Become Self-Aware (Walk the Talk) – Courageous Communicator Quest Challenge 2

You made it through the first Challenge, cheers! I expect you learned a great deal about your leadership style and strategy. The Challenge allowed you to hold a mirror up to yourself, any strategy like this can be helpful and get you better results.

Continuing on with the first part in our Courageous Communicator Quest—Knowing Yourself—we come to your next Challenge: Becoming Self-Aware (Walking the Talk).

In this week’s Challenge, you might hear some things about yourself that you don’t want to hear. Remember back to the introduction to this journey where I mentioned some might be easy for you, and with others, you might want to quit, to walk away, but in the end you will achieve greatness? This is one of those, a challenge where you will need to leave the safety of your comfort zone, but I urge you to keep going. It is worth it.

Challenge 2: Become Self-Aware (Walk the Talk)

The Myth

Great leaders do whatever they want and get to live to a completely different standard, but somehow, they get the people under them to do what they’re supposed to do.

The Truth

It might seem like those great leaders are doing whatever they want and don’t have to answer to anyone, but that’s not true at all. In fact, good leaders know that everything they do is modeling behaviors, setting expectations, and either directly or indirectly communicating to employees what his/her essential values are. Good leaders are highly self-aware: They pay attention to what they do and how they do it. And like those who live life in the public eye, they know everyone’s watching them and taking lessons away from what they do or say (and noticing if there’s a disconnect between the two).

The Courageous Communicator Challenge 

Find a truth teller (or tellers) around you. We all have a best friend or loved one outside of work who tells us what we need to hear, even when it’s tough love. We need the same at work. We all have blind spots. It’s a truism that the higher you go in an organization, the more often people will tell you what they think you want to hear, instead of what you need to hear. Truth tellers show us what we can’t see ourselves. To get started, ask your truth teller(s), “What do I need to know about myself that I am unaware of but other people see? What are things that I need to be aware of that would help me understand how I’m influencing people?”

What things do you think you might learn about yourself that you didn’t know before?

—David Grossman

Check back next week for the 3^rd Challenge where we’ll focus on Self-Disclosure.

If you are just joining us in our Courageous Communicator Quest Challenge, take a moment to start from the beginning here. 

Refer back to the previous challenge here: 

• Challenge 1 - Know Your Authentic Self

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