Observing Others – A Self Awareness Tool

Self Awareness is Critical

Like I said in my previous article titled Self Awareness a 5 Step Process, self awareness is a key to personal growth. Without utilizing self awareness your efforts in self improvement and personal growth will be hampered. Without self awareness you will still be able to put self improvement techniques into action, but you will not be able to utilize them to their full potential. It is self awareness that allows us to evaluate ourselves honestly, in real life situations and make real, life changing adjustments.

Self awareness, or self reflection, is the art of looking honestly at yourself; judging motives and causes in your life for your actions; evaluating your thought patterns; seeing your body language for what it says; analyzing your communication skills; reflecting on your dreams, wants and desires; and understanding how others see you, and then acting to improve yourself with this new found knowledge.

So, how can observing others be a tool in your ’self awareness’ repertoire?

The Observing Others Tool

It’s quite simple actually. In fact, it is the simple things that we often forget to do, because we are too absorbed in the stress and bustle of our lives. So, take this tool and make a conscious effort this week to apply it at every opportunity.

Observe in others those things you like and don’t like. What are the habits, actions, words, tone of voice, body language, etc that you notice – good or bad. Write those down. But don’t go overboard – just one or two items about each person. Later when you are calm and it is quiet review your observations. Then look for these same habits within yourself and in this way these observations become a tool for self reflection, a method of evaluating ourselves.

But, be careful. Let me caution you on several points, which are very important!

You are not trying to become like these other people. Be yourself, only better.
These observations are new lenses to look at yourself through; they are not a measuring stick to evaluate your value or someone else’s.
You are not trying to compare yourself to these people. Do not categorize people by those you are better than and those that you are worse than. This is nonproductive!
You are trying to view yourself differently by looking for those things you see in other people which you like and don’t like.
Don’t try to change more than one thing at once. At first just try to get the process down.

Also, when observing those around you take note of how they react to you. How does your voice, your body language, delivery of opinions, etc., impact them? Are you having a positive effect on them? Again, armed with these observations, find that quiet time to reflect on what they mean.

So , there are two types of external observations a truly self aware person will utilize:

Observing the actions and words of others, both positive and negative, and how those impact those around them, including yourself.
Observing how your own actions and words impact those around you.

Armed with these observations you can analyze yourself looking for opportunities to make positive improvements. Once you have identified the opportunities and have prioritized them into an actionable list utilize my 5 step process outlined in my article titled Self Awareness a 5 Step Process.

Real life

Let me leave you with an example….

In a past position I was a senior manager of a large team of professionals. I was building this team from the ground up and establishing a project management office (PMO). I hired staff of various levels of experience in order to meet the organizational needs. This team grew to more than twenty people.

During the various meetings we had I noticed the body language of several people towards me. Particularly, I observed an individual get slightly agitated, or nervous and hurry through his presentation. On another occasion I observed a team member looking at me in an out of the ordinary way. With those observations in hand I tried to figure out what was causing these reactions. It did not take me long to figure out the problem. In this case I even went to those two individuals to validate that I had rightly evaluated the situation.

The problem was, I was sitting back in my chair with my arms crossed. This was sending some people the message that I was closed off, not supportive of what they were saying, or otherwise disengaged from the meeting. Perhaps some of you have had trainings or read articles about body language. If so, can understand how these people were feeling. Crossed arms and leaning back is an obvious sign to many people that someone is not on the same page as them.

I can hear you saying it now, “Easy fix… don’t cross your arms, Jeff.” Your also thinking, “Pretty lame example.” Not so fast. Your forgetting step number three in the 5 step process:

(3) Analyze the information carefully and don’t jump to the first obvious solution or course of action.

There was more involved than what seemed obvious and there were more opportunities especially for me who was in a leadership role. Even as I sit writing this article the root of the problem plagues me. My hands get very cold…. <dead air> Excuse me, I had to stop and rub the chill out and sit on them for a minute before I could continue writing. You see I was crossing my arms so I could tuck my cold hands under may arms and warm them up, and I was leaning back because I have a bad back and reclining helps relieve the pressure on sore muscles from sitting in the same position too long.

I addressed the issue in several ways. First, I told everyone on my team about my cold hands and bad back. Trying to keep my team open and comfortable, I even made jokes about my hands and back in meetings as I would sit on my hands, or cross my arms and lean back. They appreciated the honesty and typically they no longer responded negatively to my body language once they understood the reasons behind it. I also tried to show each person an appropriate amount of attentiveness by leaning towards them during their portions of the meeting and not staying in the ‘arms-crossed-leaning-back’ position too long. I also used this information to monitor myself in meetings outside of my team. I could not tell everyone in the 3000 person organization about my cold hands and bad back. In these cases I found other ways to warm my hands that did not send the wrong signal to people. In the end I executed three solutions:

Honest communication to my team.
Adjusted by own behavior in my team meetings.
Found more subtle ways to warm my hands in other situations.

If you have not noticed there was another benefit of this observation. I was able to create an object lesson for my team. They were jumping to a conclusion about my body language and I was able to show them the error of their way. Sometimes we know just enough to get ourselves in trouble. Also, there is another good point here, which I shall write about soon in greater detail. Some of my staff were taking my problem, misunderstanding it and turning it into their problem. One gentleman in particular thought that I was dissatisfied with him because of my body language.

Wrapping it Up

Look over this article and compare it to the 5 step process I have outlined in Self Awareness a 5 Step Process. You will find that I followed those steps in this example. Consider my 5 step process a training tool. You are training yourself to think and act differently. As you follow these steps over time they will become second nature. We are not all born with the ability to exercise effective self awareness, and even if we are good at making the observations we may not be good at selecting the correct solution and executing it. In all processes there is an evaluate step, just as in my 5 step process.

Observation of both ourselves and those around us is a critical part of self awareness. Observe to learn. Self awareness through observation is a proactive approach to self improvement. Through observation you can discover your opportunities before they become liabilities.

Practice the observation skills until they are a part of your life. Utilize the 5 step process until it is second nature. Look for opportunities for self improvement and perhaps along the way you will discover, like I did, an opportunity to help others grow as I did in my example above. That is ‘unselfish help’ helping others as you help yourself.

Author: Jeff Harris

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