Self-Awareness Includes Understanding How Others Perceive You
When we discuss self-awareness, certainly a popular topic these days, it gets tricky. Do you know how others perceive you at work? Chances are, if you are like most of my clients, you don’t know.
You may have spent a lifetime studying yourself internally—your competencies, weaknesses, and all the in-betweens, and thus, feel confident that you score a whopping 10! Sorry to say, you’re more like a five or halfway there. Most of us do not realize that to be fully self-aware at work; we need to grasp how others see us in the workplace.
One can even argue that it’s more important to be aware of how others are reading you than by how you are reading yourself.
Who you are to YOU
Internal self-awareness is our ability to be introspective and look within ourselves. It is a key aspect of our emotional intelligence.
Broadly defined, internal self-awareness is our being “aware” of who we are and how we operate as individuals; it is the foundation of how we view ourselves.
For example, you may see yourself as a relatively intelligent, hard-working, patient, forgiving, and friendly person to your co-workers. You have done the hard work and are “in tune” with yourself and your emotions—which is no easy feat. Practicing this internal self-awareness regularly requires us to study who and how we are.
We make it a habit of delving deep and attempting to understand what motivates our behavior and reactions. We ask ourselves why we sometimes think highly or lowly of ourselves. Our practice contributes to making positive changes in our lives, whether at the personal or professional level.
Understanding our behaviors and personal reactions we can have significant control over how situations unfold and influence their outcomes.
Who you are to OTHERS
Along with our self-internalized percecptions – how do others perceive you at work?
External self-awareness, on the other hand, is becoming aware of how you are to others. In other words, how others perceive you.
This kind of self-awareness has less to do with how you perceive yourself. Looking at ourselves and the world through our own lens is a bit easier and perhaps less painful. It can feel very vulnerable to enlist the views of our colleagues and those who work for us.
You may be surprised to realize that there are two very different opinions about yourself: your own self-awareness and other people’s awareness of you. One is internal while the other is external, and there is very likely to be some dissonance between them. In fact, it is entirely possible in some cases that no relationship will exist between both views at all.
You can be highly aware of your own thought patterns and the likelihood of reacting in a particular way to a certain scenario and still have immense blind spots when it comes to grasping the ways that others end up perceiving you.
How we can increase your external self-awareness
Increasing your external self-awareness will require that you develop effective ways to receive truthful and objective feedback from your colleagues at work. Perhaps the only way to do this is through regular practice and making it a point to seek honest views from those you interact with regularly routinely.
How did you come across on that teleconference? Perhaps you were a little harsh and domineering? What do the other people present on the call think of how you engaged with them and your colleagues? Making it a point to do this regularly will start to give you an accurate view of how you are presenting yourself at work.
Seeking unbiased information
By openly seeking unbiased, external feedback from co-workers, and the more you possess a willingness to consider what you are told, the more likely you are to have accurate external self-awareness. Knowing how others perceive you can be an invaluable leadership tool in the workplace.
Your colleagues can corroborate (or refute) the accuracy of your view of yourself. They reveal how are presenting yourself to the world. Note: an obvious way to not do this is by seeking feedback from people you know will tell you exactly what you want to hear!
