Being a Self-Aware Leader – July Leadership Tip – #247

Every second Thursday of the month, one of our MomCo staff members will teach a leadership tip or principle they’ve learned and want to share with you. This month, Andrea Fortenberry shares the importance of self-awareness and gives practical steps to grow as a leader. 

We'd love to connect with you! Send us a direct message on Instagram or Facebook or email us at leaders@themom.co.

You can also find our cohosts on Instagram: @andreafortenberry, @ivymamma and @sherri_crandall.

Get your MOMCON tickets today.
Sign up for MomCo Membership today!
Learn more about The MomCo!
Find a group online or in person near you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Momco Leadership Podcast. We believe that life and leadership are better in community. We're here to equip and encourage you as a leader and mom. We'll talk about real issues and practical tools to help you grow in your leadership, motherhood, and faith. Hi leaders, I'm Andrea Fortinberry, your host for today, and welcome to this month's Leadership Tip Episode. Today I want to talk about the importance of being a self-aware leader. Being self-aware means that we are mindful of how we show up in the world. It means we acknowledge our strengths and our weaknesses. Acknowledging our strengths means that we celebrate how God made us. We use our gifts not for self-glory, but to glorify the God who uniquely made us and wired us and to love and serve others. Acknowledging our weaknesses doesn't mean that we wallow in shame for what we don't do well. Instead, we use this awareness to grow and to rely on the strengths of others. God created each of us with different gifts. We see that over and over in the Bible. God created us to need him and others. He didn't design us to live and lead on our own independently. Self-awareness is truly a gift to ourselves and to others around us. If you've ever been around someone who lacks self-awareness, it can be frustrating, right? They might lack care or concern for how their actions impact others. They might live pridefully instead of having an attitude of humility. They might have the mindset of, this is just the way I am, instead of being open to growing and changing. We don't want to be leaders like that. Instead, we want to be self-aware leaders. Because, as I said a moment ago, self-awareness is truly a gift to ourselves and to others around us. Seeing ourselves realistically, being self-aware helps us to live confidently in our strengths. It helps us tap into the strengths of others. It helps us to seek humility and pursue continual growth. I have three steps that each of us can take to help us be more self-aware leaders. First, analyze. Get curious about yourself. We're so used to ourselves that sometimes we don't see our gifts and strengths for what they are. They might seem common or ordinary because we're used to them when in reality they're really special. So I want you to make a list of your unique strengths. What do you do well? What do you enjoy doing? What gets you excited? These are ways we can identify what our strengths are. I also want to encourage you to take some assessments to help you identify your gifts, such as a spiritual gifts test, strength finder, 16 personalities. I'll put links in the show notes for where you can find each of these assessments that can help you to be more self-aware. I've often found that when I take them, I'm like, wow, how do they know me so well? And sometimes I think we can have a view of an assessment of like, oh, I don't want to take that because it's going to put me in a box and limit me or define me to something. But if we have the mindset of wanting to know ourselves better and to be a more self-aware woman, we can take these, learn from them, use what's helpful, put aside what's not. But I've just found them to be really valuable, not only to my own self-awareness, but really to be able to interact with others in a more effective way because I understand more about myself and how to be effective in loving and leading others. A few other ways that we can analyze how we show up in life and leadership is to think about this question. How do others regularly respond to you? What kind of reactions do you get when you're leading or when you are the one in charge, when you are guiding your family, guiding a small group, guiding a large group? How do others regularly respond to you? And then I want you to make a list of areas that you want to grow in. I want you to do this without judgment or shame. Just name a few ways that you want to grow and make peace with the fact that you want to get better. None of us are perfect and none of us will ever arrive at being fully mature and developed until we get to heaven. We all have ways that we can grow and improve in every season of life. So name those things, just make peace with them, acknowledge them, and then I want you to create one or two action steps for how you can start to improve in this area today. So I'll just share one of mine is that I want to be more responsive or quicker to respond. Sometimes when I get a text message or an email, I because I am a perfectionist, I want to have the perfect response or the perfect opportunity to respond to someone when in reality it just takes me too long. So I want to grow in being quicker to respond to things versus letting them pile up. So that's just one of mine. Just wanted to share that with you. But make a list, it could be something like that. It could be your responsiveness, it could be maybe something that will be a bigger goal, like public speaking, or you want to be more organized. Some of all of these things really just take time over time. And we're not going to make progress unless we name it and get started. So I want to encourage you to do that. Okay, so the first step was analyze. Next is we want to seek and receive feedback. I want you to think of people in your life who have your best interest at heart. Who do you know that you trust that you can ask for some feedback from? This matters because sometimes we will receive feedback from people whose voices don't deserve full volume in our life. Maybe it deserves some volume, but not full volume. So I want you to ask those full volume people, maybe that's your husband, your best friend, your mom, your leadership team, and ask a couple of questions. You could ask, what do you think I do well? This is really helpful because again, we feel like our strengths might be just common and ordinary and that everybody has them, but that's not true. So these people will be able to speak into those and help you figure out your strengths and what you do really well. And the next question to ask is, what is an area in me where you see potential for growth? And I like