1st Lead U - Leadership Development

Awareness: Why 85% of Leaders Fail the Awareness Test - -C.H.A.R.T. - Ep 319

• John Ballinger • Season 3 • Episode 319

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Awareness forms the foundation for effective leadership, with self-awareness being the most difficult yet crucial leadership skill to master. 

• Emotional intelligence assessments reveal most leaders score in the 60s (D range) for self-awareness when they should be in the high 80s to 90s
• Only 10-15% of leaders truly possess good self-awareness according to psychology research
• Unaware leaders often display "imposter traits": being boisterous, heavy-handed, mouthy, and conceited
• Teams can immediately sense when a leader lacks awareness, with productivity suffering as a result
• Being aware means understanding your internal state, emotional triggers, and how you impact those around you
• Physical reactions like blotches or hives are signals your body gives during difficult situations
• Three practical steps to improve awareness: consistent journaling, physically stepping back in challenging moments, and asking team members for honest feedback
• Self-awareness enables leaders to know which leadership style (coach, commander, counselor) is needed in different situations
• Awareness creates the foundation for being adaptable, approachable, and appreciative as a leader

To become a better leader, you must learn to first lead yourself through developing genuine self-awareness.


John Ballinger:

If you can become aware, you can become a doctor. If you can become aware, you can become a coach.

Announcer:

If you can become aware, you can become a Christian. Welcome to First Lead you a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.

John Ballinger:

Hello America and welcome to First Lead you where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders.

Announcer:

Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.

John Ballinger:

Hello leaders and welcome to First Lead you. My name is John Ballinger and I'm here with my trusted co-host, mr Douglas Ford. Hello Douglas, hello John, how are you this week?

Douglas Ford:

I'm good, we're remote, we are remote, although no one would have done that if we hadn't said it.

John Ballinger:

Well, I thought I would plug that because we're actually in Chicago, Illinois, and meeting with one of the most aware business owners I've met in quite some time.

Douglas Ford:

Yes, I would say he is certainly speaking our language when he talks about self-awareness and self-development.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, and the unique thing about this- business owner is, and self-development, yeah, and the unique thing excuse me, the unique thing about this business owner is he's not from America originally. He's been here 25 years but he was very aware of where he came from and what he came to and what a blessing it was for him to be able to be here and build the business he's built over the last 25 years.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, absolutely. I think he is certainly a model for others to follow and, whether you're from America or not, he has set a path for himself through intentional effort and decision-making for sure.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, and he's told us also that he's had a journey where he's become aware and we were meeting with him and his wife today and she said he's definitely become more aware of his how he acts, reacts and things like that around team members, family and things like that. So we're up here meeting with him about some things inside his business that could benefit him. So that's why we're remote on this podcast. So this podcast is the beginning of the A's in the acrostic of chart.

Douglas Ford:

So right now we're at cha.

John Ballinger:

We're at cha Cha Cha, if he's correct. Now, douglas, I told you before we started this. This is the most difficult letter to master in all of the acrostic.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, and I agree. It seems like each of the letters within this group of four touches each of the other four groups. Correct, so one letter equals a group, right.

John Ballinger:

And just for the audience we're starting out. Our first A is awareness. We will go to adaptable, approachable and appreciative and, as I stated, this is a difficult letter. Once you work on mastering this letter, it helps with the other letters in the acrostic. Now, why is someone really not aware? What's causing someone not to be aware?

Douglas Ford:

I would think they just have a lot of other things going on in their life and in their mind that they just can't focus on life and in their mind that they just can't focus on maybe even really one thing at a time, but they're so clouded with everything that's running around in their brain that it's just like they don't have time to pay attention to that.

John Ballinger:

Statistics will say in psychology today that the reason for lack of awareness and these are tough to hear are mentally and emotionally lazy, selfish and someone that's always whining about something. They're so caught up in whining about themselves or circumstances more pitiful me. I've got all this stress and pressure on me. You all don't understand. You can't imagine being in my position. That makes them very unaware of what's going on around them.

