High performance leaders recognize the need to constantly improve their organization and its people, and above all, themselves. To become better leaders, they continually expand their self-awareness, even if this means confronting aspects of their personalities, habits and performance that they’d rather not see. Self-awareness requires a dedicated effort to uncover the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Here are some steps to get you started.

Accept that others may know you better than you know yourself. It is far easier to have wisdom about others than it is to truly know ourselves. Recognize that you have a biased perspective or that you don’t comprehend the whole picture of your behavior and its impact.

Examine your world view. There’s an old saying that a fish doesn’t know it’s swimming in water until it is thrown upon the riverbank. Up until that moment, that fish thinks that he understands all about the world and how it works. Your world view is a framework that allows you to understand individuals, groups and your “reality.” A world view is like a lens through which you see yourself and others. It is dangerous to assume that your world view is the right one or the same as other people.  To explore your world view, ask yourself, What are my beliefs? and What assumptions do I make about myself and others?

Find a new perspective. Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” To get a different perspective, look at an unrelated industry, ask for feedback from a new source or methodically toss out all of your assumptions and start fresh.

Explore the unknown unknowns. You’re probably pretty comfortable with not knowing every answer. What if you didn’t even know the right questions to be asking? According to an article by Errol Morris in the New York Times Opinionator, known unknowns are the problems you can list and prepare for. The unknown unknowns are problems about which you are completely unaware. Giant leaps in self-awareness and performance can be achieved by not only adding to your list of solutions, but uncovering previously unexplored questions.

You would never accept mediocre performance from yourself. Likewise, don’t accept that you have complete self-awareness, without a consistent and disciplined effort to uncover the real you.

Here’s Mr. Cloutier’s advice, and Humanergy’s take.

Be a dictator. Give direction, but not about everything. Dictate the mission, values – the critical few things that will keep your organization focused and successful. Don’t waffle on those.

Tell your employees: “Don’t think – obey.” If your employees aren’t thinking, they should stay home. You need all intellects, skillsets and experiences actively engaged on your organization’s problems and opportunities.

Forget your likeability score. Earn respect through true leadership and likeability will probably come. True leaders don’t walk around with the goal of being warm and fuzzy, but they do treat people with genuine respect and kindness. They know that engaged workers who see themselves as an integral part of the organization produce better results. Therefore, good leaders communicate often, get input from their people and earn trust and respect at the same time.

Be a feared general. Don’t use fear as a tool. Using fear as a leadership tool is a sign of the leader’s own insecurities. Anyone holding the reins that tight is doing so out of fear – fear of losing control, new ideas or not being the smartest person in the room. You cannot command respect through fear. What you will create is an environment that encourages in-fighting, short-term gains and employees doing anything possible to look good.

Fear is the best motivator. Praise is a far better motivator. Our blog post on praising employees quoted research on the connection between praise and performance. Employees who receive regular praise have higher productivity and lower turnover, and they make fewer mistakes. Fear, on the other hand, may produce some short-term compliance to avoid reprisals. But because fear increases physical and emotional stress, employees are less productive over time. They’re also profoundly unfulfilled, which in turn causes your employees to dust off their resumes and find a less toxic environment.

Penalize poor or negligent performance. Spend more time feeding good performance than pointing out what’s not going well. Indeed, poor performance must be addressed as soon as it is noted. However, if you as a leader spend most of your time doling out penalties for poor performance, you are taking time from your most high value work. You should spend the vast majority of your time figuring out what is working and building on that success.

Fire incompetent employees. Surround yourself with only the best people. There should be no room in your company for people who operate contrary to the values, ethics or best practices that you’ve established. Hire and groom people who’s goals align with the organization’s and with passion to continually learn. Do that well, and you won’t need to fire many people.

Enforce, enforce, enforce. Adapt, adapt, adapt. Plans are made to be adapted to an ever-changing business environment. Rather than insisting that people follow your plans exactly, encourage adaptation within key parameters. The goals and best practices won’t change, but you’ll be nimble and responsive in how you get there.

Being a dictator requires a leader to possess all the wisdom, creativity, experience and judgment necessary for success in an ever-changing world. No one can do that. Unfortunately, some people still operate in the mindset that they can do it all, that they have all the answers. Scary. As Emile Chartier said, “There is nothing more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”

• What is important today is also important tomorrow
• You don’t chase the latest fad, project or trend
• Your bad mood doesn’t cause you to act radically different
• People know what to expect from you

Being consistent in your leadership means that even under duress, you make the right choices. You steer the ship, make mid-course corrections and align your “crew” around important best practices that will help you reach your destination.

Even the most reliable and unswerving of leaders must be able to adjust to change. Yet, the consistent leader will be grounded, so that unfamiliar and challenging conditions won’t change the quality of interactions, thinking and decision-making.

