The Art of the Science Behind qChange Series: Perception vs Reality

The Art of the Science Behind qChange series highlights the Science behind qChange, while also describing the Art of applying that Science. In previous weeks we focused on utilizing Nudge Theory to prompt positive behavior from leaders right before critical meetings. Then we walked through how we use Neuro-Linguistic Programming to talk to leaders in a style that resonates with them. Last week we spent time on Self Determination Theory (SDT) and our core needs that move us towards growth.

This week we’ll move from Self-Determination Theory to Self-awareness. Self-awareness is extremely important to leaders. If you're highly self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behavior with your values, and understand correctly how others perceive you.

In my experience, both working internally in a variety of leadership roles, in quite a range of organizations, and externally consulting to executive teams around the world, I’ve been around extremely self-aware leaders, and others that aren’t as self-aware.

Personally, I’ve had moments where I’ve been clueless, and totally missed something with my team, and other times when I’ve been more dialed in. Looking back, to help, I wish I had something available to me, in the moment, to center me and keep me more self-aware.

All kinds of important organizational outcomes are impacted by a lack of self-awareness. Dr. Tasha Eurich, in addition to receiving her Ph.D. from the same fab school as I did, Colorado State University (Go Rams), has written extensively about the importance of self-awareness on career success, job performance, leader effectiveness, team performance, and other critical organizational variables. For a nice summary of this, see Dr. Eurich’s HBR article: https://hbr.org/2018/10/working-with-people-who-arent-self-aware

Let’s come back to the stat in the title. This statistic from her studies blew me away. It also tells me that we’re on the right track with qChange. In their research program, they found that although 95% of people think they are self-aware, only 10-15% actually are. Wow.

At qChange, with our Leader Experience (LX) solution, we strive to bring more humanity to the workplace. Since leaders are estimated to impact 70% of the variance in employee engagement, creating greater leader self-awareness can be both financially and psychologically beneficial to organizations. Through our proprietary LX cycles, providing leaders nudges, feedback, measurement and development, in a continuous 360-degree manner, all in the flow of work, can greatly enhance self-awareness and shape us into the leaders that we want to be.

To learn more, please see: www.qchange.com