Why Awareness Is the Most Underrated Leadership Tool

We challenge the drive for more hacks and make the case that awareness is the most underrated leadership tool. Through a real coaching story and practical steps, we show how a simple pause can turn triggers into choices and raise the quality of meetings, decisions, and relationships.

• running on autopilot versus leading from presence
• the gap between event and response
• self-awareness as the engine of emotional intelligence
• four-part framework for awareness in leadership
• myths that awareness is soft or only spiritual
• practical three-breath reset before meetings
• reframing triggers through journaling and breath
• making intention guide outcomes, not adrenaline

Join me on December 3rd at 11 a.m. Central Time. Click the link, show up. If you can’t make the live session, it will be recorded and sent out to you.
👉 https://markwalkercoach.kit.com/315a695cb2

If you’re tired of doing this work alone, I offer a free conversation to help you get clear on your next steps. Apply Here when you’re ready.

Chapters

• 0:02 Welcome And Purpose
• 0:50 Productivity Isn’t The Problem
• 2:10 A Client Trigger Becomes Insight
• 4:38 The Gap Between Event And Response
• 5:09 Self-Awareness And EQ Research
• 7:28 Awareness As A Leadership Engine
• 9:11 Four-Part Awareness Framework
• 11:10 Myths About Awareness
• 12:26 Three-Breath Meeting Practice
• 13:23 Webinar Invitation And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hey there. Welcome to Fierce Encouragement. My name is Mark Walker, and this podcast is a home for anyone that might feel a little off balance or they're tired of going through life, kind of being on autopilot. In this podcast, we get really honest about that inner dialogue of negativity that can kind of dominate our mind. And most importantly, we start to train with awareness and patience to build up our emotional strength, to kind of have that foundation so we can live with clarity and live honestly from our heart and from our real purpose. So thanks for sharing your time with me today and tuning in. Today I wanted to talk about something that I struggle with that I've seen a lot of people in my coaching practice struggle with. We don't need another productivity hack or tactic. Instead, we need a nervous system that knows how to slow down and pause. So I see high performers and people that come into coaching or come into conversations that are really crushing their to-do list. They're really showing up oftentimes in work and really making tons of progress materially. They feel uh fulfilled, but sometimes on the inside, they still feel this emptiness or this hollowness, like something's not quite right. And I know this feeling, and I want to share this. It's because we're running from uh the outside in. So that awareness kind of flips direction. We get really focused on the external things, but we're not too aware of what's going on on the inside, maybe in our mind, maybe in our fierce encouragement or lack thereof. I want to share this moment where I had a client. Um, I started to challenge them and kind of ask them, you know, after they went through their to-do list of things they got right, they couldn't quite hear what I was trying to share. And it led to kind of a reflexive backfire. They didn't understand what I was trying to talk about. So they went to a team meeting and they got triggered by their coworkers and they reacted, you know, with their obviously in their mind, uh, in their energy. And after the meeting kind of cooled off and they had some space around it, they brought it to our coaching session that they didn't trust those people anymore. They didn't trust that energy and what was said in that meeting. And granted, some of the things that were said were difficult, but it's interesting how we attach. And again, I'm guilty of this too and have struggled with it, but seeing it more and more clearly, when somebody says one or two things, our mind will attach to that, whether it's our leader or somebody we're trying to get through a project with, it's almost like we hold on to that negative, negative statement or something they shared, and it's just like it gets replayed in our head. Like they think I'm not successful or they think I can't help uh in this project, or the things that they said really took me down a notch. But this leader, uh, when we paused and created some space around it, did some breathing, did some journaling on it, when he started to catch himself, he actually had that chance in his own cognition and in his mind to rewrite what that meeting meant to him. And I want to like put a stamp on this. Because awareness came in, and because that mindfulness of understanding, just that emotional response, it almost uh prompted his wisdom or his inner intelligence to come forth. And there was a choice to make. He could continue to rift on that negative narrative and stay in that kind of closed loop, or he could step out of it and see what he wanted to create from it, what choice he had from that situation. I think we all get this chance between the thing that happens and our reflexive response, we can start to learn to open up a gap. And honestly, science supports this. You know, self-awareness is really foundational to what scholars and Daniel Goldman and some amazing researchers have called emotional intelligence. It's foundational to leadership and success and helping others. So, for example, research has shown about 15% of people are sufficiently self-aware. Now, that comes from the Harvard Business Impact um survey they had. So you can kind of take that or leave it, uh, but I think it proves out, and maybe it's just something we can like subjectively sample in our own work or in our own friend group. A lot of leaders, some are really good, some not so much. But I think that 15 percentile is really telling because emotional intelligence or EQ is increasingly shown to be just a core concept or a core skill in leadership. I don't think it's optional anymore. I really don't. And there, you know again, you can read about emotional intelligence from Daniel Goldman. And I would even go a step further and say awareness, as you, you know, as I like to define it, is kind of that moment-to-moment presence or mindfulness of our current state. That awareness is essentially the engine behind our EQ or our emotional intelligence, or