 Self-awareness for managers is an essential skill to lead and manage others better. If you can't manage yourself, then how will you manage others effectively? Research suggests that when we have good self-awareness or see ourselves clearly, we build better relationships, communicate more effectively and are more confident, more creative and make better decisions. Those with good self-awareness are more likely to be open and honest. Self-awareness gives us the ability to manage ourselves better, making us more effective leaders with happier team members, which in turn improves team performance and creates more profitable companies. Today I'm taking you through, firstly, what is self-awareness and the two types of self-awareness, secondly, why self-awareness is so important in leading and managing others, and then third, five actions to improve your self-awareness. Developing your self-awareness as a manager is really important to increase team performance and to improve your management skills as quickly as possible. My name is Jess Coles, and if you're new here, Enhance.training shares people management expertise, resources and courses teaching you how to build higher performing teams. I've included links to additional videos and resources in the description below, as well as the video timestamps, so do take a look at these. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. So let's start with what is self-awareness and the two types of self-awareness. Self-awareness is your ability to perceive and understand what makes you an individual, including your personality, actions, values, beliefs, emotions and thoughts. There are two types of self-awareness, firstly internal or private self-awareness and then second, external or public self-awareness. Internal self-awareness is how clearly we see our feelings and emotions, our mental states, our values, our passions, our reactions and our impact on others. Research has found that better internal self-awareness is associated with higher job and relationship satisfaction, personal and social control and happiness. External self-awareness is our understanding of how other people view us in terms of the same factors as internal self-awareness. Those that are more aware of how others see them are better at showing empathy and understanding of other people's perspectives. For managers and leaders that see themselves as their team members do, their team members have better relationships with them, feel more satisfied with them and view them as more effective managers in general. You probably expect that if you had good internal self-awareness, you would have good external self-awareness. According to research done by Harvard Business Review, there is almost no correlation between them. You can be a great at one and terrible at the other. Let's now cover why self-awareness is so important in leading and managing others. When leaders have developed the skills to manage themselves, their emotions, their fears, biases, etc. they are much better equipped to manage others well. I mean, who would you have more confidence following? A leader that openly panics in a crisis or a leader that calmly organizes the team to take appropriate action? If the leader panics, what emotions will the team feel? When the leader is calm, they transfer their calmness to the team so they can better deal with the crisis. Here are six very important benefits that increasing self-awareness at work brings. Firstly, self-awareness helps you understand your own strengths and weaknesses. You can use your strengths to support the team better and ask others to provide support to the team in your weaker areas. Secondly, self-awareness gives you greater understanding of your impact on others. You are then able to make more thoughtful and considered decisions and take more careful actions. You are much more likely to keep the team happy and motivated which further improves the team's ability to achieve goals. Third, growing self-awareness enables you to better manage your emotions. You can then display your positive emotions to the team and manage and constructively communicate your negative emotions. You build authenticity and trust and increase your effectiveness as a manager. Fourth, improving your self-awareness helps build trust and credibility. You are much more likely to be authentic, fair and trustworthy and understand your mistakes and limitations and be happy acknowledging them. Fifth, better self-awareness improves decision making. When we understand our emotions and our biases we are less likely to be influenced by them during decision making. Sixth, faster personal and professional growth. Self-aware managers are much more likely to seek out and take in honest feedback and change their management styles to fit the needs of the team they lead. Sixth, very good reasons to take steps to increase your self-awareness. I'm now sharing five actions for how to increase your self-awareness. Studies indicate that although most people believe that they are self-aware only 10-15% are truly self-aware. The first of five useful actions to help improve your self-awareness as a manager is firstly actively seek and use feedback given. Feedback is an essential tool to assess how well we are doing so we can either do more of the same or work out how we can improve the decisions and actions we take. The more senior your position, the more power you hold over employees' careers and therefore the harder it is to get candid honest feedback. Five ways that I found to be very useful in developing self-awareness includes firstly, regularly ask colleagues, peers and your bosses for feedback. You always listen, control your reactions and thank them for