How do you stay on course and make consistently positive leadership choices? Start by answering these four questions.

1. What is success? Success is defined first by the impact you want to make – and secondarily by the results you need to achieve to have that impact. Think about who and what will be changed by your efforts. That’s your impact.

2. What is sacred? What are your non-negotiables? Make a list of the things you will not compromise, no matter what. For example, you might list ethical standards that are vital and unchanging.

3. What is important? List a few guiding principles for your life and your leadership. Examples might include:

• Act with integrity
• Be a good steward of resources
• Be humble
• Have fun

4. What works? Know – and grow – best practices that lead to success, help you hold fast to what is sacred and allow you to focus on what is important. Identify the thinking and actions that are requirements for questions 1, 2 and 3.

Consistent, dependable leadership choices provide a solid foundation for your people – enabling them to weather storms and operate at their peak. You shouldn’t be completely predictable. You don’t have to be perfect, and you’re allowed to have bad days. What you cannot do is permit outside conditions to change you fundamentally – causing you to shift whichever way the wind blows. Be the anchor that your organizational ship requires.

Use situational awareness. Law enforcement officers, who deal with life-or-death situations, are trained to avoid cognitive blindness. That’s what happens when we face a threat. We focus in on the one thing that’s giving us trouble. Officers are trained to develop situational awareness or the ability to  mentally widen out. Think of it as a camera lens that pulls back to wide angle. Rather than focusing your thinking on the narrow threat, expand to take in the larger picture.

To broaden your thinking, ask these questions:

• What are the peripheral issues that have an impact on this crisis?
• What other industries might we learn from?
• What other situations have we been involved with that might inform our actions?

To deepen your thinking, ask:

• What are the potential outcomes of the situation now? In the future?
• What other perspectives aren’t we considering?
• What data are we using to make a decision?
• What other data point to a different conclusion?
• What assumptions are we making, even without being consciously aware of them?

Try the rule of six. When things go bad, we want to quickly zero in on “the answer.” Judy Sorum Brown shares the rule of six, which was taught to her by Paula Underwood, a Native American leader and author. Basically, this means that we come up with at least 6 possible answers to our problem. The most challenging aspect of the rule of 6 is that you must hold each of those 6 answers in your head and not immediately choose from among them. This allows you to be open to a wider range of thoughts and perspectives. As you discuss and examine all 6 without judging, you are able to be a true systems thinker, without having to champion “your” idea.

We all want to be like Henry Kissinger, who said, “There cannot be a crisis today; my schedule is already full.” Like it or not, you’ll face predicaments that must be solved. Giving yourself (and your team) a wider head space in which to think will mean a better solution. And because it’s the best resolution to the problem, you probably won’t have to deal with that same crisis again. Good riddance.

Researchers believe that fluency is adaptive, that it helps us be successful as a species. For example, fluency includes a preference for the familiar. This ensured that we ate familiar (nonpoisonous) plants and avoided unfamiliar, dangerous creatures.

The problems with fluency occur when we don’t factor it into the ways we process messages and communicate with others. We can be unaware of the influence of fluency on our own judgments, and we can miss opportunities to utilize fluency when we want to share information with others.

How can cognitive fluency work for you?

To “sell” your message, keep it simple. Ideas that are easier to think about are more memorable and more believable. Use simple terminology that is familiar to your audience. People will not only remember it more easily, they will be more prone to believe it. Rhyming phrases are more believable than those that don’t rhyme, even if the words mean the same thing.

Use repetition. Seeing or hearing something multiple times helps people remember your message. This bias for the familiar also creates positive associations. People like familiar things, even if they really are no better than the alternative.

Be a better listener by “closing the loop” with clear, simple words. You’re listening carefully, but to be sure you are both on the same page, restate the message in your own words – using plain language to summarize your understanding.

To encourage deep thinking about an issue, use more complex or unfamiliar words. Use the opposite of fluency – disfluency – if you want people to think abstractly or profoundly on a topic. More complex wording, unusual word combinations or even a less readable font encourage our brains to get out of intuitive mode and think deeply.

To help people feel confident, have them list only a few reasons they’ll be successful. Generating a long list of positive attributes gets challenging, and that difficulty encourages the person to think more negatively. Because they have to work hard, they subconsciously conclude that they’re not so great after all.

Resist the urge to manipulate using cognitive fluency. Cognitive fluency can be used for good or for less-than-honorable purposes. Be open and transparent in what you are doing and why. For example, tell people why you’re using certain terms – either to help them think deeply or to make your message more memorable.

Research continues to reinforce the idea that we make judgments and decisions based on more than just the cold facts. The moral of the story is to think critically about the myriad of inputs you process each day. Are your likes and dislikes well-reasoned, or are they simply a reflection of what is easy for you think about?