John Ballinger:

So how do you lead and how do team members follow when the team member sees the leader who is unaware, which is not having knowledge about something or someone? That's what the definition of unaware is, but other words that are used to frame what unaware means is oblivious, ignorant and unmindful. Those are strong words, those are strong words. And if your team is seeing you as not aware but unaware, they're looking at you through that lens of oh, they're oblivious, they're ignorant to what's going on, they're not even mindful of it, they have no clue. Haven't you heard that before between team members, when the leader leaves a room and does something like they have no clue what's going on.

John Ballinger:

Absolutely room and does something like that, they have no clue what's going on, absolutely. So we're going to read the definition of awareness, and this is a long definition. Okay, but it's long because it encompasses so much of what a leader should be to their team. Awareness at its core is the state of being conscious. Do you recall that word, conscious, being used in a previous podcast?

Douglas Ford:

Yes, I think we just repeated that podcast from episode 317.

John Ballinger:

Right, it was the podcast where we talked about defragging the brain so that you would learn to be more conscious instead of unconscious because your brain's so clogged up. So here's awareness. Look at the correlation to truly understand how to use your brain effectively as a leader. It's the state of being conscious of something, whether it's an internal event, an internal feeling or a concept. It encompasses knowing, perceiving and understanding, and it's often used interchangeably with consciousness. In essence, it's the ability to notice and be present with what is happening, both within you and around you.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, well, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. It's certainly. We have certainly been using it, I think very correctly in the way we talk about it and understand it, because even as we explore it and talk about emotional intelligence, the awareness, the key to emotional intelligence is awareness, and so what's going on inside you and what's going on around you? That's two key concepts that we talk about on a regular basis.

John Ballinger:

You and I were talking I believe it was this week about spatial awareness and I used an analogy of a movie that is a fairly old movie that Russell Crowe was in called A Beautiful Mind, and I said the best way I know how to really understand spatial awareness is when in that movie, where the math problem comes up off the board and kind of circles around and he's looking at it mentally and he's solving the problem and putting it back on the board Leaders, when they're self-aware and they have spatial awareness of what's going on around them, it's very similar to seeing the math problem come off the board.

John Ballinger:

You're moving it around in your mind, you're coming up with a solution and putting it back and guess what? You're doing Quickly. Your team members, when things are going on and they're coming to you, don't have time for you to get out the pencil and the paper or the iPad and start taking notes down and saying let me get back with you Because as the day goes on those problems stack up if you don't know how to spatially be aware and solve problems throughout the day.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, and just to throw some props back to Clint Powell and David Roddy, who mentioned our name several times on a recent podcast with Michelle Hecker-Davis, who has been on our podcast before. They were talking about training the brain and things that Michelle does with LearningRx, but David talked about being spatially aware in high-stress situations and how just changing positions, you know, can impact other people, and of course they had an example they use. But it's like if somebody is expecting you to be somewhere, and I'm going to mess it up, this is a OOPA loop or something Anyway that they have. So somebody is doing something, they expect you to be somewhere and you move. Well, you've thrown their loop out, but yours is complete because you know you moved Right, and so that's part of being aware is just where's everybody in the room, what's going on? And just being aware of what's happening, you move. You can create some turbulence for somebody else.

John Ballinger:

Right. This is another difference, a statistic from psychology today, studies indicate that only about 10 to 15% of leaders truly fit the criteria, that they are aware of their surroundings Most believing that they do, but the reality is, according to this research study, up to 85% to 90% have no idea of what's going on around them internally and externally and how what they're presenting because of what's going on internally is externally affecting their team.

