Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think - Softcover

Eurich, Tasha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0525573941 ISBN 13: 9780525573944

Publisher: Crown Currency, 2018

Synopsis

Learn how to develop self-awareness and use it to become more fulfilled, confident, and successful.

Most people feel like they know themselves pretty well. But what if you could know yourself just a little bit better—and with this small improvement, get a big payoff...not just in your career, but in your life?
 
Research shows that self-awareness—knowing who we are and how others see us—is the foundation for high performance, smart choices, and lasting relationships. There’s just one problem: most people don’t see themselves quite as clearly as they could.
 
Fortunately, reveals organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, self-awareness is a surprisingly developable skill. Integrating hundreds of studies with her own research and work in the Fortune 500 world, she shows us what it really takes to better understand ourselves on the inside—and how to get others to tell us the honest truth about how we come across.
 
Through stories of people who have made dramatic gains in self-awareness, she offers surprising secrets, techniques and strategies to help you do the same—and how to use this insight to be more fulfilled, confident, and successful in life and in work.  

In Insight, you'll learn:

· The 7 types of self-knowledge that self-aware people possess.
· The 2 biggest invisible roadblocks to self-awareness.
· Why approaches like therapy and journaling don't always lead to true insight
· How to stop your confidence-killing habits and learn to love who you are.
· How to benefit from mindfulness without uttering a single mantra.
· Why other people don’t tell you the truth about yourself—and how to find out what they really think.
· How to deepen your insight into your passions, gifts, and the blind spots that could be holding you back.
· How to hear critical feedback without losing your mojo.
· Why the people with the most power can often be the least-self-aware, and how smart leaders avoid this trap.
· The 3 building blocks for self-aware teams.
· How to deal with delusional bosses, clients, and coworkers.

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, New York Times bestselling author. Dr. Eurich has contributed to Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, and TED.com, and has been featured in outlets like Fortune, Forbes, The New York Times, Fast Company, and Business Insider. She was named a Leader to Watch by the American Management Association, and in 2017, was selected as a "100 Coaches" honoree from more than 14,000 candidates by Marshall Goldsmith to advance the practice of leadership coaching. She lives in her hometown of Denver with her husband and rambunctious dogs.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The Meta-­Skill of the Twenty-­First Century

The toughest coaching session of my professional career began with me staring, for what seemed like an eternity, at the top of a senior executive’s bald head. That head belonged to Steve, a construction company boss with a bleeding balance sheet. He’d been in the job for just four months when his CEO asked me to come in and help him.

That morning, I’d taken the elevator to the eighth floor, waited in the reception area, and was finally shown to Steve’s palatial office by an assistant whose voice shook slightly when she announced my name. As the door closed silently behind me, Steve didn’t look up from his computer, acknowledging my presence only with a long sigh and an aggressive flurry of mouse clicks. Which left me standing there, awkwardly staring at his head and admiring the contents of a presentation cabinet. It included a large award in the shape of a demolition ball, and that really said a lot about the situation.

I’m not easily unnerved, but as the seconds dragged by, I began to feel the challenge that lay ahead of me as a sensation of mild nausea. It didn’t help that I was holding a red folder bulging with interview notes that told me just how volatile this man could be.

“Should I take a seat?” I finally ventured.

“Please, Dr. Eurich,” he sighed impatiently, still not looking up. “Whatever makes you comfortable.”

As I sat down and opened my folder, ready to begin, Steve pushed his chair back. Finally, he looked at me. “Let me tell you a thing or two about my operation here.” Then, with the restlessness of a caged tiger, he began pacing up and down behind his desk, sharing his ambitious vision for the business and his hardball leadership philosophy. I was impressed with his energy—­I also knew that our work together would require all he could muster.

Steve’s department, he told me, was in trouble, although I already knew that. His predecessor had been fired because of cost overruns, so his in-­the-­red business unit needed to drive growth while finding efficiencies wherever possible. There was no room for failure, but Steve had no doubt that he was just the man for the task. His self-­proclaimed leadership skills included setting high expectations, rallying his troops, and being tough but fair. “I know I’ll face challenges in this role,” he confidently stated, “but I also know how to get the best out of my ­people.”

Unfortunately, Steve was totally delusional.

What I’d uncovered when I interviewed his direct reports, and what his CEO had only begun to sense, was that Steve’s reign was already proving disastrous. In the 16 weeks since his official promotion, three employees had quit. A fourth, who had recently started taking blood pressure medication because of the “Steve stress,” was halfway out the door. Though not a single member of Steve’s team questioned his capabilities and experience, they thought that he was—­to use a more polite term than they did—­a complete jerk. He’d bark orders at them, question their competence, and scream at them in a way they found unprofessional and frightening. And they weren’t a bunch of whiners, either. I found them to be seasoned, seen-­it-­all types who weren’t looking to be coddled. Steve had simply pushed them too far.

