Application of the first practical skill: Self-awareness. Managers and executives of companies as well as entrepreneurs within the different Latin American cultures, have begun to recognize more and more that the "soft sciences" and emotional intelligence "can make a difference in their business. And one of the problems that they usually pose us has to do with how to implement and put into practice each of the five practical intelligences referred to by Daniel Goleman (“Emotional Intelligence”; Bantam Books - 1995).
Some managers in the corporate world are surprised by the fact that there is a certain “sequence” that must be followed for an effective application of emotional intelligence in organizations.
And since this sequence begins with “self-awareness”, both managers and entrepreneurs are very common to be surprised and see that motivation is relegated to third position.
As the vast majority are people who are characterized by being proactive, perceiving that control (locus of control) is more in their hands than in that of others, and that they dedicate many of their hours and energy to initiatives linked to action., many of them perceive self-awareness as a stage that they could skip.
Who does not believe or perceive that he is in control of himself? Who is the manager or businessman who thinks that he does not control his life and actions within his own business?
Some managers and entrepreneurs have stressed to us - by sharing practical skills with them - that self-awareness seems to be useful for those linked to philosophy, but that it seems little useful for those who “have to achieve results quickly with a minimum of resources ”.
Daniel Goleman has done a voluminous compilation work related to the soft sciences, the behavioral sciences.
His exhaustive work has been turned into the aforementioned work that has been characterized by the immense number of buyers it has had, which has not always been accompanied by an immense number of readers. And to corporate managers and entrepreneurs - owners, in general it has seemed an "interesting" work but one that is not always helpful in terms of its practical implications.
A senior manager told us that "someone must make the necessary bridge to unite Goleman's conceptions with the needs of companies to achieve their own objectives."
Much of Daniel Goleman's significant success within the corporate world (Johnson & Johnson Corp., among others) in developing his conceptual framework is supported by the work of many notable behavioral science experts and researchers.
Likewise, it goes to a selection of main variables to which a wide coverage has been given within the business world, mainly within the United States of North America, such as: motivation, leadership, participation, importance of “ affection ”, work in groups, among others.
The interested reader can find on the page www.gestiopolis.com a large bibliography and also contents directly related to the variables highlighted above, within the Organizational Development section.
There are many authors who have focused their interest on aspects related to self-awareness within the Behavioral Sciences such as Chris Argyris, Jack Gibb and J. Luft among others. The work on T-groups and sensitivity training developed under the initiative of National Training Labs in the 50s and 60s of the last century have had a lot to do with knowing yourself and meeting others.
Daniel Goleman seems to suggest that if we all stopped for an instant in this world we would then have enormous power of transformation in our own hands. The motto: "For the world to be propelled towards higher dimensions and levels, it is only necessary that, for a moment, we all stop", seems to take full effect within the framework of Daniel Goleman. Without the requirement of knowing oneself, it does not make much sense - for this author - to think about pushing ourselves.
The importance of self-awareness is especially relevant in a world where tradition has given way to transitions and where the latter has already been overcome by transformations.
A couple of centuries ago, changes were rather slow in terms of their impact on people's behavior, and they began to accelerate after the Industrial Revolution.
The practical consequences of the industrial revolution and the organizational revolution made it necessary to develop a profession that some have preferred to call as a consultant, while others have shown a preference for the development of a profession specialized in organizational change, which has emerged as a mid-century under the name of the Organizational Development Profession. Within this incipient discipline Robert Golembiewski ("Ironies in Organization Development"; New Jersey: Transaction Publishers - 1990) highlights that there are three main possible exchange rates. We have as the first type of change the Alpha change that has to do with a “constant” type of progress; The author points out that under this situation both the variables and the measurement methods remain unchanged.As a second type of change emerges the Beta change that has to do with some variable rate progress; under this situation, both the variables and the measurement methods are modified. As an example we can highlight the things that happen in "a second cycle" as a result of change initiatives adopted in a first cycle. Golembiewski suggests a last type of change that receives the name of Gamma that is characterized by the fact that in addition to the Beta change there is a transformational change; this implies a quantum leap.As an example we can highlight the things that happen in "a second cycle" as a result of change initiatives adopted in a first cycle. Golembiewski suggests a last type of change that receives the name of Gamma that is characterized by the fact that in addition to the Beta change there is a transformational change; this implies a quantum leap.As an example we can highlight the things that happen in "a second cycle" as a result of change initiatives adopted in a first cycle. Golembiewski suggests a last type of change that receives the name of Gamma that is characterized by the fact that in addition to the Beta change there is a transformational change; this implies a quantum leap.
