In my last newsletter, I posted the results of a large study by The Hay Group where 17,000 employees were interviewed to measure their individual levels of emotional self-awareness. I expressed my surprise that only 19% of women exhibited high self-awareness, and only 4% of men in the survey population exhibited self-awareness. This supports top business leaders’ emphatic declarations that emotional self-awareness is among the most critical needs in short supply among key employees, managers and leaders.
We do a great deal of marketing aimed at people in all walks of life. Since there isn’t a line forming at our door, I’d guess either people feel they are doing just fine in being self-aware, or they can’t recognize their self-awareness shortcomings.
Statistics suggest most of us just don’t realize how unaware we are. With anxiety and depression running rampant at 30% of our population, chronic or periodic stress levels up at 80% of our population, and sale of psychotropic drug prescriptions at almost $1trillion per year, a whole lot of people are pretty unhappy and too numb to do anything to fix it.
We talk to leaders young and old about engaging in self-awareness coaching, yet very few get excited by the prospect. This is a serious and insidious problem.
In stark contrast, among the top organizations in the world, the great majority of CEO’s have virtually permanent relationships with coaches. Alan Mulally, formerly CEO of Ford, Frances Hesselbein, for many years the leader of Girls Scouts of America, and Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of World Bank Group, all have had coaches during most of their exceptional careers. Each of these highly talented and successful people claim coaching made all the difference in their careers and in their lives. Virtually all top athletes and performers work with coaches continually to help keep them competing in top form.
It seems incongruent that the very best of our top leaders, athletes and performers use coaches constantly, while so many less accomplished people reject coaching as unnecessary or inconsequential.
Why is this so? Why do the best performers want coaching, and the rest reject it? I suspect it has to do with mindset. People with a growth mindset feel they can always get better. In their mind there is no end to their capability to improve. They might not always know exactly how to make those leaps in performance by themselves, and for that they turn to coaching and training.
In others who have a more fixed mindset, they feel they are already as good as they can be, so why waste time and money on coaching. Unfortunately for these people, they are living a self-fulfilling prophesy. They feel they are limited in ability, and thus their thinking makes it so.
Those with a growth mindset seem to have a subtle spark of enthusiasm or motivation that whispers messages of encouragement and inspiration about a more limitless potential within. I don’t know if some people are born with the spark and some aren’t. We do know that people can be taught a growth mindset, so maybe that suggests that this spark of inspiration can be implanted.
But first people must become open up to the possibility that they can be better. One of the world’s great coaches, Marshall Goldsmith laughs about his initial experience with a new client. Goldsmith’s initial work with all new clients is to interview bosses, colleagues and direct reports about the skills, behaviors, interests and blocks their colleague (his new client) exhibits in his working relationship with them. Goldsmith asked his new client to name at least 9-12 people he worked with so that Marshall could get started.
His new client gave him the names Marshall asked for, then suggested that Goldsmith would need to work hard to draw out of these people, constructive feedback and criticism since they liked and admired him so much. Marshall nearly fell off the chair laughing. His client’s bosses, colleagues and direct reports required no encouragement at all to give mountains of corrective, supportive feedback for change in their colleague’s behavior.
Marshall Goldsmith later stated that none of us are very aware of how negatively…or sometimes positively…our behavior impacts our colleagues, friends or family. That might be part of the reason people are reticent about coaching. Either their fragile egos can’t stand the constructive criticism, or they are just blind about their own lack of self-awareness.
We are certain to see an exponential growth in coaching over time, because many more people are receiving coaching, and talking about the remarkable benefits they got from coaching. The word is spreading. The earlier you start coaching to build your self-awareness, the happier, healthier, more influential and successful you will become. If you are talented and successful now, you’ll be surprised at how much better you can be.
Remember, one simple discovery can make all the difference for a person.
We are now taking enrollments for our March classes.
Tom Searcy, BCC
Spirit of Eagles
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