Insight: Why We're Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life - Hardcover

Eurich, Tasha

 
9780451496812: Insight: Why We're Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0451496817 ISBN 13: 9780451496812
Verlag: Currency, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Learn how to develop self-awareness and use it to become more fulfilled, confident, and successful.

Most people feel like they know themselves pretty well. But what if you could know yourself just a little bit better—and with this small improvement, get a big payoff…not just in your career, but in your life?
 
Research shows that self-awareness—knowing who we are and how others see us—is the foundation for high performance, smart choices, and lasting relationships. There’s just one problem: most people don’t see themselves quite as clearly as they could.
 
Fortunately, reveals organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, self-awareness is a surprisingly developable skill. Integrating hundreds of studies with her own research and work in the Fortune 500 world, she shows us what it really takes to better understand ourselves on the inside—and how to get others to tell us the honest truth about how we come across.
 
Through stories of people who have made dramatic gains in self-awareness, she offers surprising secrets, techniques and strategies to help you do the same—and how to use this insight to be more fulfilled, confident, and successful in life and in work.  

In Insight, you'll learn:

• The 7 types of self-knowledge that self-aware people possess.
• The 2 biggest invisible roadblocks to self-awareness.
• Why approaches like therapy and journaling don't always lead to true insight
• How to stop your confidence-killing habits and learn to love who you are.
• How to benefit from mindfulness without uttering a single mantra.
• Why other people don’t tell you the truth about yourself—and how to find out what they really think.
• How to deepen your insight into your passions, gifts, and the blind spots that could be holding you back.
• How to hear critical feedback without losing your mojo.
• Why the people with the most power can often be the least-self-aware, and how smart leaders avoid this trap.
• The 3 building blocks for self-aware teams.
• How to deal with delusional bosses, clients, and coworkers.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, New York Times bestselling author. Dr. Eurich has contributed to Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, and TED.com, and has been featured in outlets like Fortune, Forbes, The New York Times, Fast Company, and Business Insider. She was named a Leader to Watch by the American Management Association, and in 2017, was selected as a "100 Coaches" honoree from more than 14,000 candidates by Marshall Goldsmith to advance the practice of leadership coaching. She lives in her hometown of Denver with her husband and rambunctious dogs.

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1

The Meta-­Skill of the Twenty-­First Century

The men burst in with urgent news to report. A party of 35 enemy scouts had been spotted roughly seven miles away, camped out in a rocky ravine. What would the young lieutenant colonel decide to do?

The pressure was on, and he knew it. After all, this was a time of war, and he alone was responsible for the 159 recruits he’d led into the field. Despite the fact that the colonel was a 22-­year-­old rookie with zero combat experience, he’d somehow found himself second in command of an entire army. Not only did he have to act quickly and decisively, he needed to prove himself to everyone who was watching. This would be a crucial test of his military prowess, but he had no doubt he would ace it. The supremely self-­assured young man was just itching to show his superiors what he was made of.

Those men in the ravine? They were clearly planning to attack, he confidently (and, as it turned out, inaccurately) concluded. So the colonel ordered a sneak assault. In the early hours of May 28, his troops descended on the unsuspecting party, who didn’t stand a chance. In less than 15 minutes, 13 enemy soldiers were dead and 21 were ­captured.

Brimming with pride over his victory, the colonel returned to camp and began firing off letters. The first was to his commander. But before even recounting news of the battle, the emboldened leader took the opportunity—­in the form of an eight-­paragraph diatribe—­to grouse about his pay. His next letter was to his younger brother, to whom he nonchalantly bragged about his fearlessness in the face of enemy attack: “I can with truth assure you,” he wrote, “I heard the bullets whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.”

His self-­congratulatory correspondences completed, it was time to plan his next move. Convinced that the enemy was about to launch a revenge attack, he realized he would need to find a better location for their camp. After crossing a nearby mountain range, the colonel and his men found themselves in a large, low-­lying alpine meadow. The grassland was surrounded on all sides by rolling hills dotted with bushes and a dense pine forest. Surveying the area, the colonel declared it the perfect defensive location and ordered his troops to begin preparations.

