BUSINESS
Self-awareness
The silver bullet to professional growth by Jeffrey Scott Alan Stein, the author of Raise Your Game, agrees with me on this. In his excellent book, he tells the story of a young basketball player and how he could predict the player’s future success on the court based on his level of self-awareness off the court. This young basketball player chose to play for a high school team that would focus on improving his weaknesses and ignore the hype surrounding his talent.
Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Scott
Self-awareness is rarely discussed in business circles, and yet it tells you everything about your future. Last October I gave a lecture to a packed room at the Green Industry Expo in Louisville on the topic of Benchmarking for Profit. The audience learned my seven key performance indicators that you must benchmark (measure and manage) to improve your company's performance.
UAC MAGAZINE | WINTER 2020
Some of the benchmarks were as expected, such as labor, and some required outside-the-box thinking.
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Then, I ended the talk with a big surprise... I shared how you can benchmark your selfawareness (!), and why self-awareness is the single most important indicator of your future success.
Here is what the audience learned... Self-awareness is rarely discussed in business circles, and yet it tells you everything about your future.
Stein (who has coached hundreds of stars) says self-awareness is the single most critical characteristic of high-performing athletes. It’s what gets them to the top of their field and keeps them there every day. How strong is your self-awareness? And how can you improve it? As I wrote this article, I was visiting with an award-winning landscape company in Asheville, NC. They invited me in to guide the owner and his team to grow from good to great...to extraordinary. I laid out the strategies to fast forward their success and domination of the Asheville market. But it still requires the owner and his team to be open to hearing my direct feedback, and then be willing to act on it. With high levels of self-awareness, the owner and his team will easily surpass the extraordinary goals they have set!
How about you? Your challenge: Try this simple exercise to benchmark your selfawareness.
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Meet with your leadership team and ask each person to rate themselves and each other on the following question: "Are you an intimidating leader or an approachable leader?"
