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Self-awareness leads to flexibility
Self-awareness could mean:
- recognising how we come across to others so we can work better with diverse groups of people;
- developing clarity about our values so we have a moral compass to guide us when there is no policy for the new situation;
- challenging our assumptions when we are feeling stuck, so we open the possibility to see a situation differently and consider a variety of options.
In our rapidly changing world, these abilities to develop flexible thinking allows us to adapt and respond to uncertainty.
Taking the idea of awareness further, by developing critical awareness, we are encouraged to challenge the world around us and our place within it. Humans are sense-making beings and seek to understand and interpret what is going on. We make sense through what we can hear, touch, taste, smell and feel. We are emotionally and physiologically attuned to the world around us.
However, we are so bombarded with information and embedded in dominant experiences of our workplace, our professional standards or our social culture, we absorb ideas almost unconsciously. We can lose track of where our influences come from. These things become fixed and unchallenged, or we assume we ‘should’ adopt the rules set out in our context.
Knowing what informs our practice, helps us to question it and to continually review if our approaches are fit for purpose. Tuning in to all our sources of data – including the feelings and the senses - helps us to develop a rounded appraisal of a situation beyond the numbers or logical analysis alone.
Why is critical awareness essential for leadership for the future?
The world of work is changing. It is:
- adopting digital innovations;
- developing sustainable approaches that preserve the world’s resources;
- combining technologies from across discipline boundaries or creating diverse teams in hybrid working.
