Removing Your Blind Spots

SUMMARY

Do you sometimes wonder why you do the things that you do, why things bother you that do bother you, and why you react to them in certain ways?

Well, because you're a human being, that happens to all of us. This week, as we continue to examine this amazing thing called emotional intelligence, I want to help you answer that question.

Answering that question is the first step in being able to change your results.

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of what emotion you're experiencing - in the moment - and then use that information to manage your response to it, therefore managing your behaviour. When there is a lack of awareness and understanding of your emotions, problems will arise, and that lack of emotional intelligence will cause you to react to what's going on around you.

So, what are these things called blind spots?

Let's look at the Johari Window. If you haven't heard of the Johari Window, Google it. It’s an amazing model that shows you exactly what I'm talking about here.

Within that Johari window, you'll see that there are things that you know about yourself that others don’t. There are also things that others can see in you that you can't see or, in my case, don't want to see. In those areas, the Johari window talks about the open area. That's the area that everyone can see. You know it about you, they know it about you, it's open — it’s out for everybody to see. But then there are those hidden areas. They're the areas that you know about you, but you don't want others to see them because you've made them mean certain things about you.

Self-awareness is the key. Removing these roadblocks and before you can remove them is identifying them is what I want to help you to do.

That's it from me for another week.

Join me again next week as we go into that area that I talked about of Personal Power.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you sometimes wonder why you do the things that you do, why things bother you that do bother you, and why you react to them in certain ways?

Well, because you're a human being, that happens to all of us. This week, as we continue to examine this amazing thing called emotional intelligence, I want to help you answer that question.

Answering that question is the first step in being able to change your results.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around this shift in our intelligence from singular to multiple by helping you to remove your blind spots.

Throughout my military and corporate career, I have had people try to get me to make some changes. The challenge was that I couldn't see what they were talking about, or in some cases, I didn't want to see them.

And that meant I didn't have the certainty I needed to make the changes. I couldn't draw a correlation between my thinking, my behaviour, and my lack of results in certain areas, particularly in relationships. This was due to a lack of emotional intelligence.

Last week, we started a conversation about this amazing intelligence that we have as intelligent human beings that enables us to navigate our emotions in a resourceful and healthy way.

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of what emotion you're experiencing - in the moment - and then use that information to manage your response to it, therefore managing your behaviour. When there is a lack of awareness and understanding of your emotions, problems will arise, and that lack of emotional intelligence will cause you to react to what's going on around you.

Now, just like everything else, this comes out of your identity. It comes around your beliefs about yourself. If you haven't been on the journey with me long enough to rewrite your story, flipping those limiting beliefs to more empowering ones, then go back, have a look at the previous episodes, and you will be able to see how you can set the foundation for what we're going into right now.

I didn't think that I needed to be aware of anything related to emotions. My technical ability and skills spoke for themselves but unfortunately, I'm not a robot, I'm a human being. Relationships and interaction with people are the keys to my success, as they are to yours.

So, what are these things called blind spots?

Let's look at the Johari Window. If you haven't heard of the Johari Window, Google it. It’s an amazing model that shows you exactly what I'm talking about here.

Within that Johari window, you'll see that there are things that you know about yourself that others don’t. There are also things that others can see in you that you can't see or, in my case, don't want to see. In those areas, the Johari window talks about the open area. That's the area that everyone can see. You know it about you, they know it about you, it's open — it’s out for everybody to see. But then there are those hidden areas. They're the areas that you know about you, but you don't want others to see them because you've made them mean certain things about you, as we talked about a few weeks ago.

The other area is the unknown. That's where you can't see them and others can't, either. They're deep in your subconscious and come out (unfortunately) at the most inopportune times. But then, you've got the area of blind spots. These are the things that others can see but you can't. These are the things that (for whatever reason) you've blocked out and have been blinded to not be able to see them.

They're things that the internal dialogue (that mini-me) controls, and they make you not want to see them or accept them because if you do, it means you need to change.

And that's uncomfortable.

