Unlocking Team Potential: The Power of Self-Awareness
In business, you can have all the right strategies, tools and resources in place, but if you don’t also spend time focusing on the people within your teams, it’s never going to work. When a team of people are able to work together seamlessly as a unified whole, they can achieve amazing things. But all too often, individual issues, grievances, preferences and behaviours get in the way of success and can end up creating toxic environments. Productivity, motivation and attendance can plummet, customer service goes out the window and results go through the floor.
The thing is, every team is made up of people, and people are complicated. We all have different wants, needs, insecurities and behaviours which, when left untended, can clash with each other and create tensions and issues.
By focusing on self-awareness at an individual, team and even organisational level, the gaps can be spotted and dealt with, the communication can be enhanced and the productivity and effectiveness can fulfil expectations.
So how do you do that then, we hear you ask!
What is self-awareness?
Self-awareness is the ability to identify, acknowledge and understand our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. But contrary to common belief, there are two types of self-awareness: internal and external.
Internal self-awareness is about being conscious of what’s going
on within our own heads. It’s about how we manage our thoughts, emotions and behaviours and how honest we can be with ourselves.
External self-awareness is about how we believe we are perceived by others – and often that is where things can get very complicated indeed. Our minds play tricks on us all the time and we often take our assumptions about others to be facts.
When team members are self-aware, they are more mindful of their actions and the impact they have on others. This allows them to better navigate through complex team dynamics, identify and address potential conflicts, and work towards common goals.
Self-awareness within teams is essential for business success.
It contributes to:
- Better communication with fewer misunderstandings, leading to better outcomes for the business, customers and workforce.
- Enhanced problem-solving. Self-aware people with high emotional intelligence are open to shared thinking, feedback and constructive criticism which enables powerful problem-solving practice to develop across the team, leading to more diverse and innovative solutions.
- Increased trust. This often stems from better communication and understanding of one another, which is essential for effective collaboration, taking out defensiveness and adding in idea sharing, calculated risk taking and psychological safety.
- Improved motivation and productivity. A workforce that feels seen, heard and understood is much more likely to feel fulfilled and rewarded, and results are likely to improve leading to further collective success.
How do you develop self-awareness in teams?
One of the most effective ways to develop greater self-awareness in teams is through the (proper) use of personality profiling tools. At Spirus, we use Facet5, which is based on the Big 5 theory of personality and which has been proven to transform individuals, teams and organisations worldwide. From the lightbulb moments of self-recognition which happen so often in the personal profile to the pivotal team understanding delivered by the TeamScape tool, Facet5 provides a framework for effective interpersonal communication which facilitates feedback, development and unified growth within teams.
Using personality profiling to unlock the potential of teams stems from a few key factors, which include:
- Understanding individual differences: Personality profiling helps team members understand how they, and their colleagues, operate. By understanding each other’s strengths and development areas, team members can better leverage their individual strengths and work together more effectively.
- Conflict resolution: with greater understanding comes greater compassion and communication. A growing appreciation of people’s different communication preferences, interpersonal and leadership styles is essential for fostering a constructive and respectful team dynamic where conflict is dealt with in an open and healthy way.
- Better collaboration: being able to see where the similarities and differences are within teams allows leaders to deploy the right people for the right projects and gives everyone a chance to pre-empt and compensate for natural gaps.
- Smarter recruiting. While we do not advocate the use of personality profiling to “weed out” any individual, there is no doubt that having a transparent view of where the key strengths and development areas of a team are can be a huge advantage in recruiting and developing talent.
- Better leadership. Leadership today requires emotional intelligence and the ability to flex communication and leadership style to best suit the team members and the organisation requirements at hand. Having such in-depth insights into each person, and seeing how those individuals are mapped out across the team, gives leaders the best chance of success in their role.
There is no right or wrong when it comes to personality, but it’s no secret that some personality types will get along better than others. Shining a light on differences, within a safe and effective communication framework that allows constructive communication and development is a brilliant way to enhance team performance, and drive individual motivation, reward and fulfilment. We believe it is absolutely critical for building diverse, equitable and inclusive cultures which in turn are essential for successful business performance in the modern world.
What’s next?
If you would like to know more about our team effectiveness coaching, or about Facet5 personality profiles for individuals or teams, please drop us a line. We’d love to get to know you.
In conclusion, self-awareness within teams is critical for business success. When team members are self-aware, they can communicate effectively.