Self-Awareness in Leadership

Business Consulting That Builds Self-Awareness

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Business consulting based on self-awareness can help you improve yourself and your business by helping you focus your energy and talent on things that will help you take your business to the next level. I help executives, managers and companies develop self-awareness, improve staff morale, increase productivity, build stronger teams and practice excellent workplace communications. I help managers to help them delegate more effectively and give their staff the opportunity to grow and excel. I help business owners focus their vision and take action on their goals.

Successful business owners know that when their employees feel their skills and abilities are being recognized and utilized the business benefits from a more productive workforce. Skilled managers understand that a happy workforce reduces turnover and hiring costs. I enjoy working with businesses to help them identify their employees strengths and use their talents.

The consulting services I provide include:

Self-Awareness Consulting for Individuals: Targeted support for leaders and staff to help improve specific situations. Helping individuals clarify what is happening in the situation and develop strategies to meet the challenge. Individuals build on their own strengths and devise their own plans of action with the support and encouragement of a coach.

Self-Awareness Consulting for Groups: Working intensively with staff to build a shared culture and purpose. Building stronger interpersonal connections through ongoing skill building. Monitoring participant progress and promoting accountability by encouraging participants to meet their goals and plan for the present and future.

Self-Awareness Consulting to Increase Success: Supportive partnering to identify areas of interest, barriers to achievement and areas of strength. Building clearer goals and devising specific strategies to reach those goals. Developing a clearer vision of where you are going and how you will get there.

Businesses benefit from having an impartial outside person help leaders and staff individually and in small groups to build skills and achieve goals. My self-awareness consulting services are an ongoing process that helps the individual clarify what she wants to accomplish and helps her achieve it through strategic support and accountability. My consulting is individualized and focuses on promoting successful behaviors that create change over time.

What will you do to increase self-awareness in your organization?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Deeper Communication Skills

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This two-part series on self-awareness and deeper communication skills is designed to help you build a workplace environment where people interact positively and get more done with less effort.

Many workplace conflicts arise because of disparate values, goals, objectives, strategies, levels of self-awareness, and points of view. Well-meaning, intelligent leaders and employees can genuinely want to get along but not know how to communicate meaningfully and productively. When I consult with groups in active conflict, I often help the participants learn and practice skills to help them connect on a deeper level, interact positively and generate positive results in the workplace.

We sometimes forget to build relationships before jumping into problem-solving and we don’t consistently create environments where people are encouraged to be self-aware and work together to find solutions. The most common communication model is people talking at each other instead of with each other. I’ve found that individuals have an amazing capability to work collaboratively when they take the time to build a strong foundation first. Here is a practical approach to help you create a workplace environment where people are self-aware and reach mutually beneficial solutions. This process works best with groups of twenty people or less.

  1. Agree on a place and time to meet. Make it comfortable, interruption-free and conducive to conversation.
  2. Have a skilled, welcoming, neutral facilitator run the meeting.
  3. Have the facilitator welcome everyone and present the ground rules: One person talks at a time and, when that person is talking, everyone listens. All opinions and ideas are valid.
  4. Have the facilitator pick a single topic of interest.
  5. Have each person in the room talk about his or her perspective on the topic for up to two minutes. Encourage people to talk from the heart and not from the head. Also mention that they don’t have to talk about anything they don’t feel comfortable sharing.
  6. Ask the group to listen to the person speaking without interruptions, comments, editorializing, rebuttals, reactions or any other kind of distraction. Ask people to simply listen and remind them that everyone else will do the same for them when it’s their turn.
  7. When everyone is done speaking ask the participants to share their impressions of what just happened. Go around the room and allow each person up to a minute to share.
  8. Take a break.
  9. Have the neutral facilitator pick another topic of interest.
    Repeat the process three times.

Once you’ve repeated this process three times the group will be ready to move on to the next phase which is working together. Stay tuned for part two of this series where we’ll talk about how to help people collaborate to solve problems.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and practice deeper communication skills in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy