5 Develop Self-awareness
Emilda Thavaratnam
Do you know who you are? Are you conscious of your character, emotions, motives, and desires? If you can clearly identify these factors, then you have practised self-awareness in some form. Self-awareness is key to reflecting on and reinventing our communication.
What You’ll Learn:
- How to practise self-awareness when communicating
Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times bestselling author of the book Insight. In this video, she explains why we may not be as self-aware as we think.
The Self-awareness Framework
Being self-aware, knowing who we are and how others see us, can help us develop our unique voices as communicators. While Dr. Eurich’s strategies can be used in all facets of daily life, here we will use them specifically in relation to communication.
Take a look at Dr. Eurich’s (2017) framework for developing self-awareness:
- Being open and curious: Rather than focus on what went wrong in your communication, focus on what you can learn from the experience.
- Daily check-ins: Reflect on your experiences at the end of the day. Ask yourself: What went well? What didn’t go well? What can I learn to do better tomorrow?
- Dinner of truth: Have a meal with a close friend or family member, someone who cares about your well-being, and ask them to tell you how they see you. In other words, ask them what they like about you and what they find challenging.
Being self-aware has numerous benefits for your communication skills:
- Helps you become open to feedback
- Helps you recognize your biases and blind spots
- Widens your perspective so you can build closer relationships with others
Dr. Eurich’s self-awareness framework and approaching communication as a vessel for creating community are concepts that can be universally applied.
This example shows the internal and external conversations of an individual who recently went for an Early Childhood Education job interview.
Being open and curious: I was nervous during my interview, so I may have spoken too abruptly and quickly. This did not allow me to let the manager know that I am passionate about this profession. Next time, I will slow down my pace and focus on sharing my experiences teaching abroad in vulnerable communities. This is the person with whom I’ll be working, so I want them to understand that I value their experience and want to be part of their school. I will share my experiences in a follow-up email.
Daily check-ins: My interview didn’t go too well today, but tomorrow I’m going to go back to looking for jobs. I think I will also rewrite my cover letter to tailor it to the child-care jobs I’m applying for. I want the person who reads my cover letter to know I share the same values and am passionate about childcare.
Dinner of truth: “Thanks for joining me for dinner, mom. My interview did not go too well today. I was extremely nervous, and I feel like I may have spoken really fast and may have interrupted the employer. Do you feel like I interrupt you? What do you notice about the way I speak? Is there anything I should change?”
Apply Dr. Eurich’s three-step self-awareness framework to your last piece of communication. It could be a phone call, a social media exchange, an essay submitted for a class, a presentation, or an interview. Respond to the questions below:
- What can you learn from the experience?
- Reflect on the experience and ask yourself: What went well? What didn’t go well? What can I learn to do better tomorrow?
Once we know who we are and the way others see us, we can reflect on our communication skills and create strategies to connect and engage in meaningful communication with others.
