Exploring the Power of Self-Awareness & Empathy: Personal Journeys and Professional Advacements

Did you know that owning up to our shortcomings is crucial for self-awareness and can dramatically boost our personal and professional skills? I (your host) embarked on an introspective journey, spurred by my alarmingly low empathy score, and today, I'll be sharing this transformative experience with you. We're going to discuss how self-awareness is key to improving conversation skills, public speaking, selling skills, and customer service. 

Throughout this episode, we will open up about my personal struggles with empathy, the lessons learned during the pandemic, and the positive changes self-awareness engendered in my work culture. But it doesn't stop there! I've also got some practical strategies for you, including a 90-day listening chat challenge and tips on effective journaling. Brace yourself for an engaging conversation about self-awareness, empathy, and emotional intelligence, and walk away with proven tips and strategies to better understand yourself and improve your personal and professional life.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

When it comes to self-awareness, one of the toughest things that we all go through is looking in the mirror and really going through the process of self-discovery. And I will tell you on a personal level I'd say it's about four or five years ago, you know, I got certified in emotional intelligence. Who are great coach in Dallas, texas, ed Hennessy and he said what do you think your low score was? And I said empathy. He said you're right. And I always thought about okay, that's me, that's my personality, but it's not.

Speaker 1: 1:07

Emotional intelligence can be improved, much like self-awareness. Now, I think, in order to improve anything conversation skills, public speaking, selling skills, customer service skills, whatever it is it starts with self-awareness. See, one of the toughest things that happens and I often use this as an example is I think about you know salespeople. You know when sales are up, look at me, I'm fantastic. When sales are down, wow, the market went south. And the funny thing about it is most people don't typically look in the mirror and say you know what? I didn't have a good selling season because I didn't handle objections well, I didn't negotiate well. That would be a healthy, self-awareness-driven answer. So self-awareness requires practice. So I started to take action and I remember Ed saying do you ever ask how other people feel? I said no, why I literally was that shut off from empathy.

Speaker 1: 2:03

And it's tough for me because I've been since the age of 14, I've been kind of on my own. I, you know, didn't get a lot of money from my parents. Since I was 14 years old I paid for my own college. I've always just worked through things and so even today, when people say, well, do you see, you know I'm struggling with, you know, mental health or anxiety, I know those are real things. I'm not putting those down, so don't write me. I struggle with that. Because I didn't have that, for lack of better description. I didn't have that cushion to say, well, you know, I can't work because I was on my own and so it's always taught me a really good thing. Yet it manifested itself in not such a great thing not being empathetic. So when the pandemic hit, thank goodness I was working with Ed because I did have people I work with that were really struggling, legitimately struggling mental health, anxiety and I kept saying take the day off, catch up with your hours. I would never have done that. The last two years we've given the people that work with us employees and contractors, most to the month of December and the first week in January off, almost a full month off, with pay. Enjoy your family, Enjoy your holidays. I would never have done that.

Speaker 1: 3:23

And then they always say to me well, are you going to work? I'm like, yeah, I'm going to work. I'm used to working, I like working, I like what I do. This is not a torturous job, this is actually a fun job.

Speaker 1: 3:34

So self-awareness takes action. Where can somebody start? What's an activity? Number one listening chats. Ask people twice a week and do this for 90 days. It'll take you 10 minutes every two weeks, 20 minutes total monthly. Number one ask what can I do to better serve you? Number two what can I do better as a teammate? Number three what are some things you feel like I do really, really well and that's it Now? Here's the rule of listening chat Just say thank you. See, most of the time we hear things we rebuttal them. We start thinking about what we wanna say. The rule of engagement is to write them down and just say thank you.

Speaker 1: 4:23

I've had more people come to me after doing that activity and literally say at first I hated it. Weeks later I am learning so much about what people need from me, cause, let's be honest, when we get into a conversation, we're running hard, we have meetings, we have reports, we gotta do, we gotta get projects done we're not thinking about. I gotta get into a listening state of mind and we cut our self off from self-awareness. So one of the things that when I did it, people would say, slow down. You can probably hear it in this podcast I talk fast, I think fast and everyone goes oh, that must be wonderful. You're so good on your feet. Now, communication wise, I can create heartache for people cause I talk too fast. So, number one, listening chat.

Speaker 1: 5:09

Number two journal. Now I know guys typically don't like to hear the word journal because it's oh, I don't wanna have a diary. But a journal is write down observations of other people in terms of what they do really well. That might equate to something that you have to do. So I had somebody a couple of years ago who just was not confident in running meetings and we identified somebody that does run a good meeting and we had her journal Every single time she attended one of this guy's meetings.

Speaker 1: 5:40

What he did really well, what did he look like and what she was really doing is writing down her own curriculum, her own training outline, her own personal development, outline of what she needed to do within about a year from the observations and then meeting with this person and saying how did you get to this point? What did you do to practice this? How did you become so good and confident in running your staff meetings? She became unbelievably good at running meetings. So, number one listening chats. Number two journal Write down observations of other things, of other people that will fuel your mind positively. And those are the two main actions to drive self-awareness.