Wanting To Improve Performance? Try This
Know Thy Self. Be Aware. Self-Awareness. If you are wanting to improve performance, increase your self-awareness!
It’s not sexy. It’s not flashy. And frankly, it is not easy. But if you are looking at ways to improve your performance, do not look any further than the mirror before looking to improve anything else.
Even though self-awareness is nothing new, mankind still seems to struggle with this key skill to performance. Korn Ferry ran a study and found that poor performing companies were 79 percent more likely to have low overall self-awareness than companies that had a high rate of return on stock.
Since you are reading this, I am going to assume you are a high, aspiring leader looking to elevate your career, relationships, or life. Good, but I have a warning for you. Please do not assume your self-awareness is to the level it needs to be in order for your performance to hit the heights it needs to.
Of course you can take an emotional intelligence assessment if you would like, I can provide that for you. But if you are wanting to improve performance now, then go straight into the application by trying these few things below to elevate your self-awareness no matter where you are at right now.
Wanting To Improve Performance? Increase Self-Awareness With These 6 Strategies
- Pull Back. Like most aspiring leaders, you are going full speed. You have your head down and do not have time to smell the roses. Forget the roses, plan out a 15-minute window to stop and reflect on your day, past hour, or even past 15-minutes. Put into practice the routine of pulling back and reflecting.
- Slow Down. Much like pulling back, slow down. However, this does not mean stop. Sometimes it is powerful to slow down the things already in motion in order to reflect as you are still in motion. For example, slow down your breathing, slow down your walking pace, slow down your driving, slow down your thought process, etc. Your conscious brain can’t always keep up with your current pace, so just S….L….O….W D…O….W….N.
- Document Scenarios. Sorry, you cannot always trust your memory. Studies have proven that our working memories cannot always be trusted for complete accuracy. In fact, the further we distance ourself from the event, the less reliable the facts are to the event. The best thing you can do to increase awareness is documenting events as soon as the event happens. I typically have clients specifically document non-intense events. I want to see what is happening when emotions are at a level place. If they are too high, biases can manipulate recollection. If they are too low, your brain might not care to be accurate. Find the middle ground events and document them. Then after a week of doing this, review them. Did you learn anything about yourself while reviewing them?
- Evaluate Emotions. Make it simply. Categorize your emotions in regards to two words, pleasure and energy. This means there are 4 options: high-pleasure/high-energy, high-pleasure/low-energy, low-pleasure/high-energy, and low-pleasure/low-energy. Then throughout the day, simply categorize where you are at. It is even more powerful when you chart this at the same time of day for multiple days and then review it at the end of the week.
- Know Your Triggers. Become an expert at what sets you off. Everything from tones, words, attitudes, external pressures, environments, and even people. The better you are able to identify the things that set you off, the better you can learn to regulate your emotions afterwards. This goes for good triggers as much as bad triggers.
- Learn Your Physiology. This is when you need your mirror. Or you might just need someone close to you that is able to be fully honest with you. How do you respond to all different types of situations? And how is your physiology reflecting the accuracy of your emotions? Does the person or people tell you that a certain response looks like anger when it really is curiosity? The better you can understand what your body is communicating, the better you can shift your expressions in order to portray the actual emotional response you have at the right moment.
None of these little tricks are an all encompassing way to improve your self-awareness, but some of these might be really effective for you. Try some of them. Try all of them. What works and what doesn’t work? Be honest and be reflective. This will catapult your development and improvement in performance first and foremost.
