“The day I decided that my life was magical, there was suddenly magic all around me.”

Marabeth Quin, mixed media artist.

Leadership: what not why.

You probably think self awareness is important, right? Most people do. And you probably feel that your own view of who you are, what you value and where you’re headed, drives your leadership style. Makes sense. But research from organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich found that although 90% of people claim to be self aware, only around 10%-15% actually are. Why? Well, because there are two types of self awareness. Internal awareness, knowing yourself. And external awareness, knowing how others see you. Tasha’s research confirms that for most, although you might have a clear internal view, it may not match the view others have of you. It’s like believing you’re a straight-talker, but being unaware that doing so makes everyone feel like crap. To be truly self aware, you need both.

A thought for leaders: One reason we misunderstand self awareness, is our tendency to introspect too much. We see self reflection as a path to greater self awareness. But Tasha’s research show this isn’t true. When we only introspect, we keep asking ourselves why to understand our emotions, behaviours or attitudes. But often (because we’re irrational), we just invent answers that sound good but aren’t true. Instead, she suggests changing why questions, to what questions. Instead of why did I get bad feedback, we should ask what can I do to improve in the future, so I can get better feedback. This turns self awareness from a me focus, into more of a we focus.

Performance: infinite work.

A thought for leaders: Conversations around AI tend to centre around organisational efficiency and speed. More for less. We mostly hear stories like the CEO of BT saying AI will allow them to strip out more than 40,000 jobs by 2030. Adding to the existential AI anxiety, technostress, and an ever present negative energy. But what if we re-framed how we think and speak about AI in our organisations? What if instead of obsessing about what it might take, we start focusing on what it might give us back. What if we see it as a positive force to give us back more valuable time. To do the things we actually want to do. And clearly, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Culture: strategic culture.

Culture is not only a challenging area, but it’s a challenging word. Firstly, we hear it so often it’s almost lost all meaning. Secondly, it’s often viewed in very binary terms. Good or Bad. Despite being a lot more nuanced. Why, for example, is one culture better than another. Why are they different or unique? And thirdly, culture is often viewed as a soft social construct, unconnected from business outcomes. The Economist recently commissioned a study of company culture (paywalled for full edition), where they analysed the culture of 900 large companies and rather than looking at generic good/bad, happy/sad, they broke culture into 9 elements: leadership, support, toxicity, work-life balance, agility, candour, innovation, strategy and transparency. The results shone some much needed light on the nuance of culture.

A thought for leaders: They found that culture is just like business strategy. Firstly, it’s about trade off’s and choices. In this company, we value this, above this. So companies can deliver on some things, but not others. Which means that secondly, it creates differentiated cultures. Which thirdly, should drive business outcomes and create value. The study found, for example, that SpaceX have a culture of innovation and agility. Whereas Lockheed Martin (which mostly has long term contracts), scores well on work life balance. These appeal to different employees. At different stages. Culture is a key business asset. The first step to realising that asset is recognising that yours is different, built on your strategic business choices, and designed to create value.

Podcast: EP 24: Culture in Chaos

Aligned to our theme on Culture, we have included a podcast from the vault: EP 24: Culture in Chaos. This episode serves as a reminder that, as a leader, whether you know it or not, you are the CCO, the Chief Culture Officer.

You can listen to it here.

Enjoy revisiting or newly discovering it 😊

You can follow Flow Group on LinkedIn here.

Hope you enjoyed, and please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

P.S. This month’s featured artist is mixed media artist Julie Cockburn. She is best known for embellishing and altering found photographs, immaculately adding hand-embroidered shapes to vintage portraits and landscapes. She has been honing her unique approach since childhood, producing instantly recognisable pictures that blur the lines between conceptual art, photography and craft.