair to what you don't remember, no, no, that's what I mean. Yeah. I mean you've you've seemed to have just broken away from what you were, what your expected end point was, and you've chosen another end point. I was like, Yeah, that's exactly what I've done, for better or worse, that's what I've done. And I think taking control of that narrative is really important for achieving what you might want to achieve. Yeah,

I'd agree. So I'm not, I'm not sure I'd put it the tyranny of narrative, the power of narrative, maybe,

yeah, I guess, I mean, I chose the word tyranny because I think if you're not aware of it, it can control you. I would agree with that. And I'm slightly being argument. Yeah, we can be argumentative

about it. I just kind of like the phrase. I don't even know where I got it from. I think I got it from a program that was called something like the tyranny of story that I quite liked. Yeah, that makes no it totally, totally makes sense. Cool. So anyway, narrative

identity is fun. It's probably something we should have touched on when we looked at behavior change, because it's yeah,

it's funny. I came up and I remember coming away from that thinking, Oh, we should talk about that, yeah.

But nonetheless, it's here now, and from a self awareness perspective, it's important because it's important to understand the narratives and stories that you've created to support your own life and what that means to you. And you know, again, like so many of these things, if you can step back and be aware of the framings that you bring to stuff, it'll give you a better understanding of who you really are underneath all of that, and it'll provide a tool that'll help you change a little bit. And then I guess, just to close off this conversation on self awareness, or research round up on self awareness, I wanted to bring in a quote that I really like, and it's from a guy called Charles Horton Cooley, which a pretty cool name, American sociologist. He was like, late 18, 1890s early 20th century, and his quotes a bit kind of complicated or a bit convoluted, but it's lovely. And so his quote says, I am not who you think I am. I am not who I think I am. I am who I think you think I am, right? And that sounds a bit gobbledygook, but, but what he's really getting at is he saying that when we're working with others or engaging with others, we bring our own self awareness and sense of identity to that conversation, but we know that the other person brings an understanding of who we are to that conversation as well, and the fact that we know that they've got a sense of who we are affects the way that we are we see ourselves in that conversation. So for example, when I'm in a situation where I'm working with Jane, I can have my own identity. She can have her own perception of who I am. But in that conversation, I kind of behave to some extent as who I think Jane thinks I am. So that the way that we project onto other people, an assessment of ourselves as individuals, frames for way that we relate with other people. So why is this important for self awareness? I think it's it's very important because it gets into some of that piece around change and development of self awareness and becoming who you want to be through understanding and growing and challenging some of your self awareness. So specifically, what I mean by this is that if we're going to develop as individuals and and redefine our sense of who we are, to some extent, based on our understanding of self awareness, we need to not only change ourselves, but we need to some extent, to change the way that we think others think about us, right? So if we go back to my narrative piece, if my narrative was I was always not good enough, then what this might mean is that I think that when I'm working with Jane, she's always thinking, You know what, James, you're just never really going to be good enough. And if I think that that's how she's thinking of me, then to some extent I'll fall into the trap of being that person in my relationship with Jane. So to change I need to not only change my narrative, but I also need to change the way that I think Jane thinks about me. How's that for. Layered.

I love the quote. I it always mind bends my mind a little bit, yeah, but I think it's, I think it's on to something. I don't think, I don't know that it's as powerful as like, I don't think that that's the only thing that defines who we are, is how we've how we perceive someone else sees us, but I think it impacts it. Yeah, and I think, particularly, I think it works very well with higher expectations. So if someone has higher expectations or opinions of you, you don't want to let them down totally. And sometimes you will do things to the detriment of your own life because you don't want to let people down, because they have a perception of who you are and what you can do. So have you heard of it? Like the Pygmalion and golem effect is for phrases for, I've heard the Pygmalion effect.

