Work Environment and Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and Negative Beliefs - Change Your Life through Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and Negative Beliefs

When you possess a high degree of self-awareness you tend to bypass negative beliefs because you have a more complete understanding of what’s really going on inside and around you and how you can move things in a positive direction rather than staying stuck in fear, superstition, inaction or inauthenticity. Here are some ideas to help you reduce the negativity:

  • Realize that you can’t possibly control everything around you.
  • Work actively on understanding yourself on a deeper level.
  • Take action each day to do things that are meaningful to you.
  • Believe that your perception of the world doesn’t have to be negative.
  • See the big picture rather than getting mired in endless detail.
  • Focus on what’s going well.
  • Learn to redirect negative feelings and replace them with positive alternatives.

Negative people and events can’t hold you back if you don’t let them. You have many options available to you rather than despairing or giving up, what will you do to increase your self-awareness and get rid of negative beliefs?

Cheers,

Guy

Using Self-Awareness to Take Care of Yourself at Work - Change Your Life through Self-Awareness

Using Self-Awareness to Take Care of Yourself at Work

Self-awareness can help you take care of yourself at work. We’re not always taught how to look after ourselves at work. We pack our work lives full of activities and tasks but we don’t take the time to nurture ourselves. Building your self-awareness and taking care of yourself is important because it makes you more effective in all areas of your work experience and helps you recharge your batteries.

Try these ideas to bring some balance into your work life and smooth out some of the bumps.

  1. Stop. Take a moment during your day to do nothing and just relax. Lie down, take a nap, go for a walk or just look outside. The idea is to just stop and enjoy a slower pace.
  2. Breathe. Take deep breaths, slow and controlled. Inhale fully and exhale. Think of yourself inhaling serenity and exhaling stress.
  3. Think of something joyful and fun. Sweep aside all the garbled noise that clutters your brain and focus on thinking of something that makes you feel great.
  4. Find a way to vent. Find someone who will listen to you without interrupting and who will simply be there for you to talk about whatever you want.
  5. Celebrate yourself. Do nice things for yourself that don’t cost money. Give yourself a pat on the back and give yourself kudos for the things you’ve accomplished.

The key to taking care of yourself at work is to forget about others and focus on you. Try the ideas we’ve discussed here to introduce some calm into your work life and heal yourself. You deserve it.

What will you do to increase your self-awareness and take care of yourself at work?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Healing Your Workplace - Change Your Life through Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Healing Your Workplace

Self-awareness, team building, and healing are strongly linked in the workplace because teams can’t function well if everyone is walking around carrying personal grudges and hurts. It often falls on the team leader to help everyone function effectively but it’s nearly impossible if he or she is carrying around a lot of negative energy.

There are many negative workplace experiences that affected people negatively. Individuals sometimes hold on to these feelings for a long time even when they realize intellectually that they would be better off letting them go. I consult with leaders and employees about how they can end this cycle of negative feelings and thoughts and build stronger teams and it almost always begins with healing.

Healing your workplace is one of the most important concepts for you and your employees’ well-being and it begins with having the self-awareness to heal yourself. If you think about it, you deal with people very differently when you are healthy rather than hurt. If you want to create a work environment that is free of hurts from the past, then think about the following questions.

1.  What do I need to heal?

This question will help you define what it is that you need to look at. There is no right or wrong answer, you get to decide what part of you or your workplace is hurt and then you get to heal it. No issue is to small or trivial, if you need to heal it it is a valid starting point. You can have several issues but try to pick one to start on.

2.  How will I heal myself?

There are many avenues you can take to heal yourself and they almost always involve getting help from an outside person who can help you get a clear perspective. You benefit from realizing that you need help and then reaching out to someone who can partner with you to make it happen. There is no right or wrong approach to healing, look for an approach that works for you. Some people talk to a friend, others a therapist and others HR.

3.  How will I know that I am healed?

The goal of healing is to come to terms and feel at peace with the issues you face. You will know you are healed when an issue no longer stirs negative feelings inside you. You will also see improvements in your day to day work life because that issue won’t be affecting you in the same way.  Healing can take time so be patient and keep working on taking care of yourself. Take it easy on yourself and only work on healing one thing at a time. Once you feel better about one thing then you are then ready to move on to the next issue.

Do some careful thinking about these three questions and you will begin the process of building self-awareness and discovering what hurts and how to heal it. The idea is not to reopen terrible wounds and relive those moments, it’s to acknowledge that you have an issue and work on it. Once you heal yourself you’ll be in a great position to help your team do the same. The result is a workplace where people aren’t working out their personal stuff on each other.

How will you increase your self-awareness and start healing your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

How Self-Aware Business People Communicate - Change Your Life through Self-Awareness

How Self-Aware Business People Communicate

Your communication style tells other businesses a lot about your level of self-awareness, your professionalism and what they can expect when they deal with you. A theme that frequently arises when I consult for leaders is how to communicate in a manner that invites other companies to want to do business with us. The following tips will help you put your best foot forward and communicate confidently:

  1. Listen actively. It’s amazing what you learn when you’re not talking.
  2. Say it briefly. Go with the approach that less is more in communication.
  3. Keep it professional. Business communication is not the appropriate time to vent about personal problems or delve into people’s private lives.
  4. Keep your temper in check. If you fly off the handle it not only shuts down communication but also reduces the likelihood that the other company will give you an opportunity in the future.
  5. Remind yourself that communication glitches aren’t a personal slight against you, they are just part of doing business.
  6. Practice excellent conflict resolution skills. Brainstorm with the other person to get some ideas on how to deal with the issue at hand and agree on a solution that works for both of you.
  7. Train everyone, starting with top leadership, on how to communicate effectively.