To be fair, Steve had grown up in the rough-­and-­tumble industry of construction, where he’d learned that great leadership often meant “he who yelled the most.” And while this hard-­charging style may have been passable in the past, it was a costly miscalculation in his current role, especially against the backdrop of the company’s collaborative culture.

As he paced around his new office, proudly detailing all the ways he was exactly the visionary leader his company needed during this difficult period, I marveled at how utterly oblivious he was. His behavior was hurting his employees’ morale, his team’s performance, and his own reputation. Even losing some of his best people hadn’t shaken his self-­image as an effective and respected leader. But Steve’s team had had enough of his bullying. And somehow, I had to find a way to break that to him. More fundamentally, Steve lacked the single most important, and yet least examined, determinant of success or failure—­in the workplace, or anywhere else. I’ve spent the last four years studying self-awareness. My research team and I quantitatively surveyed thousands of people around the world in ten separate investigations. We analyzed nearly 800 scientific studies. We conducted in-depth interviews with dozens of people who made dramatic improvements in their self-­awareness.

While a precise definition is more complex than it first seems, self-­awareness is, at its core, the ability to see ourselves clearly—­to understand who we are, how others see us, and how we fit into the world. Since Plato instructed us to “know thyself,” philosophers and scientists alike have extolled the virtues of self-­awareness. Indeed, this ability is arguably one of the most remarkable aspects of being human. In his book The Telltale Brain, neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran poetically explains:

Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars. Apes live, contend, breed and die in forests—­end of story. Humans write, investigate, and quest. We splice genes, split atoms, launch rockets. We peer upward . . . and delve deeply into the digits of pi. Perhaps most remarkably of all, we gaze inward, piecing together the puzzle of our own unique and marvelous brain . . . This, truly, is the greatest mystery of all.

Some have even argued that the ability to understand ourselves is at the core of human survival and advancement. For millions of years, the ancestors of Homo sapiens evolved almost painfully slowly. But, as Ramachandran explains, about 150,000 years ago, there was an explosive development in the human brain—­where, among other things, we gained the ability to examine our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as to see things from others’ points of view (as we will learn, both of these processes are absolutely critical for self-­awareness). Not only did this create the foundation for higher forms of human expression—­like art, spiritual practices, and language—­it came with a survival advantage for our ancestors who had to work together to stay alive. Being able to evaluate their behaviors and decisions and read their impact on other members of the tribe helped them, to use a slightly more modern reference, not get voted off the island.

Flash forward to the twenty-­first century. Though we may not face the same day-­to-­day threats to our existence as our ancestors did, self-­awareness is no less necessary to our survival and success—­at work, in our relationships, and in life. There is strong scientific evidence that people who know themselves and how others see them are happier. They make smarter decisions. They have better personal and professional relationships. They raise more mature children. They’re smarter, superior students who choose better careers. They’re more creative, more confident, and better communicators. They’re less aggressive and less likely to lie, cheat, and steal. They’re better performers at work who get more promotions. They’re more effective leaders with more enthusiastic employees. They even lead more profitable companies.

On the flip side, a lack of self-­awareness can be risky at best and disastrous at worst. In business, regardless of what we do or what stage we’re at in our careers, our success depends on understanding who we are and how we come across to our bosses, clients, customers, employees, and peers. This becomes even more important the higher we ascend on the corporate ladder: senior executives who lack self-­awareness are 600 percent more likely to derail (which can cost companies a staggering $50 million per executive). And more generally, un-­self-­aware professionals don’t just feel less fulfilled in their careers—­when they get stuck, they tend to have trouble figuring out what their next phase should even be.

The list goes on and on. After so many years of researching the subject, I would go so far as to say that self-­awareness is the meta-­skill of the twenty-­first century. As you’ll read in the pages ahead, the qualities most critical for success in today’s world—­things like emotional intelligence, empathy, influence, persuasion, communication, and collaboration—­all stem from self-­awareness. To put it another way, our self-awareness sets the upper limit for the skills that make us stronger team players, superior leaders, and better relationship builders. And here, even small gains in self-awareness can have a big payoff.

Now, you’d certainly be hard-pressed to find many people who don’t instinctively know that self-­awareness is important. After all, it’s a term we tend to toss around pretty freely ­about our boss, our colleagues, our in-­laws, our politicians. Although have you noticed that when we do, it’s usually in the negative, as in “so-­and-­so just isn’t self-­aware”? Despite the critical role it plays in our success and happiness, self-­awareness is a remarkably rare quality.