We are now facing a type of paradigmatic shift where people and organizations can no longer act incrementally and cannot remain totally still, since it would be a case of “paradigmatic paralysis”. You are facing the existence of an alteration of the existing order beyond your own conception.
To be successful in this type of situation it is necessary to develop the ability of self-awareness; what happens outside of us and what happens inside of us and to me is enough to keep alive and growing both for the individual and for the organization.
At the beginning of "the organization" as a productive mechanism, the privileged approach was that of Frederick Taylor based on the best and greatest use of each of the members that people have (their arms and legs), focusing attention on what mechanical way it could be adopted using the body of the worker. Henry Ford has been known for his phrase where he highlights the non-need to take into account what the worker had in his head (actually it is in his mind) by stating that “I only ask for a pair of good arms and legs and it turns out that a complete person comes to me ”. Man could and should also work and operate with a degree of efficiency close to that of the machine or at least complementing each other as a part of the machine.Years later, the movement known under the name of human relations showed that this conception was insufficient to manage the business world to which must be added the cognitive conception that James March and Herbert Simon privileged in their treatise on "Organizations" (Wiley & Sons - 1958) where they prioritize the aspect related to decision making. But still no one made us see - nor did they speak to us - of the importance of self-awareness.But still no one made us see - nor did they speak to us - of the importance of self-awareness.But still no one made us see - nor did they speak to us - of the importance of self-awareness.
At this point, organizations began to privilege a particular type of person: they were Professionals. They were characterized by being University Diplomates, who had a particular specialization. And this particular specialty was directly linked to the "vertical niche" type of organizational arrangement. It was necessary to have Public Accountants and Bachelor's in Administration to take charge of departments such as Comptroller and Administration in organizations.
The Engineers would be responsible for the Production and Factory areas and the Lawyers would be part of the group that makes up the Legal Department. Sales would be in charge of professionals who would make up the Marketing departments, and thus, little by little, the Graduate Professionals would be placed in management and direction positions in the organizations. Even to join a "corporation" it was essential to have a Diploma Profession and the professionals who were just entering saw how many non-graduates were expelled from the companies.
Even some authors, such as Victor Thompson, came to show how the different professions could collide with each other, and in particular those who took pride in the exercise of their profession with respect to the person who was located at the top of the organization.
The organizations needed that what the managers had in their minds as strategies could be implemented by the professionals in the management bodies, who would be responsible for instructing those below regarding what specific procedures they should follow. But just as every new conception has a beginning, it also has an end.
Information technology through its binary system makes the existence of the Diploma professional less important; programs (see again March & Simon - already mentioned) implemented through the binary system (0 and 1) turn out to be the main predilection of businessmen. The decisions are from then on of the "programmed" type; It is not whoever is at the top of the company who decides but rather a previously designed program.
And the role of graduate professionals is beginning to lose its validity. Later on, the reengineering would begin to show that it is precisely the intermediate positions of the organization, which are no longer as necessary as they were until then.
Both in society as a whole and within organizations, the "middle" class ceases to have the important presence that it had until then.
The people who "remain" within the organization have to Act. And act fast.
As a senior manager of a service company put it: "Executives should bear in mind that the name we have given (executives) has to do with doing and not so much with thinking." And this phrase has become widespread worldwide since globalization, as the phrase "You think globally and act locally" has expanded and installed.
The people in the corporate world who settle in the metropolis are the ones who would decide what happens in the subsidiaries; and those responsible for the subsidiaries would have to focus especially on execution.