I think, like, you know, like a lot of these unrepeatable psychology experiments, it's basically saying, you know, in a school, if you project having high expectations of your pupils, they will over achieve, whereas if you have negative expectations of your pupils labeled under a

chair, it's like the Michelle Pfeiffer film where she said she gives all her class name at the beginning, Oh, yeah. You gotta do is keep the A Yeah,

when in doubt, check out. What was it called? Like, um, how? What was that called? It had Coolio in it, didn't it did have Coolio in it, or he did the soundtrack. Is that right? That That sounds more like, Yeah, you sure I could remember mines? Was it? No, I'll find it. Yeah, okay, yeah. I mean, well, I mean, clearly a memorable film, and not

Yeah, yeah, anyway. But it is, no, it stuck with me that film, because I think it's dangerous minds. It was dangerous mind. She was a teacher, yeah, anyways. Pretty rough. Anyway. So

good stuff in there, yeah, anyway, so that's a quote. It's kind of interesting, and it's pleasant to say, and it's a nice, nice quote, but that's kind of the wrap up of my research Roundup. Wrap up of a research round up

with the research Roundup, yeah, inspired by Coolio he had. So hopefully that's quite a practical research round up for people to go away and utilize right? Yeah,

I think so. I think there's a range of stuff in there. I mean, Johari Window is something you can absolutely take away and do. There's some advice on developing self awareness as well, which is hopefully useful. Cool. Should we move on to list of the week? Yeah, do you want to take us through a list of the week? Sure.

So this is 10 starter questions that may help develop your self awareness, things you can ask yourself. When we say things like, things that you can ask yourself, don't do it on the bus to start with. I mean, you might get good at it and eventually be able to do it on the bus, but do it somewhere quiet. Have a notebook or a computer, ideally, a notebook actually, and just jot stuff down, even if it doesn't make any sense, and be quite structured about it. I always find it's really a good idea to leave yourself with a question for a couple of minutes, even if you can't think more, to say yeah, you might even come back the next day with some stuff I found, but don't just give up, like, Don't go, I don't know what this is, and give up, because that's half the point, right? You're meant to be thinking, yeah. So 10 questions, what am I good at. And I would add to that, what am I good at? And what do I think other people think I'm good at? And what do people seem to suggest I'm good at, or say I'm good at? What am I bad at? And again, is that just me that thinks I'm bad at it? Is it stuff that I've been around a long time? Have I always been bad at it? Or is it a recent thing, or was all these things help, right? What activities and which people make me happy? Or are around when I am happy? So quite often things don't make you happy, but it is. It is not a coincidence that the same people seem to be in the room when you're at your happiest, right? And so that's really important. And slightly different but similar, what activities in which people energize me? And I think that's really important. I think everyone needs people that kind of boost how they feel about stuff. What activities in which people make me angry or frustrated or irritated, those are all excellent examples of that question or fearful. I think one of the really interesting things for me, and I, I'm not suggesting it's a woman, only thing, I just don't know if it's the same for men, is there are certain people that make me uncomfortable for no reason of theirs. It's nothing to do with it must be something to do with them. But it's not them doing anything wrong. It's about me responding to something in my past that I've had someone of a similar character, and it's kind of affected me. Does that make sense? So I think that's a really good one. You know, make you angry or also fearful. What activities leave me feeling content, pleased and at peace with myself? How do I want to be treated by others, and how do I want to treat others? Number eight, what behaviors do I think are unacceptable? Number nine, who are I role models? Why are they my role models? And I always say they can be living, dead or fictional. Doesn't matter. Yeah, it really doesn't matter, as long as you understand why. And finally, number 10, how do I want to be remembered by others when I'm older? I know some people do epitaph writing, yeah, so I've done that a couple of times, and I find it like it's creepy at first, but actually, if you can put aside what you're doing, which is writing about what's going on a gravestone or in a funeral, it's actually a really interesting process. It is, isn't it? It's really good for getting perspective. It's really good for getting perspective about where you are in your life versus where you want to Yeah, right. Don't sweat the small stuff. That's what it's really helpful for. So that's 10 questions that we think are useful starting points. I think with all of these things, it's about how many times you go back and think about it again and again and again, and what change is and reviewing it. And I think all of those things are helpful. I think how I want to be treated by others, and how do I want to treat others, is really important. Yeah, I think, and I know I rushed over them because there's 10, but if I was to pick out one, it would be the one that I think helps people the most think about things, because how do you want to be treated? In detail will give you a huge amount of insight into your own values, and you're also able to think about all the people around you then very easily, because you think, hang on, do they do I feel like that's how I'm treated by those people, and is that why I want to be treated like that? Because there are people that I love that treat me like that, and that makes me feel good, and therefore that's how I want to be treated. But I think it's probably one of the easy entry level questions as well, right? It's a really easy one to get on. Some of the other ones are little something like, what am I good at? Can be very difficult if you've never thought about this stuff before. What do you think? Yeah, like, I think it's any favorites.