That leads you into those areas where those three universal fears of not being enough, not belonging and not being loved could easily be triggered.

Before we can shift any of our behaviour so that we get different results, you and I need to take the scales off our eyes, remove the mask and the bandage, or whatever it is that's holding us back. We also need to ensure that self-awareness, the first quadrant in emotional intelligence, becomes a priority.

Now, knowing what we know about ourselves and what we've been talking about over previous weeks, sometimes self-awareness is not comfortable. It's like some of those foods that we are advised to eat that probably don't taste like what we want them to taste, but they're good for us. And that is definitely the same with self-awareness.

When I was a kid, every day, my mom would give me a spoonful or a tablespoon of cod liver or castor oil. It was good for the health of your body, systems and stomach, but it tasted disgusting.

That's exactly what self-awareness can be.

It is so good for you, for others around you and the greater good. But it means you need to face things about yourself that you may not want to face.

Now, I'm not telling this to scare you off. I want you to have a level of self-awareness because what I found in my life is that as I removed those roadblocks, I was able to go forward from where I was to where I wanted to go.

Roadblocks are things that stop you from going where you need to get to, and having things that you don't know about yourself, particularly in this context of how you respond or react emotionally, what your triggers are, and all those things that you need to know so that you can manage the response to your emotions.

This is a critical area for you and me as individuals and as leaders of ourselves and of others.

Within that area of self-awareness, there are three things that I like to work on with my clients.

The first thing is emotional self-awareness. Knowing in the moment what is the emotion that you're experiencing and what it's doing in that psychological, once it shifts from that physiological sensation.

What do you think about, what does it normally lead to, and why?

Being able to stop at any point in the day and go:

“Hey, what's the emotion I'm experiencing right now?”

This is not something that we are normally taught to do.

Remember we talked about the fact that most people want you to leave your emotions at the door, let alone take up space in your day thinking about them?

However, that is counterintuitive.

Stopping and going:

“Hey, what's the emotion I'm going through right now?"

"How's that affecting my thinking?”

That's going to give you the data that you need to shift and change.

The second area that we work on is accurate self-assessment. A lot of times, we assess ourselves in a way that feeds that performance trap — that approval addiction. We see ourselves as either less than or more than we really are in certain areas and competencies because we're trying to please others. Accurate self-assessment gives you the reality starting point that you need to go to:

“Hey, this is where I am, and this is where I need to shift.”

The third area, and we're going to talk about this a lot next week, is the area of personal power. Being able to know where you stand in terms of your own self-worth and self-confidence and being able to develop that personal power so that you know that you've got everything within you and around you to be who you need to be to get where you need to be in life. This is a key area in psychological safety, health and well-being, resilience, and the management of stress.

And it starts with this self-awareness.

What I want to challenge you to do is to continue this journey with me to recognise those blind spots.

This may take you getting some help from some other people and asking them how they see you. Then, instead of what we normally do, which is a common thing with human beings, we rebut and reject that because it goes towards that approval addiction again, and we make it mean to us what we think it means.

So be mindful of how you ask for that feedback and make sure that it's people who have a vested interest in your success.

Self-awareness can taste a little bit yucky. However, what I found in my military and corporate career is I got to the point where I thought:

“I wonder if the things people say actually have some validity?”

I was at a point where the fear of finding that out was less than the fear of what was going to happen if I didn't get on top of these challenges that I had in my own thinking and behaviour.

Self-awareness is the key. Removing these roadblocks and before you can remove them is identifying them is what I want to help you to do.

That's it from me for another week.

Join me again next week as we go into that area that I talked about of Personal Power.

This is the area that I believe underpins every other competency of emotional intelligence. It's the area of a foundation around you. It's where you get to shift a lot of those unhealthy beliefs and that dialogue. It’s about being able to recognise why you can rather than you can't.

It's an exciting area for me in my own life personally, and as I've helped others around the world to develop that area, it has seen major breakthroughs in their life as well.

That's why I'm a little bit excited about it.

So, join me again next week as we go through this, but bring along an element of self-awareness.

I'll see you then.