Self awareness is one of the fundamental building blocks of emotional intelligence. It is an important trait to have in all areas of life – personal and business. Furthermore, when your self-awareness is at an all time high, you are able to more effectively interact with others and perform at a higher level.

In business, leadership specifically, self awareness is one of the most vital traits one can portray as it directly impacts your influence over others, your personal growth, and the company’s success. Great leaders are able to understand, recognize, and manage their natural emotions and behaviors. With this level of self-awareness, they are able to make better decisions and choices to change and grow themselves and the company.

Here are a few ways to boost your self-awareness:

Discover Your Strengths & Weaknesses

When building your foundation of self-awareness, you must take into account your greatest strengths and weaknesses. Understand what you excel at and how you can use that to lead others. On the contrary, understand where you lack knowledge or expertise and where you need help. When identifying your strengths and weaknesses, set your ego aside and really uncover what these look like for you. By doing so, you will be able to dive into further self-reflection which leads to great self-awareness. 

Identify Triggers

A great way to measure and increase your self-awareness is to be present in all situations, both positive and negative, and recognize how you react and respond. Are there specific instances that trigger you to react certain ways? Do you know why these instances trigger these specific reactions? Try tracking this for one week. Take a notebook with you wherever you go and notate various situations that occur (remember, both positive and negative) and how you react. At the end of the week you should be able to look back on the many situations and notice patterns to your reactions. Once you are able to recognize these triggers, you will be able to go into any situation and know exactly how to manage your reactions and actions. 

Solicit Feedback

Another effective way to understand your level of self-awareness is to simply ask those around you how you show up for them. When you ask for feedback from others, you show them that you are empathetic and are dedicated to serving them at the highest possible level. Once you are able to discover and understand the impact that you have on those around you, you will be able to alter your behavior and actions to be more influential.