I kind of like, sometimes I kind of like the sort of inverse ones on this. So I think sometimes people find it hard to think about the sort of positive aspect of things and say, you know, what do I think is good? How do I want to be? So I think some of the questions that flip it on its head are kind of good. So I kind of like the what behaviors do I think are unacceptable? And, you know, if you can identify some of the opposites, then you can get clarity over yourself. So I think that opportunity to invert stuff is helpful. So I'd probably call that one out. I mean, I like the one you did as well, but I think that inverted one's quite good for me. So yeah, I guess maybe focus on some of those ones. Okay, cool. So where are we going? That's

our list of the week. Yeah? So normally we go towards stories from the keyboard, yeah, real life situations. Feel like this is ripping off a band aid. You go first,

alright, so I can do a couple little bit. So one of the things that we used to do in my old work team that I had is we did a lot of stuff on feedback and trying to, you know, we did sort of live open feedback with multiple people in the room and stuff like that, and various things like that. And it's hard to get to the stage where you can really get good feedback from people. But I've had a couple messages that came out that came out that really stuck with me for a range of reasons. And I guess those activities are hard, but they can be really powerful. And one of the messages I got that stuck with me is that I didn't share enough of myself for the people that were in my team, so people felt that they couldn't really know me as much as they wanted to, and I was a bit, I guess, unclear or impersonal, or whatever, you know, on intimate, whatever these phrases are. And I remember getting that feedback, and you know, when you get feedback, and it kind of actually knocks you, and it is a bit of a blind spot, you know, it really was almost that blind window within a joharis window. For me, I thought I was being fairly open, but clearly I wasn't, and it felt uncomfortable to get the message I didn't like it. It took me a little while to deal with it, but over time, I tried to change as a result, and it was helpful. So I guess that's that's kind of a real life example of something I went through, and it is uncomfortable, but it was good in the long run, and it helped my self awareness. And, yeah, yeah. And so I've tried to be different as a result. But regardless of how successful I've been at being different, I'm certainly more self aware as a result of that, and I think that's been useful for me. What about you? I'd say

