It?s hard sometimes to look at yourself critically with an unbiased opinion to see who you really are; strengths and pitfalls included. However, it?s very important to try to reflect and review who we are and strive to improve ourselves in any way that we can. That is how we grow and how we help others grow.
There are two basic areas you can analyze about yourself: personal and professional. There are a few ways to help with honest and productive self-reflection that will make sure you can not only learn greatly about yourself but also grow as an individual.
Your personal life is the hardest to analyze because a lot of your traits aren?t necessarily even conscious, they are ingrained in you from your childhood, environment and experiences. The best way to analyze your personal life is to open up and talk to your loved ones. Ask people in your life to give you constructive criticism on the good and bad traits that you have so you can take it and work with it. The people in your life that you trust implicitly and you believe can be completely honest with you are the best to help you with this process. Oh yes, I know we all don?t want to hear about the things we can work on but trust me, hearing it from another point of view will help you grow.
How Does This Affect My Business And Leadership?
Finding out what works for you will help you build and balance out your team. For example, if I know I am horrible at time management, I will hire an assistant with a strong time management background to help me stay on track.
Creating a successful team is so important and being able to be honest with yourself will help you create results. It doesn?t stop there considering that you and your team are constantly growing and constantly changing. A great way to assess your development is to pull up old work, not only see how far you have come in developing your skills and also to identify the things that have remained stagnant and could still use improvement.
Look at other successful people in your industry and how they got where they are now. Doing this will help you to put things in perspective. ? As you are watching them, ask yourself, ?How can I learn from their experience while making sure I still set myself apart??? Are you doing or can you do what they are doing to be successful? Push yourself!
Being a leader means you have to act like a leader. You are an example to your team and showing them how you acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses will allow them to feel comfortable enough for them to do the same thing. Teaching them that you reflect and learn will in turn, teach them to do the same thing.
Reflecting often is a very important thing to do in order to move forward. Knowledge is one of the most powerful things in life and the more we know about ourselves and where we want to go, the easier it is to see our path and what we need to do to get there.