For most people, it’s easier to choose self-­delusion—­the antithesis of self-­awareness—­over the cold, hard truth. This is particularly true when our delusion masquerades, as it often does, as insight. I recently picked up Travis Bradberry’s best-­selling book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and I was astonished to learn that over the last decade, our collective emotional intelligence (EQ) has improved. (EQ is the ability to detect, understand, and manage emotions in ourselves and others, and countless studies have shown that people who have it are more successful, more resilient, more tolerant of stress, better at building relationships, and more.) But in my work as an organizational psychologist, Bradberry’s findings didn’t match what I had observed: at least anecdotally, I’ve seen low EQ becoming more, not less, of a problem in recent years.

It wasn’t until I took the online assessment that came with the book that I identified the stunning source of the discrepancy. While, yes, Bradberry’s research involved a staggering 500,000 people, his conclusions were based on their own self-­assessments. Think about that for a minute. Picture a few of the least emotionally intelligent people you know. If you asked them to evaluate their own EQ, how much would you bet that they’d see themselves as at least above average? So an alternative, and far more likely, explanation for Bradbury’s findings is a growing gap between how we see ourselves and what we really are. In other words, what looked like an increase in EQ was more likely a decrease in self-­awareness.

Our increasingly “me”-­focused society makes it even easier to fall into this trap. Recent generations have grown up in a world obsessed with self-­esteem, constantly being reminded of their wonderful and special qualities. It’s far more tempting to see ourselves through rose-­colored glasses than to objectively examine who we are and how we’re seen. And this isn’t just a generational problem, or even just an American one—­it afflicts people of all ages, genders, backgrounds, cultures, and creeds.

Right now, you might be mentally conjuring all the delusional people you know and chuckling—­the co-­worker who thinks he’s a brilliant presenter but puts everyone to sleep in meetings; the boss who brags about being approachable but terrifies her team; the friend who thinks she’s a “people person” but is always the most awkward guest at the party. Yet there’s something else we all need to consider. As the Bible asks, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:4). Whether it’s at work, at home, at school, or at play, we’re quick to accuse others of being unaware, but we rarely (if ever) ask ourselves whether we have the same problem. Case in point: in a survey that I conducted among potential readers of this very book, a full 95 percent reported that they were either somewhat or very self-­aware!

The truth is that while most of us think we know ourselves pretty well, this confidence is often unfounded. Researchers have established that our self-­assessments “are often flawed in substantive and systematic ways.” As you’ll read more about soon, studies show that we tend to be terrible judges of our own performance and abilities—­from our leadership skills to our car-­driving prowess to our performance at school and at work. The scariest part? The least competent people are usually the most confident in their abilities.

And in most cases, the planks in our eyes are pretty obvious to everyone but us. A tone-­deaf college student who drops out of school to become a singer. A braggadocious boss who reads scores of business books but remains a terrible leader. A parent who spends very little time with his kids but thinks he’s “Dad of the Year.” A thrice-­divorced woman who’s convinced that the end of each marriage was her ex’s fault.

But being overconfident about our abilities isn’t the only way that low self-­awareness can play out. Sometimes we lack clarity about our values and goals, causing us to perpetually make choices that aren’t in our best interests. Other times, we fail to grasp the impact we’re having on the people around us, alienating our colleagues, friends, and families without even knowing it.

Now, if that’s what unawareness looks like, the next logical question becomes: What does it mean to be self-­aware? When I began my four-­year empirical research program on the subject, answering this question seemed like a rather straightforward place to start. Yet I was stunned to learn just how many conflicting definitions existed. Without a clear definition of self-­awareness, though, how could I possibly develop a method to help people improve it? So my research team and I spent months reviewing hundreds of studies to see what patterns emerged. In the process, we unearthed two main categories of self-­awareness that, strangely, weren’t always related.

Internal self-­awareness has to do with seeing yourself clearly. It’s an inward understanding of your values, passions, aspirations, ideal environment, patterns, reactions, and impact on others. People who are high in internal self-­awareness tend to make choices that are consistent with who they really are, allowing them to lead happier and more satisfying lives. Those without it act in ways that are incompatible with their true success and happiness, like staying in an unfulfilling job or relationship because they don’t know what they want.

External self-­awareness is about understanding yourself from the outside in—­that is, knowing how other people see you. Because externally self-­aware people can accurately see themselves from others’ perspectives, they are able to build stronger and more trusting relationships. Those low in external self-­awareness, on the other hand, are so disconnected with how they come across that they’re often blindsided by feedback from others (that is, if others are brave enough to tell them). And very often, by the time they hear this feedback, their relationships are too far gone to be salvaged.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown Currency
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0525573941
• ISBN 13: 9780525573944
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352