If you don’t have awareness, then you don’t know that you don’t have awareness. If you can’t see what you need to have awareness of, then you don’t know that you can’t see what you need to have awareness of. To grow to your full potential, you must have awareness. How do you raise your awareness?
By becoming a highly effective leader, there are a lot of things that you need to be aware of, and one of those things is to have awareness. When it comes to the differences between a low performing leader and a highly effective leader, one of those differences is how aware they are.
A highly effective leader’s awareness level must be higher.
1. Work On Yourself
To help you raise your level of awareness, you must keep working on yourself every day in both the competency and character areas. Reading this post is a great start in making you more aware. However, there are hundreds of self-development books out there that can raise your awareness level even more.
So, when you finish this post, don’t stop there. Keep searching through my other posts that can help you continuously improve as a highly effective leader, and eventually create a team of highly effective leaders.
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You will learn about more people (besides me), and their stories throughout their lives and career. The more stories of highly effective leaders you can relate to, the better it is for you.
If you are enjoying this post so far, and you feel that it is making you more aware, then congratulations to you and keep reading. To help make you even more aware, increase your influence, and help you raise your leadership level then read through my other posts, and keep an eye out for my future posts.
I have been reading self-development and leadership books since 2009, and with every new book I read I am becoming a lot more aware. I read daily, and this is a part of how I work on myself every day. I encourage you to do the same.
You can learn from me about working on strengths and weaknesses. To work on your strengths in the area of competency, reading will help with that. To work on your weaknesses in the area of character, reading will help with that too. Being deliberate in these areas is a must…every day.
1. Take Action
Highly effective leaders take action every day with their development and personal growth. They are also constantly seeking response and feedback from their leaders and teammates on how they are doing.
Highly effective leaders have very high levels of self-awareness, but there are times when they can’t see everything. So feedback from teammates helps them in the areas they can’t see for themselves.
Being aware and being focussed is the ultimate goal when it comes to a highly effective leader and their team. One thing a highly effective leader has great ability in is the ability to focus on what the team is trying to accomplish, the mission.
However whilst being focussed on the mission, they also have awareness of what the organisation is trying to accomplish, the objective. By being able to do both, nothing will be lost. The team will be able to achieve both their own mission and still contribute to the organisation’s objective.
We have talked in detail about motivation and inspiration. As a highly effective leader is working on themselves every day, and increasing their awareness level every day, they are in a great position to help their teammates increase their awareness level every day too.
3. Motivate Others
As we now know, a highly effective leader can motivate their teammates with ease. A highly effective leader is inspired from within to help develop their teammates and their personal growth.
They don’t need any motivation from anyone else to be able to do that. A highly effective leader’s mission is to grow their teammates and increase their influence.
This is who a highly effective leader is. They are part of the team so they can add value to the team. It is what they do. They are so aware of themselves, and know themselves inside out, better than anyone else. They are fully aware of their own purpose, and they are fully aware of their own passion.
They use their purpose and passion to help the team, and give them the most benefit possible from it. A highly effective leader is not seeking any type of reward or recognition for it, they are happy to be in the background remaining highly effective.
For many years as I was going through my career, and living in different places, I caught myself looking backwards a lot. I would think of Scotland and wonder “I wish I was still in Edinburgh.” Or, I would think of my hometown Liverpool, “I should have stayed home with my family, I miss them.”
These are nice things to think about, but the past is something we shouldn’t dwell on or criticise ourselves about. When we learn something new, we imagine what our past life, or our past job would have been like if we knew this new thing we have just learned.
We think, “I should have done this is I’d known.” Or, “I could have done that if I’d known.” The past is something we should think about and reflect on, not dwell on. What we should focus on is the future.
4. Looking Forward
Now that we are learning new things every day because we are working on ourselves every day, we should look forward. We should be excited for what’s in store for us with our newly found skills and insights.
It is thinking like this that will keep our awareness level high, and it is thinking like this that will raise our awareness level.
When I stopped dwelling on my own past and instead began to reflect on it, I started to learn more about myself. I reflected on my past mistakes, learned the lesson from those mistakes and vowed to myself to do my best never to make those mistakes again.
The more I reflected, the more I learned. The more I learned, the more aware I was becoming. I wasn’t just becoming more aware of myself, I was becoming more aware of those around me.
It’s amazing what you feel and realise when you change how you think about your past, and use it as a way to learn, not as a way to beat yourself up or criticise yourself.
When you look inside yourself right now, how do you feel? Are you beating yourself up? Are you criticising yourself? A highly effective leader is constantly looking inside themselves, and learning about themselves.
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They are also looking at their teammates and learning about them too. A highly effective leader is so aware of both themselves and their teammates. By being aware of others on your team, you will know exactly how to motivate them and how to influence them.
The more you learn about yourself, and you start doing things differently, you will not only become a highly effective leader, you will become a better person overall. Highly effective leaders don’t just have to do things better, they have to be better.
Raising your awareness level isn’t just about your competency and what you can do, it is about your character, and who you are. We discussed that to be a highly effective leader that competency and character must work in harmony.
Well, to raise your awareness level, do better, and better, then again competency and character must work in harmony.
How do you feel about your teammates, your friends, and your family? If a person is not important to you, then there is no way that you can make them feel important.
I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.
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All the best,
I often beat myself up about the past or I think that I wish I’d known this or that back then.
Sometimes I also think of past bosses when I read your posts and I realize how they could have benefited from them. Awareness is important, and I often feel that people think they learned “enough” or “all they need to know” at university, and they behave at work as if they’re so knowledgeable; but we need to constantly educate ourselves. Reading every day is a good method. Analyzing actions of the day, perhaps, too.
Hi Christine,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for sharing your experiences of the past.
It’s a catch 22 when we know we could have done things differently after reading an article like this. But, I wouldn’t have any regrets if I was you, especially when it is the behaviours of your past bosses that needed to change, not yours.
Keep looking forward and keep the vision you have for yourself and others in the front of your mind.
All the best,
Tom
Hey Tom,
For me what has helped with my online business is writing down a list of 10 things that I need to do every single day. Then, once I have that list star 5 of them that absolutely need to get done today. Make sure I complete the tasks that are an “absolute”. Then, I set up small rewards throughout the week, month, and year to help keep me motivated.
Hey,
Thank you for your comment.
Seems like some good ideas on how to run your online business here. Keep sharing them with other online business people and help them to follow in your footsteps.
All the best,
Tom
I feel like some people are not aware of themselves. My mom seems to be one of those people that she is the way she is and no improvement is needed. I find that difficult to deal with because I am the opposite, I am hyper aware. I was diagnosed as bipolar at a very young age and when I finally accepted that I learned that I had to change. I had to be aware. I have to sit down and think about every situation and my behavior. Of course this has continued until adult hood. It just a still boggles my mind that more people don’t look inward. Anyway rant over. Great article. I hope lots of people read it!
Hi Brianna,
Thank you for your comment.
I appreciate you sharing your experiences with your family and with yourself. I hope people can relate and learn from you just as much as they can learn from me.
Good luck in the future and keep in touch.
All the best,
Tom