Douglas Ford:

When you say presenting, you mean the way they're carrying themselves, the way they're presenting themselves to the team, to an individual.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, we've been in companies where a leader will walk in a room and you can feel the temperature change in the room. We feel it, the team feels it. It's not uncommon for a team member to say what's the boss's temperature right now. They're not meaning. Is he sick, is he elevated, is he upset, is he on a war path, is he calm? For psychology today to say that self-awareness is a crucial, there were crucial leadership trait impacting everything from job satisfaction to team performance yeah, well, I think I've.

Douglas Ford:

I obviously I agree that they're the experts in this, but but I do think that just from my personal experience, that's been true, because if you're so again, so caught up in, like just the thunderstorm of your brain, so to speak, um, you're just you're, you know, you can be constantly looking for the negatives in something. You're never looking to solve a problem. Every time somebody comes to you with a problem, it's like look, I don't have time to deal with this, I've got my own stuff to deal with, go, do your own thing. But if you're the leader, like that's what they're supposed to do, and the thing that you don't want to happen is them to stop coming to you, because that means you've put them off so much as like it's not going to do any good, right, and so, um, so yeah, I think that is completely true. Self-awareness is is a key to leadership, which we say all the time Right, have you ever had a leader that you worked for?

John Ballinger:

that was, uh unaware.

Douglas Ford:

Yes, sometimes that you worked for that was unaware.

John Ballinger:

Yes, sometimes it's been me, but when it was the other person, yes, because you've become more aware as you've gone through your own self-development, haven't you?

Douglas Ford:

I hope I have yes.

John Ballinger:

But what was it like working for someone that was unaware?

Douglas Ford:

It was miserable. I mean it really was. It's like you didn't want to be around them. I mean you may enjoy working with your coworkers, but it's like please don't come in here and start talking to us, because we're doing our thing and we don't need you in here messing it up. But you just every interaction was either frustrating or, you know, stressful, so it just made it, made my job satisfaction go down because of their lack of awareness were there times that, uh, you felt the team understand that that person's also unaware your team, besides you yes, yeah, I mean, do you know?

Douglas Ford:

because it becomes the joke or the comments or whatever the snide comments that go around in a team, when, when you're, the person who's supposed to be the leader is unaware yeah, that person doesn't know when they leave the room.

John Ballinger:

The eyes that are rolling, the comments that are being made.

Douglas Ford:

Oh yeah, no, everything's great. Man, I've handled that perfect.

John Ballinger:

They're thinking when they walk down the hall. I showed them, I told them yeah, absolutely. So when we come back from the break, I thought I would dig in a little bit into the assessments that we've given leaders and the scores that we see on the social and self-awareness side. So we're going to take a break, We'll be right back.

Douglas Ford:

Hello First Legion listeners, douglas Ford here. I want to take just a few seconds during this break to say thank you for spending a few moments with us as we discuss the challenges and opportunities of being a leader. We hope that in every episode, you find some bit of information that will help you on your own personal leadership journey. In order to reach more people and to improve our positioning on all the podcasting and social media platforms, it's important that you to improve our positioning on all the podcasting and social media platforms. It's important that you subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcasting platform, like Apple, spotify or any other platform where you listen to First Lead you. We would really appreciate you clicking on the subscribe button to help us reach more people and expand the message of First Lead you and please take time to visit the First Lead you website and the message of First Lead you and please take time to visit the First Lead you website. That's the number one S-T the word lead and the letter U dot com. Firstleadyoucom. Number one S-T the word lead and the letter U dot com. I hope you have a great day as you continue to learn to first lead you.

Douglas Ford:

Hello First Lead you listeners, we are here today talking about awareness it's the first A in our chart acrostic and we are talking about how the A's are really a unique subset inside of the chart acrostic, because each of the A's that we will be covering actually correlates back to one of the other letters. So an A goes to the C, an A goes to the H, an A goes to the R, an A goes to the T, and we'll keep breaking this down as we go through it. But, john, you were going to give us some statistics on the assessments and how we see the results that we see when we give these assessments for people in the social and self-awareness categories, right?