Other businesses judge us in much the same way our clients do. How we communicate says a lot to the outside world about the way we conduct business. Keep these tips in mind as you interact with other companies and you’ll be on your way to increasing your success exponentially.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and communicate positively?

Regards,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Building Better Workplace Relationships - Change Your Life through Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Building Better Workplace Relationships

You can’t build great teams if you don’t possess self-awareness and the knowledge to promote successful relationships. Even some of the most well-intentioned leaders who really care for their employees have difficulty building great workplace relationships because they don’t know how.

I’m a big supporter of clarity in workplace relationships, where everyone involved understands what’s going on in the relationship. It does away with assumptions, secrets, guesses, misunderstandings and frustration because every person is on the same page.

How do you increase clarity? You work on increasing your self-awareness and gathering more information. The next time you encounter conflict in any workplace relationship practice the following ideas to really understand what’s going on:

1. Each person talks without interruptions about how they see the situation.

2. Each person listens carefully without judging, rebutting or giving advice.

3. Each person asks open-ended questions to clarify what is going on.

4. The people work together and develop a plan to proceed.

Dialogue is very important to achieving clarity. Make sure to practice listening skills and ask questions that allow people to share their perspectives in a safe environment. Open ended questions are questions that don’t lead to a yes or no answer and allow each person to meaningfully explain their point of view.

This is a style of interaction that doesn’t require confrontation, it focuses on people listening to each other and sharing their points of view. Try it sometime to gain clarity on what’s going on in your workplace relationships. What will you do to improve your self-awareness, team building, and workplace relationships?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Better Team Building - Change Your Life through Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and Better Team Building

Self-awareness leads to better team building because participants are able to look at how their own emotions, thoughts, and actions lead to creating a healthier, more high-functioning organization where people get along and work well together.

I facilitate many team building workshops and the participants sometimes get confused when they realize they aren’t going to be climbing a tree or catching each other as they fall backward. It’s a natural reaction because a lot of what is presented as team building might actually be team bonding. Here’s the difference:

Team Building

  • Focuses on behaviors and their effect on workplace functioning.
  • Helps people learn how to work with each other and get along well.
  • Builds skills like communication, planning, problem-solving and conflict resolution.
  • Builds empathy and compassion.
  • Encourages long-term behavior change.
  • Helps people build genuine connections.
  • Is practiced over time.
  • Encourages deeper discussion and processing.

Team Bonding

  • Focus on fun activities.
  • Brings people together by encouraging collaboration and teamwork.
  • Helps people see each other in a different light.
  • Allows people to connect in a different setting.
  • Usually a one-time activity.
  • Helps people get out of the workplace and relax.
  • Encourages people to have fun together.
  • Sometimes asks people to think about the implications of the activities on their workplace.

The major difference between the two approaches is that team building is a long-term process that encourages self-awareness and creates behavioral change while team bonding tends to be a short-term, fun experience. If you’re looking for a quick pick-me-up then team bonding is your thing. If you’re looking at foundation building and long-term change then team building will help you get there.

As a leader, you get to choose what kind of workplace you create. I’ve found that highly successful (and happy) organizations commit to a long-term team building approach that helps people build self-awareness to think and behave in ways that benefit them and their work environment. Learning effective team building takes time and effort but it creates lasting success and a company culture that encourages positive behaviors. What will you do to develop self-awareness and promote effective team building in your organization?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Giving Your Employees a Voice - Change Your Life through Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Giving Your Employees a Voice

Self-awareness can help you build a strong team building program and give your employees a voice. In our fast-paced workplaces, we tend to forget that everyone has valuable ideas and talents that they can share with the team.  When your employees don’t have a voice you may be missing out on vital ideas that could help you run your organization more smoothly and profitably. Self-aware leaders understand that everyone has their own areas of expertise that can help the organization function better.

Here are some practical ideas so you can give everyone voice.

  • Listen to your employees so you can learn from their wisdom and varied perspectives.
  • Stop talking. If you’re the only person talking then no one else is able to his or her voice.
  • Show people you value their voice. Invite participation and the exchange of ideas. Be open to comments and suggestions. Use people’s ideas and give them the opportunity to come up with more.
  • Create a culture of respect. All ideas are valid and nobody gets belittled because their idea seems unorthodox.
  • Encourage autonomy and personal leadership. Allow your employees to use their voices to do their jobs better and become leaders in their own niche.
  • Let people do things they enjoy. People are more likely to express their views and use their voices when they are doing work that is meaningful to them.
  • Encourage collaboration. Build teams where everyone’s voice is equally valid and each person’s input is highly valued.

How many of these ideas do you currently use in your workplace? If you use them all you will create a workplace where your employees feel like valuable members of your team. What will you do to practice self-awareness and give your employees a voice?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy