Benefits of a Self-Aware Organization

Your behavioral report is a goldmine of information that can help you to better identify your own needs at work. It may give you insight into how others see you, or it may give you a new awareness of yourself. Scholars tell us self-awareness can increase our communication and confidence, it can make us better leaders, it can help our decision-making, and it can even predict job performance.

The Self-Aware Individual:

So how do we put this new insight to work for you immediately? There are a few ways:

See yourself through the eyes of others.

One of the most revealing aspects of your Reference Profile is the unflinchingly objective view of your own behavior it offers. Confusing feedback you’ve had in the past may suddenly become clearer after you read your profile and see how your behavior might look to others.

Understand yourself better.

If you’re a highly self-aware person already, your Reference Profile might have been full of information you already knew. But even for the most introspective among us, a profile can still hold a few surprises. For some, it’s affirming to see your needs articulated so clearly. For others, there’s comfort in knowing those needs are perfectly legitimate, understandable, and common.

Find opportunities for growth.

These revelations can also highlight areas in need of self-improvement. As you look through your profile, try to identify which observations you find affirming, and which feel like opportunities for change.

Help others understand you.

Now that you see how you might be coming across, you have a real opportunity to communicate more clearly to coworkers and managers. Your report offers objective language to frame conversations with coworkers about how you like to work. For example: you can share your report directly with your peers and manager so that they can understand more about your work style.

Set expectations and limits.

You may also want to use your report as a tool to help you set goals and boundaries. For example, you can ask your peers to give you the time you need to process information—or ask your boss for opportunities to solve problems on your own—without feeling self- conscious or needy. Your report shows that you’re wired to think and work this way.

The Self-Aware Colleague

What are the benefits of knowing your co-worker’s behavioral styles? Here are a few ways that understanding the profiles of colleagues can help your teams work more smoothly:

Build balanced teams.

Have you ever been on one of those combative teams that is all coaches and no players? Or one where conversations go in circles for hours, with no one willing to step up or make a decision? This happens when the team members have very similar behavioral drives. Studies show that diverse teams are smarter and more effective. This concept extends not only to race and gender, but also to behavioral personality type. Knowing everyone’s Reference Profiles can help us build balanced teams, and set us up for success.

Understand team personality.

Most teams tend to take on a personality of their own. It’s helpful to have information about the members of a team as we observe the team itself. It might enable us to re-create a great dynamic again (or avoid poor dynamics in the future). For example, if we’re assembling an exploratory team to take risks and push past barriers, that team requires a much different mix of behavioral profiles than a team that’s meant to thoughtfully research a problem.

Assign team roles.

Another benefit of understanding behavioral profiles is that it gives us insight when it comes to assigning roles to team members. Our traits will draw us naturally to accept roles such as leader, auditor, scribe, etc. When assigning roles to team members, leaders should seek to match roles to each employee’s individual style and preferences.

Team work styles

Every team tends to evolve a set of formal or informal values of its own. Knowing your team members’ Reference Profiles can help you set up processes and ground rules right away. Is this a team that will hold regular meetings and adhere to an agenda? Is this a team that will prefer to set objectives and check in via email? Or is this a team that will call meetings dynamically as events occur, and quickly parse out action items? Now you can make those decisions up front in a way that makes everyone more comfortable.

The Self-Aware Leader

How can you use a behavioral profile to become a stronger leader? Here are a few ways to help your team and take into consideration the needs of individuals:

Coach and develop your team.

Behavioral profiles can play a clarifying role in both coaching and giving feedback. They help you to easily manage to an employee’s strengths

and adjust to their communication and feedback needs. Profiles can also help you in succession planning and developmental planning—facilitating conversations with employees about their professional goals and identifying which roles may be best suited for which team members.

Bring in the right talent.

Hiring can be a challenge in any organization, and understanding the behavioral patterns of incoming candidates can help you find the right fit for a role, hire for team cohesion, and also ensure a good mix of behavioral diversity in your organization.

The Self-Aware Workplace

When you empower an entire team of individuals with deep insights into their own motivations and those of others, what happens? We know from studies that high self-awareness levels in organizations lead to better decision quality, coordination, and conflict resolution.