John Ballinger:

Before I give those statistics, I want to say that I've got this bold in my notes Out of the A's, awareness is the most difficult one to master and remember. The A's are awareness, approachable, adaptable and appreciative. So this is the most difficult one. If you can become aware, you can become adaptable. If you can become aware, you can become approachable. If you can become aware, you can become appreciative. So I made that bold note because it is the most difficult letter. But then that word inside is the most difficult word to master, which affects the other A's and then the other letters in the acrostic. Here's the statistic Did I say that right? Statistic Based on the emotional intelligence assessments that we give most leaders that we test score out of a 0 to 100. So that's the range and if we put that 0 to 100 in the A, b, c, d, E, f category and use kind of the same, I think it's the 100 to 89, is an A or something like that.

Douglas Ford:

It's usually every 10 points, so like 100 to 90, 80 to 89, 70 to 79.

John Ballinger:

Right, most that we've assessed are in the 60s, so that would be a D, that would be a D and some have dropped into the Fs because I've seen them in the 40s, which that's like F, minus, minus, minus or something.

Douglas Ford:

And if we were going to most public schools we wouldn't be able to grade them below a 50, because they say if you get below that it's very hard to recover, right, right, right.

John Ballinger:

So I want you to think about that audience, especially those leaders, right, right.

John Ballinger:

So I want you to think about that audience, especially those leaders. Think about the fact that social and self-awareness are two of the four critical, key components to your emotional intelligence, and most of the leaders that we assess are in the D's. What the book says, what assessments say, is a leader should be operating in the high 80s to low 90s consistently to be the leader that their team needs. So look at that chasm that's between where they're at and where they need to be, and I can tell you that's a difficult place to get from the 60s up to the high 80s 90s. It takes work, practice, and at the end of this we're going to give you three, I guess, suggestions that we tell leaders they need to have in order to begin their improvement of social and self-awareness. So if there is an awareness that we see in leaders, it's that they are aware that they aren't capable of being leaders. Now, that may seem, but we see the actions and the traits, and here's how we see it. They act out through being boisterous, heavy-handed, mouthy and conceited.

Douglas Ford:

That's not a good list. It's not.

John Ballinger:

But if you look at those traits, those would correlate with what is known as the imposter leader traits, that's, someone that knows I shouldn't be in this leadership position. I arrived in this leadership position through knowing someone doing something for someone quid pro quo. My resume got me in the position but didn't necessarily meant that I should have been in a leadership position. My resume matched the job description for that organization, but they knew they were imposters and so they acted out through those different traits. And so what are those traits? Again, those traits are being boisterous, heavy-handed, mouthy and conceited yeah, that would be a difficult person to work for.

John Ballinger:

Well, it may, if you think about it, if you're thinking about the leader that we talked about earlier, that you could probably start correlating some of those traits with that person.

Douglas Ford:

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

John Ballinger:

Right. And then you start thinking okay, so you didn't want to be that leader for your team, did you? No, you didn't want your team, when you walked out, to think, roll the eyes, make the comments and things like that. But there were probably times that you weren't aware and left the room and somebody said something.

Douglas Ford:

Oh, I'm sure, Right, I'm sure there was.

John Ballinger:

All of us that have been in a leadership position have had someone, when we left the room, say something because of some lack of awareness, or it could have been you know what? We just said something they didn't like. But psychology today again says that only 10 to 15% of leaders have the trait of good self-awareness. We did a podcast on how to be a bad leader. You remember that podcast? Yes, yeah, sadly, a lot of those in leadership positions are not good at leading because they are not aware of how others see and perceive. They have no idea. So they're walking in, being boisterous, heavy-handed, mouthy and conceited, and instead of seeing how they're infecting the people and I said infecting, I didn't say affecting You're infecting just like a disease, just like a bee sting, like something's going on, because that person is actually infecting who, they are into you and it's causing you to react, and that's not a good trait for your team to have to deal with on a day in and day out basis as a leader.