to frame the question this way because it helps us to see it positively versus what, you know, what do I stink at? What do I not do well? No, we don't want to ask that. We want to ask, what is an area in me where you see potential for growth? And we keep it in that growth mindset. If we want to improve, it's okay. We all have things we can improve at, but naming them and moving forward is really helpful. And then use this feedback that you receive to get better. Just last week, I put on an event for moms in my area, something that I enjoy doing annually. It was really fun because my daughter attended with me this year and she was helping me at my book table. A few days later, we were sitting at our kitchen table having a meal together, talking about the event. I asked for her thoughts about how things went. And then she said, Can I give you some feedback? I told her to proceed and she informed me that I held the microphone when I was up on stage speaking kind of too far down, like I was holding it at the very bottom at the end. When I should have held it more toward the middle to have more of a sturdy grip on it. She sings for the high school worship team at church and says that it bothers the audio engineers when people hold the microphone in the wrong place because then the audio quality suffers. So I had no idea that I did this, you know, held the mic that way. I don't know if I do that all the time or if this was just a one-off, but now I'm aware of it. And when I look back at the pictures from the event, I totally see it. And I would have had no idea about this had she not mentioned it to me. So her feedback was a gift. And we can indeed view feedback that way as a gift. But honestly, feedback can sting sometimes. I have had my fair share of that, especially when it comes from places and people where I don't want to give them full volume in my life, but sometimes it feels that way. But when we see feedback of any kind as part of our personal growth and development, we can learn to embrace it and use it to propel us forward. Here are my thoughts real quick on what to do when you receive feedback from others that is either unsolicited or hurtful. I want you to consider the source. Again, is this a trusted person in your life? Is this someone you want to have full volume on? Or is this someone who's just kind of criticizing you from the sidelines? So consider the source. Then chew the meat and spit out the bones. Take what is valuable from what they've said and leave behind what isn't. Maybe none of it is valuable, but likely there's a smidgen of something that you can take to learn and move forward with a mindset of growth. It's easier said than done. I have had a couple of bigger instances I can think of where I have really been criticized and was hurt and it was hard to move forward. But when we have that mindset of chewing the meat, spitting out the bones, it can help us to move on with a mindset of hope instead of feeling defeated. So know that again, feedback is a gift and we can have a growth mindset to help us move forward confidently and with a mindset of growth and excitement. Okay, so we talked about analyzing, we talked about seeking and receiving feedback. And third suggestion I have for you to be a more self-aware leader is to use this season of life to grow. This one you're in right now. It's summer in the United States right now, so that means that many of our stateside momco groups are currently on summer break. So I want to encourage you, use this time. Summer is generally a little more flexible, a little more free-flowing than the structure of the school and momco year. So use this time to grow and invest in yourself. Or for our southern hemisphere leaders, it's winter right now. So you might be inside more, or you might find that you have a little extra downtime too. So wherever you are, whatever season you're in, even if you are in a busy full season, we can take steps right now to pursue self-awareness and a mindset of continual growth. Sometimes we think we don't have time to pursue personal growth because we're busy moms and leaders. But the truth is that we make time for what we value. Also, just take a gander at your screen time report on your phone, and you'll see that you do have time. You just might be using it otherwise. This is self-awareness for all of us, isn't it? Myself included. So just know that I'm right here in it with you. So being self-aware is part of being self-aware, is being mindful of how we're using our time. Here are a few practical ideas to help us grow right now in this season in our self-awareness. First is to block off time on your schedule for personal development. It could be just 10 to 15 minutes a day, which seems small, but small steps will take us places instead of staying stuck and doing nothing. You could read a book or listen to a podcast that helps you learn and grow in a specific area like this one. You could take a class, you could take a class at your local community college, you could take an online class. There's so many different ways that we can learn and grow in this area. You could watch YouTube videos or TED Talks. Find an area where you want to grow and then find a way to learn by taking some sort of class in that area. You could also complete a Bible study that would help you to learn and grow and be more self-aware. You could also meet with a counselor or a coach. I have just found such value in having someone speak into my life who is a neutral third-party observer who can really coach and encourage and help me be self-aware by listening and by identifying different things or patterns that they see in me and helping me find steps and ways to move forward. Really, the possibilities are endless. We just need to take advantage of those opportunities and to use our time wisely. I really hope that you found these steps valuable. So, again, three steps to help us be more self-aware leaders is to analyze, to seek and receive feedback, and then use this season to grow. Remember, self-awareness is truly a gift to ourselves and to others around us. Leaders who are self-aware live confidently in our strengths, we tap into the strengths of others, we seek humility and pursue continual growth. Self-aware leaders are effective leaders. Friends, we would appreciate if you would take just a few minutes to rate and review the podcast wherever you're listening, and then we would really appreciate it if you would share it via social media with your friends. Tag us and we'd love to share your post. Thanks so much for joining us today. Leaders, we know that your time is valuable. We're proud of you for investing in yourself by listening in today. We know that when you invest in mom, you change the world. We believe in you and we're doing great.