providing feedback. Your aim is to encourage as much honesty as possible. Secondly, organise 360 degree anonymous feedbacks, questionnaires, using third party providers. You want employees to be confident they can tell the truth without repercussions. Third, take as many personality tests and preference tests as possible. Each will give you a different viewpoint or angle on yourself which can provide good insights to increase self-awareness for managers. Fourth, make the time to reflect on your own emotions, thoughts, biases etc. in as many situations as you encounter as possible. And fifth, get a coach or mentor. Both are great for getting personalised, considered and honest feedback. Feedback is incredibly important. Get as much as you can for increasing self-awareness to manage others better. So second, when improving your self-awareness ask what instead of why? It is widely assumed that reflecting your thoughts, feelings and behaviours will lead to greater self-awareness. Research shows that this is often not the case. How you reflect on your thoughts and emotions is important and many do this incorrectly. Research has shown that we don't have access to many of our unconscious thoughts, feelings and motives. Asking why did I get angry with Dave and shouted him may not give you the answers that will enable you to change your behaviour for the next time. Asking why in negative situations invites us to criticise ourselves and beat ourselves up. Much better is to ask yourself a what question, i.e. what can I do next time I get angry with Dave to ensure that I don't shout at him. What questions help us stay objective, focus on creating future solutions and help empower us to take action on our insights. Ask what instead of why when reflecting on how to improve your self-awareness. Third, to improve your self-awareness understand your values. Understanding your values as a manager or leader in my view is very important for several reasons. First, when you make decisions and take actions in line with your values you are likely to be perceived as more authentic, trustworthy and predictable. All important in increasing team performance. Second, your values rarely change quickly. So using your values as a stable reference point enables you to be more consistent in your decisions, actions and behaviours which in turn improve expectation setting and the team's feeling of safety. Third, when you act and behave in line with your values you are showing more of who you are in an honest and open way. This builds trust in you personally and it encourages the team to adopt those values influencing how the team acts and behaves. Use your values to manage in an honest authentic way. Take actions for becoming more self-aware of your values. Fourth, to improve your self-awareness learn your strengths and weaknesses. You're going to be a lot more effective as a manager when you use your strengths to help the team achieve their goals and let others use their strengths when they have stronger skills compared to your weaker areas. A manager or leader will not be good at everything. Great managers and leaders know what they are good at and when to leave others better than them to do the task or activity. With good self-awareness of your own strengths and weaknesses and your teams you can play to every team member's strengths as much as possible. This is a great example of leveraging the team's skills to achieve more. With good self-awareness you are much more likely to openly acknowledge your weaknesses which will inspire confidence and trust with team members and in turn provide confidence for your team members to do the same. Better knowledge of team members strengths and weaknesses will help you leverage team efforts even better for the increasing team performance. Fifth, to improve your self-awareness learn what drives strong emotions. Displaying your positive emotions as a manager such as happiness, excitement and motivation and downplaying negative emotions such as anger, frustration and uncertainty make a big difference to the team's confidence in you and your credibility as a manager. Your emotions and behaviours create a significant influence on the team. Team members watch what you do and how you behave and emulate that themselves. If you are calm and considered your team will be too. If you are nervous and unsure your team will be too. Pay attention to what triggers strong emotion in you, especially your negative emotions. For instance what really annoys you? What behaviour in others makes you angry? What makes you frustrated? With improved self-awareness you can work on and use different techniques to constructively show your negative emotions or minimise your visible reaction to them. For example when I am angry I don't rant and rave but I will tell team members that I am really angry. Labelling negative emotions and reactions is a good way of constructively communicating feelings while demonstrating control over them. Paying attention to what triggers strong emotion in you is a great way to increase your self-awareness. So in summary, improving your self-awareness will help you be a much better leader and manager. Self-awareness for managers is vital to enable them to effectively manage others so please use all the actions and tips to improve your self-awareness. To recap we've been through firstly what is self-awareness and the two types of self-awareness secondly why self-awareness is so important in leading and managing others and third five actions to improve your self-awareness for managers. If you have any questions in self-awareness for managers five actions to improve your self-awareness please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.