Douglas Ford:

And we talked about how. You know, bad leadership basically leads to poor profits, right? So, because it impacts your productivity, if your team has to go back and mentally regroup after they've had an interaction with you, well, how much time have you stolen from their productivity? And if they dread coming in in the mornings because they don't want to interact with you, well, they're probably not going to be there 10 minutes early and they're probably going to leave for lunch five minutes early and they're going to get back 10 minutes late. I mean, it just cascades as you go through the day. You just keep losing more and more time that they're not actually being productive because they're involved in all this other emotional turmoil.

John Ballinger:

Right. I also think that, as we're talking through the self-awareness piece and what a leader needs to, and the fact that it's critical in emotional intelligence Foundation for managing your own emotional response to situations and circumstances effectively and knowing your internal state and the triggers that influence your feelings, that's a mouthful, but you as a leader, need to understand foundationally self and social awareness. And self is first because when you're self-aware you start becoming socially aware. So the self-awareness is the foundation, and to be able to effectively know your internal state and triggers that influence your feelings of how you are reacting is so critical. But it's difficult because you have to assess you. You're having a hard look in the mirror at yourself. That leader we were talking about today he used that analogy of you got to look in the mirror.

Douglas Ford:

Absolutely, and he talked about. That's the hardest conversation that you have, but it's also the most real conversation that you have. He's like other people can tell you and try to help you with awareness and unless you're open to hearing that, it's not going to be very effective. But if you take the time and the effort and have the desire to assess yourself, you're going to get much quicker and faster results because you come to that realization like, oh, I'm actually acting this way.

John Ballinger:

Right, I wrote down this to the listener because at this point this has been a tough what 17, 18, 20 minutes, whatever we're at right now because it is the most difficult letter.

John Ballinger:

It is the most difficult word in the letter and I wanted the listener to listen to this.

John Ballinger:

I just I was just typing this out and I said, okay, that was a lot so far, we've done a lot. What it means is that you, the leader, should become aware of what is going on with you Capital Y O U, mentally and emotionally, and you're able to manage emotional and physical responses in appropriate ways that are beneficial to both you and your team. I mean, like I want to just take that, laminate it, put it on your desk, look at it, carry it around in your wallet, your pocket and understand how you react to both emotional and physical responses is so beneficial, once you understand that, to you and your team Because you don't become or you don't continue to become the grenade thrower than most leaders Because I mean we're talking about 85% to 90%, according to psychology today are just grenade throwers. They're going in and creating chaos that causes a concussion with people and the leader leaves and the whole organization or whoever they came on, came into, is just kind of paralyzed and concussed. Right now they are not conscious.

Douglas Ford:

I can tell you that yeah, and I've been around people like that that would walk into meetings and throw the proverbial word grenade into the middle of the conversation and then walk out and it's like I mean they should kind of shut the meeting down.

John Ballinger:

This next note is very difficult as well, and I hate to keep saying difficult, but the reality is, if this, out of all the letters and all the words, this is it. That means that you need to spend the most time as a leader on this topic, on this work. Awareness also means being aware of your team, so it's not just you. You have to be aware of your team, being aware of when things change with your team member, being aware of their emotions, feelings, life circumstances and how things are impacting their life-work balance.

John Ballinger:

This doesn't mean that every day as a leader is a counseling session. I'm not saying that. It does mean that when someone acts out of character and you say that's not normal for them, that you, the leader, recognize that and may want to pull them in or ask someone that they report to. Hey, is Joe all right? Because that wasn't Joe's character that I'm used to seeing. When you do that and you go to Joe, I think Joe appreciates that I know they do because I've done that before and I do it weekly. When I see somebody doing something out of character, I'll pull them aside and say are you all right? Is there something on your mind? What happens when you become aware, the C which we did, which was the coach, commander, cop and counselor, actually is easier to know which C needs to be pulled out at which given time because of the awareness.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, and that's what I was going to say earlier was when you are aware of yourself and your team and you recognize that something's going on with them, it gives you, it opens up that door for you to be the counselor when you go and approach them and they understand that you care about them. And it also gives you the opportunity to extend a little grace sometimes when you know like, oh, I know this is going on, this is probably why they're off their game a little bit today and when they realize that, they really appreciate it.