Even if the consequences aren’t as dramatic, inadequate judgment on the part of leaders results in losses – in profits, morale, jobs and market share, just to name a few.

What does it look like when leaders exhibit skillful judgment, and how can you do the same?

Understand what makes people and groups tick. First, be a good listener (see our Sponge blog post). Regularly ask open-ended questions. Book smarts about group dynamics help, but you can be an expert on the topic and still not know a thing about what is really going on with your people.

Know when to fight and when to compromise. Fight for guiding principles and high standards. Compromise when the alternative being suggested is a viable way of reaching the organization’s goals, even if it isn’t your favorite way.

Make decisions based on facts. You may be more swayed by emotions than you think (see our Decision-making blog post). Seek out other perspectives, especially ones that contradict your position. Make sure your facts are inclusive and not just gathered to justify what you have already decided to do.

Analyze risk/benefit. Don’t always be a no-holds-barred risk-taker. Go for it when the potential payoff is high and the risks are low. Talk about  risk-taking with others, so that your direct reports know when it’s not only appropriate, but required, on their part.

Understand the implications of decisions. Carefully consider the chain of events that will follow your decision before it’s implemented. How will the decision affect other people or groups? What do you need to do to mitigate the effects of this decision?

Act in ways that are consistent with your principles and values. The foundation of judgment is rock solid adherence to your values. What is important to you? What will you never compromise?

Judgment might best be summarized as discernment – the ability to make sense out of  the obscure. Judgment is evidenced when leaders take in a broad array of opinions, facts and experiences and integrate these into a strategy. Not all moves will pay off, even with most wise, astute judgment. Most well-reasoned decisions will bear fruit – in the form of results achieved or lessons learned.

It’s human nature to be proud of our achievements. When pride falls out of balance, though, it can easily turn to arrogance. What are the pitfalls of pride?

Pride clouds judgment. When it’s all about you and your ego, you no longer make decisions based on a solid foundation.

Pride puts your vision in the forefront, not the organization’s. You’ll move boldly, but not in the right direction.

Pride makes you unapproachable. You won’t hear the feedback that you need, because people know you don’t want it.

Here’s how to nurture the trait of humility as a way of keeping pride in check.

Be ready to listen and learn from others. Make time each day to learn something new from those around you.

Share knowledge to “seed” others’ strengths. Communicate lessons learned and best practices, helping less experienced leaders continue their development.

Give credit to others when it’s due. Be liberal and specific in communicating others’ achievements.

Admit mistakes. Share what you did wrong and how you are correcting it.

Above all, avoid false humility. People see through fake modesty and find it distasteful at best. False humility guarantees that people won’t trust you.

To be an authentic leader, the scales must tip in favor of humility. Your achievements will allow you to soar with the eagles, and you’ll be grounded at the same time. Thomas Merton said it best: “Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.”

Please note that we didn’t say “make all the decisions all the time.” (For those of you prone to “leadership as dictatorship,” we’ll try to address this in a future posting!)

For some people, decisions don’t come easy. For the decision-challenged, we find these strategies to be helpful:

Fake it til you make it. Instead of labeling yourself as indecisive, replace that internal dialogue with, “I am a decisive person.” (Do NOT follow this by looking in the mirror and saying, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”)

Solve the right problem. Before making a decision, examine the root cause(s) of the problem by asking 3 “why” questions. A (perhaps overly) simple example: My shower head isn’t powerful enough. Why? It seems to be clogged. Why? The water is hard. Why? My water softener isn’t working properly. Why? No salt.

Get it down on paper. Once you know the root cause, jot down everything you can think of about the problem and possible decision alternatives. Who’s involved, what do others know, what is unknown, how long it’s been happening, etc.

Sleep on it. Don’t expect big AHAs right away. Let your thoughts slowly percolate, preferably overnight. Your brain will continue processing on its own, and you might be surprised at some of the new information you can add 12 hours later.

Keep an open mind. It’s human nature to look for evidence that confirms what our gut is telling us. Consciously seek out opposing opinions and information that contradicts your gut. Your decision will be stronger for it.

Life is uncertain, so don’t wait to know everything. Sometimes you need to leap, even when you can’t pin down all of the facts. If you’ve followed the steps above, you’ll be in much better shape to not only decide, but to deal with the consequences of your decision.

Remember, not deciding is deciding. Enough said.

* 50 DOs for Everyday Leadership: Practical Lessons Learned the Hard Way (So You Don’t Have To) was written by Humanergy’s John Barrett, David Wheatley and Lynn Townsend. For more information, check out our website at www.humanergy.com or call us at 269.789.0446.