In your preparation for My EQ you learned about the importance of developing insight and greater self awareness. You cannot develop your EQ without learning to become more self - aware. Without becoming self - aware you are doomed to repeat old behaviors. So how do you develop insight and self - awareness?
The very first step is to carefully read through your Expert Guides. The Expert Guide is a powerful tool for helping you to learn more about yourself and forms one of the cornerstones of My EQ. In Module 2 we unpacked how the Expert Guides are structured. You should always acquaint yourself thoroughly with the content of your Expert Guide when you are working on a development area, and refer back to it frequently.
In fact, we strongly recommend that you read the Expert Guide DAILY pertaining to a particular development area, for as long as you are working on it. The principle of repetition is consistent with many of the principles we taught in the preparation module - Brain Plasticity, Tiny Habits, increasing awareness and breaking down defenses.
Let's talk about this point a bit more. You get awareness, and then you get awareness and not all awareness is the same. An excellent metaphor for awareness is your eyesight or vision. Some things you see are in your PERIPHERAL vision. You see things out of the corner of your eye, but they are blurred, you can't immediately make sense out of them and are only vaguely aware of them. Reading your Expert Guide only once on the Personality Dimension you are working on will only serve to place that information in your Peripheral Awareness.
It is important to understand that your old habits, perception and self - knowledge will compete very hard with the new information about yourself that is being brought into awareness. It is like an arm wrestle. The old habits/self - perceptions being the powerful arm from years of practice, and the new habits/information being the weak arm. It will be a no - contest without repetition - repeatedly working through your Expert Guide. The new inputs from the Expert Guide will quickly be extinguished by your old habits and self - perceptions.
What you want to do, is place the information in your Expert Guide in your CENTRAL vision where it is kept clearly in focus. As you learn to keep the feedback and information in the Expert Guide in focus, you will find that you begin taking OWNERSHIP of what it is teaching you. Over time, you will begin to internalise and automate the information in the Expert Guide and it will begin to form part of your Self - Concept, Radar and Skills Set for regulating yourself, working with people and managing tasks more intelligently. It will literally be like learning to look at the world through a different lens. Although you are provided with a number of other development tools which are discussed in the rest of this module, putting on new lenses through daily readings of your Expert Guide in itself will bring about important behavioral shifts.
Why? Because the brain works according to the principles of servo - mechanisms. A servo - mechanism is a device (often used in engineering and robotics) that will automatically activate a change or a correction in performing some functions according to a predetermined set point. In psychological terms repeated use of the Expert Guide creates a "device" or new neural pathways in the brain (remember the article on Brain Plasticity?) that will automatically activate a change or correction in performing functions (how you deal with work situations) according to a predetermined set point (which is the new knowledge you acquire about yourself and alternative ways of behaving set out in the Expert Guide).
Please read the Benessere.Com article on Psycho - cybernetics for more on how servo - mechanisms work in psychology. Click here for the article.
Daily reading of your Expert Guide is therefore a critical step in creating self - insight and awareness.
In addition to reading your Expert Guide daily, you should also complete the rest of the activities under Increasing Insight and Self Awareness set out in the Companion Workbook (remember these can be found in the Download section of this website).
Under the Self Awareness section in your Companion Workbook, you are asked to complete a number of activities:
- Firstly you are asked to reflect on how the Personality Dimension you are dealing with works for you.
- Then you are asked to reflect on which of the counterproductive behaviors work against you.
- This is followed by asking you to reflect on how the counterproductive behaviors constrain your effectiveness as a leader
- Then you are asked to observe your own behavior at work for a few days and to make a check next to the counterproductive behaviors you have become aware of in the table provided in the workbook
- Finally you are asked to make notes on how these Counterproductive Behaviors constrained your effectiveness
You may initially find it difficult to answer all of these questions, but if you persist and repeat them, you will undoubtedly find yourself becoming more aware of your own behavior.
We will show you how this works in practice. Please download the following file which provides an illustration of the completed Increasing Insight and Self - Awareness Activity. Study this illustration carefully and then to go to the Implementing Coaching Suggestions page.
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Insight and Awareness Illustration.pdf Size : 321.595 Kb Type : pdf |