John Ballinger:

Sure.

John Ballinger:

So today I want the leader to think about how you can improve your awareness, both self and social, to be an effective leader. And I've got three suggestions for the leaders. And number one Douglas journal journal journal. You've heard me say that I told you last week I started meeting with a young man. I'm on my second meeting with him and he did the most complete journaling I've ever seen since I've been doing this. He gave me dates, time, places, what was going on with him, what was going on with the person he was with. I mean it was. And I told him. I said that's the most complete journey I've ever seen. And I mean it was. When I say the date, it was this date and then the next day. This happened. Based on what happened this day and their reaction. It was between him and his spouse, him and his father-in-law, him and you know, work, teamwork, team members and things like that. I was blown away by what he delivered to me. But then we started walking down through each one of those journal entries and explaining oh, that's why I reacted that way. This is why I did that Now, I would say in two meetings his self-awareness, probably.

John Ballinger:

My guess is if he, because he was in the 60s. He probably elevated himself from the 60s to the 70s and to me that's awesome Because he was telling me oh, as the week went on, he started thinking oh, that's why I do that Childhood. Oh, that's why I did that. This boss hurt me. Oh, that's why I do that Because of this circumstance. Yeah, oh, that's why I did that this boss hurt me.

Douglas Ford:

Oh, that's why I do that, because of this circumstance, yeah, I mean. And a lot of times this stuff is just sitting there right under the surface and you just, if you haven't taken the time to really process it, really think about it, reflect and brighten it down, because then you can go back and reference it again and again and you can spend time thinking about what you wrote.

John Ballinger:

You're also going to see patterns. He started seeing patterns of behavior when situations arose. Number two when you are in a difficult situation and you can feel it as a leader, because your body is reacting to it a lot of times people's physical body like hives or getting blotches and things like that your team sees that the best thing to do in that situation is to take a physical step back from the situation you're in, because what it's going to do is going to trigger in your brain right now Something's going on. My body's reacting to it. I don't spatially understand what's going on and when you take that physical step back and he actually tried that through a coach he took a physical step back and said man, that is incredible how that just stopped me from reacting like I would have been reacting had I not been taking that step back. It may sound odd, but I'm telling you, every person that's utilized it on a consistent basis says it helps them. Stop what's going on by taking that physical step back and you become aware of what's going on with you and the team or the person and then, as a team member, ask your as a as a leader excuse me, as a leader, ask your team to help you.

John Ballinger:

I know I know strange as a leader. You're going to your team and say, listen, I want to learn how to be better socially and self from an awareness standpoint. Will you help me do that and point out things to me privately that you see going on that can help me be more aware. Now that's going to take some vulnerability and it takes your team, or where? Now that's going to take some vulnerability and it takes your team.

John Ballinger:

It takes you trusting your team and your team trusting you that you're not going to create retribution when they call you into your office and say, hey, can we talk a second about what just happened in the meeting? I was there, I saw it happen and I think this may have been a point where you did this and I was watching the room and the the room temperature changed and people just locked up. Ask your team to help you, especially those that are close, trusted advisors to you, so that they will be honest with you. So, as a leader journal, journal, journal Take a physical step back and then ask team members to help you. There are three good steps to start your social and self-awareness.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, and I think those, like I said, just taking those three steps, three actions, will increase your self-awareness and put you on a good path very quickly, right.

John Ballinger:

So we've wrapped up the first A on the acrostic. Again, the most difficult A, the most difficult word in all of the acrostic words Leaders, in order to lead your team, well, you must learn to first lead you. Thanks everyone, I'll see you next time.

People on this episode

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John Ballinger

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Douglas Ford

Co-host