Leadership - Insight - development
Insight - development
Basic needs
In order to think about and develop your skills in any area you will need to make time.
Schedule it into your diary.
Perception
We know that perception is a sign of seeking the underlying meaning in something and from this clarifying understanding.
You won’t be able to do this if you just accept the status quo and do not have an enquiring mind.
Acceptance often means stagnation in the long term and a missed opportunity to discover something new.
In medicine you may be able to diagnose a problem by observing signs but you may be much better informed once you have all the symptoms.
You will only get all of the symptoms by asking questions.
Relaxed mind
In order to gain insight you must be able to accept that different views from your own, exist.
The trouble is some people have closed minds to change and are entrenched in their own views.
This is the case for those people in a rut of doing things in the same old way.
They often use past experience as the corner stone of a rigid view on how an activity should be carried out.
If this is the situation this closed view must be relaxed. Once this rigidity in thinking is gone people are then open to influences from other sources. This could be people, books and visual media etc.
After this the mind regroups encompassing this new information.
Hopefully, the addition of new information will provide insight into a problem and result in consideration of a different option.
Psychometric tests
There are many tests that exist that will give an indication into your personality traits.
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
- FIRO-B (Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation - Behaviour)
- OPQ (Occupational Personality Questionnaire)
Self awareness
One of the key principles of leadership is to adopt the values you live by with the people you interrelate with.
You can’t really objectively look at developing your insight by observing the behaviour of others until you have carried out the exercise on yourself.
You need to make a conscious decision to assess your own position.
The application of honesty is required so that you don’t fool your self into a false sense of security.
It is easy to make assumptions about how you behave without having any great evidence to support it.
It is hard to see your own behaviour as others see you.
Gaining awareness is really making the effort to improve your perception of a particular behaviour.
Consider the following.
- What did the behaviour convey? Satisfaction, frustration, acceptance, anger? Try to get a feel of what may have been the underlying issues. Were there any hidden agendas?
- Once you have a series of fundamental issues examine them to see if there are any common themes or connections.
- Is there a fundamental issue which is driving the main behaviour.
Basically, you are trying to get to the underlying reason for the behaviour so you can consider a course of action.
A common theme may be easier to address than several separate issues.
This sort of exercise should gradually improve your insight.
This simple process can be used for yourself and the behaviour of others.
The aim is to improve your ‘insight’ by increasing your awareness of your own behaviour and that of others.
New is good
Insight is closely allied to wisdom.
If you remember.
Wisdom
The ability or result of an ability to think and act utilizing knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight.
One problem is that some people are forever quoting past experience almost as a way of not doing anything new.
They stagnate and their insight development is usually poor.
One way of improving insight is to proactively explore new areas and experiences to add to the way you think about an issue.
These might be take the form of talking to others with.
- Differing political views.
- Alternative religious views.
- Gender or personal differences.
- Those having specific expertise.
- Persons working in a completely different environment.
We usually look at everything from our own perspective it is a good idea to try to sit in the other persons chair.
Consider what their motives might be and how they might approach an issue to gain additional insight.
It is usually a good idea to think about how your competitors are behaving both to gain development of insight and to consider these external threats. See S.W.O.T..
Successful insight is usually gained by asking relevant questions and to do this you must pay attention and listen well.
Each question should delve a little deeper into the problem until you are satisfied that understanding has been achieved.
Read widely
This method of gaining insight development is easy to do as finding and reviewing books is now very easy over the internet.
IQ and EQ
Being intelligent is not enough to be a good leader. Having a high IQ may help in terms of understanding acquired information.
Intelligence
The capacity for understanding; ability to perceive and comprehend meaning.
The understanding of the emotions and reactions of individuals is important.
How an individual copes with these and turns them into positive actions is extremely important as a leader.
This is termed Emotional Intelligence (EQ).
Typically, Emotional Intelligence seems to be twice as important as IQ for successful leaders.
It is very important to understand your own EQ and how it may affect others as you move up the ladder of responsibility.
Mood
We have all heard of the phrase ‘lead by example’. The mood of the leader will translate easily to the team or others.
This will be more evident if the leader is in a negative mood.
This applies to actions as well as emotions like frustration or enthusiasm.
If you are a good listener your team are more likely to follow suit.
If you encourage a no blame culture and back it up with your own actions others will follow.
Confidence in the leaders actions help others to mimic those actions lower down the chain.
EQ also applies to teams as opposed to individuals.
Teams containing a high level of persons with high EQ usually perform higher.
This requires making an effort to connect with other members of the team.
For example.
- Are you interested in finding the cause and solution to a problem without apportioning blame?
- Do you like to find out how people are doing when you meet them, or at a meeting or via social events?
- Have you ever bothered to check understanding and agreement or just assumed this is fine?
- Can you give constructive criticism without being rude and overly negative?
- Is feedback encouraged?
Overview
- Know yourself and the reason for key behaviours. Anger, frustration, enthusiasm, apathy etc.
- Assess these emotions and what causes them and devise a plan for self regulation.
- Assess how you behave towards others and the route causes and take necessary actions. How do you empathise with others?
- Consider practicing communication skills, relationship behaviours and building trust and team work between individuals and groups.
- When you have a negative emotion get to the route of the cause and do something to improve the situation should it arise again.