Recently, I was talking with someone who was telling me about action steps they had been taking to grow their personal brand. As they were describing the steps, I was a bit surprised because these steps didn’t seem like they were related to this person and how he currently presents himself. I asked him how he decided on those steps, and he told me his colleague at work had done the exact same steps so he figured they would work for him too. In my mind I was yelling, “BUT YOU’RE NOT THEM!”. On the outside I was simply smiling and nodding.
I actually hear this a lot from individuals who are wanting to focus on their personal brand. They start jumping right into action steps they think they need to take based on what they’ve seen from others. But what they don’t realize is that each person’s path is different, and it’s based on that individual. What they don’t realize is the first step in any path of personal development is actually self awareness.
It only makes sense to have a better understanding of who you are, and where you are before you decide where you want to go. And really it goes deeper than that. Having self-awareness helps you know all about your personality traits, your habits, your strengths, your weaknesses. Self-awareness can come from what you learn and know about yourself, and it can come from what you learn on how others perceive you.
There are a few great methods for developing your own self-awareness.
Ask for feedback.
When you try to think of how others see you, it’s always best to go straight to the source. And it helps by directly asking others for feedback. By asking trusted peers, friends and even family members for feedback about how you relate to others, you’ll be able to better learn about your blind spots, those tendencies that you may not know about. So schedule regular conversations with those who can give you that valuable feedback: your supervisor, your peers, your team. Have them tell you where you’re doing well and where you can improve. Then be sure and thank them – their feedback will be a huge gift in helping you grow.
Be aware of your mood.
You may not realize this, but your mood impacts not only how you interact with others, it impacts those others too since moods are contagious. You may have been well-prepared for a 9:00am meeting and left in plenty of time to arrive a bit early. But, you had no control of the traffic jam due to unforeseen construction that left one lane open and a bumper-to-bumper line of cars standing still. If you’re self-aware then you can prevent yourself from carrying your frustration and anger with you to your meeting. That makes for a much more productive, and collaborative, environment than if you let your mood affect your interactions with others.
Take inventory of your habits.
Have you ever maintained a food journal where you write down everything that you eat and drink each day? When people first start this journal, they’re usually surprised at what, or how much, they’re actually eating. You can take the same approach with your regular habits each day. And you might be surprised with what you find too. Writing down what you do, and how you react to different situations, on a regular basis is an ideal way to increase your self-awareness. It gives you a clearer picture of how you operate and if you’re acting in a way that you’d prefer not to more often than you realize. Once you start journaling your habits, you’ll be much more aware of them and will start to head off any bad habits before they occur or prompt yourself to instill those good habits when you’d like them to occur.
Take personality assessments.
Taking a personality assessment can help you better understand yourself in ways you may not be aware. There are lots of personality assessments available to you that you can take online: Myers Briggs, StrengthsFinder, Cognitive Style Inventory, Kolbe A Index, and more. The information from these assessments can be really useful in helping you gain insights into your personality traits, tendencies, strengths and weaknesses. And the assessments will provide more information and guidance based on your individual results.
It may be difficult to try and take on all of these methods at once, so pick a few that you think you’ll be able to stick with. Once you start learning more about yourself, you’ll become more self-aware. And then it’ll be much easier to recognize the opportunities for you to develop action plans to grow further.
