Recently, one of the biggest complaints that I have been hearing about leaders is how a lack of self-awareness is impacting their performance. Employees complain about leaders who are totally oblivious to how their behaviours, words and actions create distrust and frustration amongst those around them.
Workplaces tend to have lots of interdependencies, complexity and unknowns that change daily. High achievement leaders provide their team with contextual understanding of their work environment which is critical for the speed and efficiency of their team.
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An interesting comment that I often get from leaders is that employee engagement results often don't explain team performance. Some teams have high employee engagement, but don't perform so well.
Thanks to bad experiences, a cynical society or even the way we were brought up, we tend to search for people’s faults. Without being aware of it, we act like surly teenagers automatically finding the negative in anyoneand anything.
We are biologically wired to want to be with other people. It is a deep human need to feel like we belong and fundamental to human motivation.
In today’s fast-paced world, we often don’t have the luxury of time to build trust for time-sensitive projects. The ability to react quickly and adapt is critical. Teams must be put together quickly, decisions made and deadlines met.
Every single moment our brains are scanning our environment and calculating whether we can trust the people around us. At work, we need to feel confident that speaking up or making a mistake isn’t going to be a career-limiting move. Our brain asks regularly – Am I safe to be myself? Do I belong to this team? Do we share a meaningful future together?
“Organisations learn only through individuals who learn.” Peter Senge, MIT
Humans are designed to avoid conflict. Employees fear speaking up about issues in case it makes them look stupid or unpopular. Having the courage to be vulnerable in a high stakes situation takes a lot of guts.
Thousands of years ago, when humans roamed the African savannah, it was in our best interests to live in tribes. Being part of a tribe allowed us to sleep soundly knowing that others were looking out for man-eating sabre-toothed tigers.
We are biologically programmed to want to be with people and work together, as we instinctively know it helps our survival. We feel alive when we are with other people. Yet, there is a dark underbelly to this need to be with others - we also fear rejection. In fact, neuroscience studies have uncovered we experience social rejection like physical pain.