you could say our self-regulation, with our empathy and our social awareness of how other people are feeling. And of course, you know, needing to make difficult decisions as a leader, but still honoring that energy that might be in the room. Leaders who lack self-awareness damage decision making, and they really pull apart a collaborative effort in companies and in teams, and they destroy that conflict management or those crucial conversations that need to be had. So a pause, a pause in our projects and taking a breath in between the thing that happens to us in our response, that pause equals awareness and action. And this is the core teaching here. This is the meat of the sandwich, if you will. I'd like to break down how awareness functions as a specific leadership tool. So it comes back to getting familiar with our internal state. And we could call that self-awareness, knowing our internal state. How am I self-aware? How can I bring that inner self-awareness online? The second thing is choosing before reacting or trying to expand that space. And this is what that other leader I was mentioning before couldn't understand what I was talking about in that space. But if you can kind of conceptualize it, the event happens, and then our reaction or a reflexive reaction happens, and that gives us a result or an outcome. But when we put space between the event and our reaction, that helps us kind of self-regulate. And that's the pause, as we can open up that gap. But choosing before we react. So that could be self-regulation, if you will. The third part is seeing others' states or kind of reading the energy of the room, practicing that social awareness, being present for people, right? Maybe if you're a little more intuitive, you can feel the energy in the room, and maybe that's that pause. So social awareness, or that empathy, if you will, as a leader is that third part of this leadership tool of how awareness functions as a leadership tool. And then the fourth kind of ties into the third, but it's maybe a little more zoomed out. Leading from presence, leading from a higher viewpoint, not just autopilot, not just dictating. So these are really powerful ideas that we can bring into our awareness practice and then have that awareness practice function as a leadership tool. So it's the difference between running a meeting in a storm and standing in the eye of that storm or that hurricane. When we lead from autopilot, it has more of a reflexive reaction, kind of like we would if we tested our reflexes. But when we get better and more present with that pause, our awareness can start to lead from an intention. I think there's some myths here that we need to bust through, some common misconceptions. So the first one is there's a myth that awareness is a soft skill or a passive skill. I challenge that completely. In reality, it is one of the harder skills and one of the hardest working skills to develop. It's easy to drive forward and maybe blame people that are trying to slow down and pause, but awareness is not soft or passive. In reality, it's very hard work. There's another myth that awareness is just for the yoga mat or the yogis or the monks or somebody in church. But the reality is it's for leaders that are in the boardrooms. It's for teachers that are in difficult classrooms, it's for tech people that are dealing with uh products. Maybe changes aren't going through, and uh tech debt is drowning a project. The reality is awareness is for all those uh different environments, not just uh some sacred spiritual area. Another myth is you we can kind of say to ourselves, I'll know when I'm aware. But the reality is we often feel absent in our own lives. We feel absent from that awareness and that mindfulness. Um, and that's where the stress, the burnout, the frustration, the anxiety can come from, especially as it accrues without pausing more often. So the absence of awareness more clearly is seen than its presence. So again, we got to get good at noticing where we're at. I think a really practical application of this or something that we can take right into our days is giving ourselves and practicing this kind of one leadership awareness tool. And you can use this right now, or maybe even today with your family or with your team. So before your next meeting, I'd encourage you to pause for three deep breaths. In, out, slowing down that out breath, especially, and use that space to ask yourself, what am I feeling right now? What do I want this meeting to produce? And then start that meeting. But pause for those three breaths, and I think it's really important. This is a big pause skill that can just change the whole tenor or tone of a meeting. So I'll link back to that pause practice from my second episode in this series. Because when we pause, we're not backing down, we're stepping up and we're using that self-awareness and that regulation to make it a better meeting or a better, more productive time. So kind of imagining back to that leader who doesn't react but responded instead and gave himself that space. They told me this as we worked through a couple more coaching sessions. If awareness is the most underrated leadership tool, it's what I need to practice the most. And honestly, I'm excited because on December 3rd in 2025, we're gonna go right into it in my webinar. So check out the links I'll put in the description of this episode. Join me on December 3rd at 11 a.m. Central Time. We'll spend some time going over these practices, talking about how that pause can change everything. Click the link, show up. You'll learn how to lead from more of a presence and a warmth and not just a position. And if you can't make the live session, just know that it will be recorded and uh there will be uh that will be sent out to you to you as well. So there you go. Again, this is Mark Walker. This has been Fierce Encouragement. What did you get out of this meeting? Where are you gonna practice and show up for your uh co-workers, for your family, and even for yourself? Keep going forward, keep practicing that fierce encouragement, and especially just practice that three breath pause before meeting or before walking in the house after a long day of work. You're doing really good work by just encouraging yourself fiercely, stay on top of it and know that you're appreciated. All right, we'll catch you next time on Fierce Encouragement. Bye bye.