there's, it's been quite a it's been quite a feature. Melissa, it's quite hard to know what one thing is is easiest to explain. But I guess for me, the it's a personal one rather than a work one. And I was, I was really rubbish at personal relationships for a long time, really bad at them, really bad at pursuing them really bad at making myself and I, for a long time, told myself it was because I wasn't the right sort of person that people would want to be in a relationship with. Sounds like a narrative there to me. Yeah, it was. I was trying to avoid the word narrative, but it totally was. And I, you know, there were, there were reasons that I decided that, but it was only when I started. I actually when it all went wrong, and when I got I had a bit of a rough time. And I remember one of my friends, a really good friend of mine, saying to me, You're different now, after I had a bit of a falling out with someone, and she said, My friend said, You're different now. And I said, What? And she goes, you're not. You're not. You used to be like, bulletproof. And I was like, oh, that sounds good. And she went, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. She was like, you would have to literally have blown a bomb off to get through to you. You had such a shell on you about Yeah, and you were friendly, and everyone loved you, but there was absolutely no getting close to you, yeah, and you, you know, we all had to be friends with you on your terms. And I, honestly, I had no idea. I thought I was the most open, loving person ever. And they were like, Yeah, on your terms, yeah, but, but no one was allowed near, not, not really near, not not near enough to know that you were hurt or sad or any of that stuff. And it was, and she's someone I really trust, and I remember her telling me, and it was like, it was like blinkers just came off, like instantly. I could see the world differently instantly. And i think i La building a relationship where someone felt comfortable saying that to me was really important, because I wouldn't have known, I wouldn't have no idea that that was why, a large part of what shaped the sort of first, I don't know, decade of personal relationships, I would say was just, I mean, no one. And she was like, No one gets near you, no one you know you're you're funny or witty or sarcastic, or you make them look small, or you know you are just, it's the defenses are up, and it's like a game of thrones war. Yeah, the second game. But it is, and I just didn't remember it like that. I remember feeling vulnerable and hurt and scared. And so that idea of that idea of the quote that you were talking about, you know, it's not how you see you, it's not how I see me. It's about how I think you see me. And if I think you see me as weak and vulnerable and lesser, it doesn't matter what you see me as. That's what I'm feeling. Therefore I have to understand that that is different from what you might see me as, yeah, and I think that's massively important. Yeah, that sounds like a real development, but you went through one

of the many times that I continually go through to just aim to be even a little bit less rubbish than I am so on

that I'm going to jump straight to my top tip and get there before you, which is this stuff never ends. So a top tip, it's like a refining process that goes on and on. And I've tried to develop my self awareness over the years. And I think it just keeps on going. It does. And I guess I change it's trying to, you know, nail down water or something, right? But I think you know, knowing that it always changes, and just doing a little bit gradually, doing, you know, a little bit in increments, and iterating through and just trying to learn and grow and develop a little bit at a time, is why I'd suggest trying to focus on this stuff. So I guess that's my top tip. Is just, you know, it always changes. There's no final, final definition of who you are. It's just a moment in time. And I have two, yeah, of course,

my top tip is, sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's fun. One of them, and I would encourage people not to be scared of it, like learning about yourself and building an understanding of how people see you, is it can be a bit scary, but it's blinking brilliant when you can start to laugh about yourself and people recognize laugh about the personal stuff that is real, and it doesn't feel like you're being, like, very British and like, oh, laughing at yourself, but in a faux way, it's real, and it's, I'm

not perfect, and these are the things I laugh about because, you know, it's funny, it's funny that I get this wrong, and It's only funny when you can do it with someone. So one is, one is like, it's okay, it's sometimes fun, and the other one is, and it's a very specific one. When you start to do this, if you are at all negative about yourself, you will quite often look for the negative feedback. You will seek out only negative. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying only seek out positive by any stretch, but please, please, don't do what, oh god, I reckon half the people I coach do, which is dismiss all the positive feedback and only tell me with delight where someone has confirmed a positive a negative belief. I'm surprised. It's only 50% there's probably loads more. I'm just trying to be generous to be generous to people who don't think, Oh, that's not me. Don't do it. Just don't do it. Please don't do it. Because it's I speak someone who does it all the time has to really manage it. Don't do it. It's really harmful to choose to only seek out negative confirmation of who you are, and it will build a negative narrative, whereas if you try and seek it out and balanced and the easiest way to think about it, right? None of us are perfect. You're not a bad person, right at heart, you're not a bad person. I'm not a bad person. The

person listening is not a bad person. So if you go into it with everything like, I'm probably a bit of, a bit of, you know, just like most of us probably somewhere in the middle. Off, yeah, it's a much easier, because you can assume there's good things and bad things, yeah. And also, people love giving good feedback. They like giving bad feedback. Yeah, they love giving good feedback. So if there's something positive about you that someone wants to share, that's amazing.

It's great. Yeah, that was a nice, nice, nice message there. So I guess that's our top tips, isn't it? We've had three for a price of two. Yeah, sorry, that's good again, right? So that's pretty much us fan. Another episode done. I think it's just time to say Goodbye. It's goodbye from me.