That is why it is not surprising to us when within the organizational and business world in the different Latin American countries, that executives and managers - as well as some entrepreneurs, such as franchisees - are surprised at the importance that can be get to take time to get to know yourself and get to know others.
Self-awareness does not seem so relevant to them, at least in light of the problems they face on a daily basis.
However, if we take into account the importance of Emotional Intelligence and that this is defined as the "Ability to know, direct and control both one's own emotions and those of others" (Daniel Goleman - "Emotional Intelligence"; Bantam Books - 1995), it comes to light that knowledge - both our own and what happens around us with others - is of vital importance. Now, it is evident and even obvious that “professional” expertise, although necessary, is not enough. The professions had reached the top within the organizational world and from then on it would be "other" factors that would propel the graduates to the top.
Self-awareness as a first practical skill makes us think about what is going on around us.
In trying to understand the interaction between the individual and the organization where he works, some experts suggest that the company should not allow full development to its organizational participants (Chris Argyris; 1961). And an original work in English by Dr. Donald W. Cole that was later edited in Spanish with Eric Gaynor Butterfield as co-author (“Professional Suicide or Organizational Murder; The Organization Development Institute International, Latin America - 2003) shows how important is to be attentive to the multiple signals that are present in the daily activities of companies. Professionals tend to be on the lookout for what we can call “cognitive cues” but, unfortunately for them, they are not enough.
When the company decides to establish a sales objective, it seems that it was an unequivocal signal, one hundred percent quantifiable and that it puts everything in the hands of the "recipient" as the final person responsible for reaching said "objective", which, paradoxically, seems to be objective. But in reality, that responsibility to achieve a measurable objective is not as clear as it might seem; Assigning a goal to the recipient of the goal and holding him accountable for achieving it is not always so clear and specific. In the first place, the sales objective must be reached by the sales management with personnel that he has not always hired himself; many psychologists have participated in the selection process of their personnel.
On many occasions he has received transfers of sales personnel that came from other departments.
Likewise, the advertising of the products and services to be marketed is generally in the hands of the marketing management and the advertising that the company does then does not follow the directives of the sales manager. And not to mention how products and services and their delivery are configured; their efficiency is also out of the hands of the sales manager.
Therefore, the objective of the management that seems "to be clear" by having established that it must achieve a sales volume X, in reality is not necessarily so.
Something that appears to be totally "rational" as a sales target is not necessarily.
However, the management of the company, having established it, is convinced that the acceptance of the sales goal by the manager makes it clear what the manager needs to function; but the sales manager in the development of the daily activities of his area soon begins to learn that he "does not have the necessary control over sales" as he was supposed to have.
Watching for these non-cognitive cues can determine the success of the sales manager's management as well as his possible - or not - expulsion from the position. Therefore, the sales objectives that are established from the top are not as objective as it seems and it must be important that the manager can identify which signals (emotional, among others) are present that should serve as an alert.
Something similar happens with the dialogues and conversations that we have between people. Many times we think that "what we say" is clear to the other person and we are not fully aware that our statement can be misleading. My 5-year-old grandson Bennie (Benjamin von Keisenberg), being sick, has been taken to the doctor by his mother. After his review by the doctor - which had to do with a sore throat that he had within a state of general flu-like illness - which naturally implies that he should remove his shirt and be examined, the doctor terminated the review and stated: "It is done; you can finish dressing ”.
For the mother - and of course also for the doctor - the message was clear enough; he had to help Bennie get dressed. But it seems that "the same thing" was not happening to Bennie, as he replied to the doctor: "As it is: My throat still hurts." Within the corporate world there are many messages that seem to be cognitive and clear; but this is not always so clear. Another clear example regarding the dysfunctional consequences that are present in the conversations has to do with the case that we have already seen previously - Introductory Workshop - in relation to what happened with the Norwegian battleship that gave orders in the middle of a dense fog to that the "other" would deviate, to finally be surprised that the "other" would not deviate since he was responsible for a lighthouse.