A few days later, he looked on proudly as his men put the finishing touches on their circular stockade, which consisted of scores of upright seven-­foot logs draped with animal skins. And because it could hold only 70 men at once, he’d ordered them to dig a three-­foot trench for everyone else to crouch in. The colonel thought it was marvelous, assuring his commander that “we have with nature’s assistance made a good entrenchment and by clearing the bushes out of these meadows prepared a charming field for an encounter.” He knew they’d be outmanned, but “even with my small numbers,” he reported, “I shall not fear the attack of 500 men.”

Unfortunately, not everyone agreed with the confident young leader. One of his many questionable decisions was the placement of the fort. Because it was built on such soft ground, a light shower of rain would turn the meadow into a swamp, and a downpour would flood the trenches and drench their ammunition. What’s more, they were so close to the woods—­just 60 yards away—­that enemy marksmen could sneak up undetected and effortlessly fire on their fortress at close range. As for the fort itself, the colonel’s allied commander—­a seasoned battle veteran—­insisted that “that little thing upon the meadow” simply would not hold.

Undeterred and convinced that he knew best, the colonel dismissed these arguments out of hand, furiously proclaiming the commander and his army to be “treacherous devils” and “spies.” A minor rebellion followed, with the allied commander and his followers fleeing in fear (incidentally, this fear turned out to be extremely well founded). In the battle that was to come, the colonel wouldn’t find the bullets whistling past him to be quite as charming.

And that battle would be momentous. So momentous that the colonel’s mistakes would change the course of history. In the years since, historians have attempted to explain how the operation went so tragically wrong. Many have appropriately criticized the colonel for “advancing when he should have retreated; for fighting without awaiting sufficient reinforcements; for picking an indefensible spot; for the slapdash construction of the fort; for alienating his . . . allies; and for shocking hubris in thinking that he could defeat the imposing [enemy] force.”

But the colonel’s downfall can’t be attributed simply to tactical errors, flawed maneuvers, or the lost trust of his men. Examining them alone overlooks their root cause: at the most basic level, the colonel lacked the single most important, and yet least examined, determinant of success or failure—­whether on the battlefield, in the workplace, or anywhere else. That quality is self-­awareness.

While a precise definition is more complex than it first seems, self-­awareness is, at its core, the ability to see ourselves clearly—­to understand who we are, how others see us, and how we fit into the world around us. And since Plato instructed us to “know thyself,” philosophers and scientists alike have extolled the virtues of self-­awareness. Indeed, this ability is arguably one of the most remarkable aspects of being human. In his book The Telltale Brain, neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran poetically explains:

Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars. Apes live, contend, breed and die in forests—­end of story. Humans write, investigate, and quest. We splice genes, split atoms, launch rockets. We peer upward . . . and delve deeply into the digits of pi. Perhaps most remarkably of all, we gaze inward, piecing together the puzzle of our own unique and marvelous brain . . . This, truly, is the greatest mystery of all.”

Some have even argued that the ability to understand ourselves is at the core of human survival and advancement. For millions of years, the ancestors of Homo sapiens evolved almost painfully slowly. But, as Ramachandran explains, about 150,000 years ago, there was a rather explosive development in the human brain—­where, among other things, we gained the ability to examine our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as to see things from others’ points of view (as we will learn, both of these processes are absolutely critical for self-­awareness). Not only did this create the foundation for higher forms of human expression—­like art, spiritual practices, and language—­it came with a survival advantage for our ancestors, who had to work together to stay alive. Being able to evaluate their behaviors and decisions and read their impact on other members of the tribe helped them, to use a slightly more modern reference, not to get voted off the island.

Flash forward to the twenty-­first century. Though we may not face the same day-­to-­day threats to our existence as our ancestors did, self-­awareness is no less necessary to our survival and success—­at work, in our relationships, and in life. There is strong scientific evidence that people who know themselves and how others see them are happier. They make smarter decisions. They have better personal and professional relationships. They raise more mature children. They’re smarter, superior students who choose...

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Verlag
Currency
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0451496817
ISBN 13 
9780451496812
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
368
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Europaallee 1
Bad Hersfeld
36244
Deutschland

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