PTL Retreat #3
“Self Awareness : How do you find out about your blind spots as a leader?”
Facilitated by Mic, Mul and Ignas
Self Awareness
- The ability to monitor our inner and external world
- Developing self-awareness allows us to objectively and thoughtfully respond to our thoughts and feelings and understand their impact on others.
2 types of self awareness
- Internal self awareness — How we see our own values, passions aspirations, reactions (including thoughts, feelings, behaviours, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others
- External self awareness — How others view us, in terms of those same factors listed above. People who know how others see them are more skilled at showing empathy and taking others’ perspectives. For leaders, it translates into their employees having a better relationship with them and seeing them as more effective.
What vs. Why
- The problem with introspection is that most people are doing it incorrectly. We do not have access to many ofthe unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motives. We tend to invent answers that feel true but are often wrong.
- To increase productive self-insightand decrease unproductive rumination, we should ask what, not why
- What’ questions help us stay objective, future-focused, and ernpowered to act on our new insights.
- Leaders who focus on building both internal and external self-awareness who seek honest feedback from loving critics, and who ask what instead of why can learn to see themselves more clearly
How to increase self awareness
Otto Scharmer observed that many failures at work can be attributed to a lack of listening, and therefore a lack of understanding of the situation at hand. He and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed 4 Levels of Listening model for developing effective leadership skills, self-awareness, and driving organisational change:
- Downloading: reconfirming what we already know. Everything we hear is being projected onto preconceptions of the situation, and is reflecting the past rather than the present moment.
- Factual listening: We listen with an entirely open mind and without any presumptions or prior judgements that allow us to notice disconfirming information.
- Empathic listening: We see the situation through the eyes of another in order to see the world, situation, subject or opinion as they do. This level also provides the listener with alternative perspectives which can help to sculpt and define their decision-making.
- Generative listening: also called creative listening - This is listening with a focus not just on the other person as they are now, but on their potential and the possibilities you can create with them. It is listening with an open will - looking to an emerging future. Great coaches are often skilled in this type of listening. This level can be used to envisage individual development, and can also be used to design and plan organisational change.
Mental Model
We heighten awareness for the system, so there’s new choice and therein a new future. We are not Agents of CHANGE; We are Agents of AWARENESS - The Thought Collective
Questions to reflect
- What are our boundaries?
- What are our models?
- How do we understand our impact?
- What are our perspectives influenced by?
Ethics
Product Management helps bridge customers and business in
- Value Management
- Facilitator of Conversations
- Big view vs the “Now view”
- Keeper of responsible decisions
- Keeper of value conscience
Yet, nothing in product training prepares us for making ethical decisions. Ethics provides system of moral principles that affects how we make decisions and lead our lives - balance what is good for individual (me) and society (we).
Consider how code of ethics for product managers help us resolve problems like: personal conflicts, value conscience, abandonment, do no harm, greater good, stakeholder conflicts, accountability, jurisdiction, reputation, public welfare, alignment and trust.