You must have an honest understanding of your values, thought patterns, goals, desires, ambitions, emotional responses, strengths and weaknesses and how those affect other people. This is not an easy task. It takes years to develop and while you must be committed to it, you will also need to rely heavily on honest feedback from others. Once you’ve developed this skill-set and practice it regularly, self-awareness managing your behavior becomes easier when it comes to interactions with others, relationships you build and your ability to increase your influence.

 

There is a direct correlation between the better a person is at self-awareness, the more influential the person is and the greater that person’s followers perform. Leaders with high self-awareness are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and exhibit gracefulness in learning when and where improvements are needed.

 

Let’s examine a few areas that support this basic but very important competency.

 

 

Know thyself

The fastest route to self-awareness is getting to know yourself inside without blinders on. Just because a leader is great at root-cause analysis doesn’t mean they can identify their own challenges as proficiently. Many leaders see organizational problems as easier to deal with by coping rather than evaluate and solve them.

The same can be said of leaders coping with individual issues. While we know leaders are not perfect, this truth is more than enough to signal a need for a self-exam. The number of clashes of personalities and behaviors leaders face on any given day, should alone be indicative that something is needed to bring change from the top down.

The key to progress here is knowing the difference between personality and behavioral conflicts as they are miles apart in meaning. You choose to behave one way or another while your personality is a trait within.

Your self-exam here is the key to making the right behavior choice and recognize poor habits.

 

Sincerity

Influential leaders all share a level of sincerity better revealed from the aforementioned self-exam. Genuineness, honesty, authenticity, are all synonymous with sincerity.

When push comes to shove and you are in the heat of the situation or moment, how would your true self react? This is where asking yourself and answering honestly right now, will define your nest steps to working on your sincerity.

 

Feedback

Yes, the one where everybody wants praise as feedback but will never ask in case it won’t be. Another reason why feedback is rarely asked of others is that many people will fear retaliation or risk losing a good relationship because of honest feedback.

This one is always surrounded by an emotional dynamic that often crosses the lines between professional and personal situations. The reality is that it is awkward to give and receive honest feedback. You can be a great communicator to your team but not realize you’ve been stifling their creativity or confidence all along because you simply monopolize the conversation with your own ideas.

Good, influential leaders are not shy about seeking feedback from colleagues and followers regularly. They support the organizations mission and vision completely and are committed to the belief that there is always a measure of improvement with the addition of others feedback to ensure the mission and vision remain true.

No egos are bruised here and given the openness of feedback, influential leaders work with a level of transparency that those who do not use feedback would find difficult.

Leaders seeking feedback will need to assure those they’ve asked (maybe more than once) that there will be no retaliation and the expectation is honest feedback and to be as candid as they can. Asking the right people, the right questions and your ability to interpret the answers wisely and as accurate to the process are very important to achieve this component.

 

Translating this to your organization. Why it is necessary to have the assessment.

 

Using the strategies above regarding your personal assessment, we now take this process to the organization.

Becoming self-aware as a company means considering both the aspects of the company that function well and those parts that do not.

Change is neither easy or popular. We are literally wired to argue change. Change is a personal and an intimate decision made to move toward the goal, objective, direction your organization agrees it needs to be. Key to this change is an emotion of desire. From the leader comes the desire and the natural determination to make the change.

 

As expected as any leader would. Your ability to rebuke resistance will be your most formidable task.

Denial will appear from those unwilling to acknowledge that transition will improve the organization. This may very well come from those who may feel their job security is at risk.

You will find defenders whom rise to this status after realizing the business habits are an obvious obstacle to progress. They will bring forward what they believe are self-advantaged benefits countering all other views on the matter.

The final resistance tactic involves those who diminish the efforts of the person(s) who have begun the change effort. This ‘shooting of the messenger’ tactic will ultimately fail agains the backdrop of consistent progress, communication of key achievements and visual displays of leadership involvement along the way.

 

Capacity Building

 

The support of capacity building plays a critical role in the overall assessment of your organization.

Simply put, it is both the most fashionable and misunderstood terms used in some profit and most non-profit organizations.

Funding sourced organizations tend to use this term as ‘capacity building programs’ while others may use ‘capacity building engagements’ to denote the set of activities or processes that accomplish a specific goal.

 

When it comes to supporting the organization, capacity building affects:

• Leadership
  • Governance
  • Internal Leadership
  • Sustainability
• Management
  • Human Resources
  • Financial Team
• Technical
  • Program Design and Evaluation
  • Fundraising
  • Marketing
  • Technology
• Adaptive Capacity
  • Environmental Learning
  • Programmatic Learning
  • Organizational Learning

 

While the details of Capacity Building would encompass another article, in short, the success of this critical component relies on communication, the organizations’ assessment, peer to peer networking and a competence based provider (most often a 3^rd Party) to deliver and implement the assessment process and its outcomes.