What do YOU bring to your network? Add value by understanding how you show up.
Editor’s Note: This was originally published in the May 11, 2021 Newsletter.
How well do you know yourself?
It has taken me a long time to confidently present my true self. I spent many years trying to be something I wasn't, both personally and professionally. I still wrestle with this occasionally, but less often and with more awareness. As I have grown - in years, in experience, and in self-knowledge - I have become better at exercising my strengths and mitigating my weaknesses. It is easy to dismiss this as a privilege of self-employment, but integrating your own needs with those of the business is just as valuable (and just as possible) in-house.
Knowing ourselves can be as simple as understanding who and what we are, and who and what we are not. We learn this through lived experience, reflection and introspection, feedback and commentary. We can accelerate it through assessments. There is often discomfort on the road to integrating all this, but it is so worth it!
Self-knowledge allows us to operate with effective authenticity. We can tell when someone is interacting inauthentically. We pull back because it doesn't feel good. We often fail to acknowledge that inauthentic interactions are also ineffective. A lack of authenticity undermines trust and reduces enjoyment. It makes us shorten the amount of time we spend with someone and slide them down our priority list. None of these enhance business!
I have found my business interactions have changed since I stepped confidently into who I am. I'm not everyone's cup-of-tea, but my self-knowledge supports consistency in how I show up. I'm a fast thinker, wired to solve and help, and more connected to processes and tasks than to people. I'm a great thinking partner and strategy sounding board. I'm a lousy companion for happy hour. I probably won't enquire after your weekend, but I will send you resources to help you solve a challenge. Sound familiar?
Who are you? Do you know? How can you bring your true self to work today? I promise you, it's worth it.
Building self-knowledge, together and alone.
Assessments can be a wonderful tool to build self-knowledge, and their usefulness is deepened if you share what you learned. This can be in discussion with a friend or partner, in collaboration with your work team, or with an expert facilitator. Two of our favorite tools for self-knowledge are the VIA Strengths Survey (previously shared in our edition on Values and Drivers) and the Predictive Index. In this video, I share what I learned when I first took the Predictive Index assessment a decade ago.
If you're not in the mood to take assessments, the time-honored practice of journaling is remarkable for building self-knowledge. Whether using a simple habit tracker (James Clear has lots of ideas), keeping a Gratitude Journal (this quiz will help you assess your current gratitude practice), or engaging in a regular reflective practice (even ten minutes a day), journaling allows us to capture and analyze. We can observe trends, track actions and outcomes, and build a strong sense of who we are - then use that in our business lives.