People in organizations are not fully aware of “what is happening” as a result of what we do. This is one of the reasons why learning processes are not easy in the business world.
The form of information transmission has a lot to do with the fulfillment of the task. For many millions of years the different species - and among them the human species - have been and continue to learn as a result of how they are shown. And not necessarily through words.
For this we want to share an interesting fact. A monkey that was isolated on an island - it was actually a monkey - used to eat its food, which carried sand and other elements with it. One day she learned that she could wash her food in the water that surrounded the island and from then on she continued washing her food that no longer had sand or other elements. This has been an interesting and important learning, but what has surprised us the most was the fact that monkeys that were on another island and did not have direct contact with the monkey since they could not move from island to island, started very early. to see the advantages of washing your food and cleaning it before eating it.
In recent years, people associate learning with the educational system, its schools, colleges, institutes and universities where instruction through words has been privileged. Perhaps we should keep in mind that other options are available to us. Now the example does not have to do with another animal species - as has been the case of the monkey described above - but with totally another species other than the animal. More specifically trees that belong to the plant system.
It seems that as people have been oriented to conversations and cognitive dialogues, they have been giving less and less importance to other effective forms of transmission, which sometimes manifest themselves through different signals. In the publication of the "Argentine Institute of Finance Executives" of September 1995, Eric Gaynor Butterfield highlights an interesting case: "With the purpose of illustrating the importance of an effective transmission (and dramatizing the importance of it), We mention an experiment recently carried out by a researcher (New Paradigms, Culture and Subjectivity:
Dora Fried Schnitman, Paidós - 1994), where the participants are not human beings and yet they had an efficient information transmission system. " "In this experiment conducted by" sadistic "scientists all the leaves were removed from a tree to study its behavior. The tree's reaction was predictable: it began to harvest sap more intensively to replace the leaves that had been removed as quickly as possible. And it also secreted a substance that protects it against parasites. The tree had understood very well that it was being attacked by a parasite, only that it believed that it was an insect when in fact it had been attacked by the "human parasite". But the most interesting and revealing thing is that neighboring trees of the same species began to secrete the same antiparasitic substance as the attacked tree!"Humans are going to have to reconsider - more than once - about the quality of our awareness of what is happening, and possibly do so long before acting. And we must also think about the consequences for the other of something that happens to us or of something we act on.
What signals we transmit and how we do it has been largely relegated to the background as a consequence of privileging spoken communication. Giraffes in South Africa usually feed on the small, young leaf shoots of a tree; and it is interesting to learn that the trees that are in the following direction - taking into account the same direction of the wind that operates as a signal and transmission medium - begin to generate a sap that is unattractive to the giraffe to de-stimulate it in your action.
We must remember that self-awareness must be directed towards the detection of emotions because they are the most efficient language that nature has created. And that the signals have to do with:
1. information about ourselves;
2. information about other people;
3. information about certain situations.
How aware are organizational leaders, managers, and executives to learn about their anger, fear, happiness, and eventual depressive states? It is important to learn about it since the distinction between them can lead us to a fight, to flee, to compromise or to isolate ourselves, respectively.
And we must also take into account how we have “filed” the (emotional) information since it is important to visualize how many of our actions have to be motorized as a consequence of how we have saved the image.
In the Workshop on "Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Development" we have explored a way we can learn about ourselves. The Organizational Development Profession has been linked to what is known under the name of "johari window". The “Johari window” is a development by Joe Luft and Harry Ingham that can be very useful for managers, executives and organizational and business managers who must be in a position to alert themselves to the difficulties that are present in communication between people. Interactions within companies are daily and frequent and also have the characteristic that many of them remain within the same group of belonging while they also exist with "other outsiders."Luft and Ingham suggest that the possibility of being aware of oneself and of others is only one in four, that is, in the order of 25%.
We are going to locate ourselves within a model where there are two main variables: a. Myself; and b. The others. On the other hand, the aspects related to a. and with b. They can be public or private, depending on whether they are known or not (by me and by others). The first area is what the two authors have called free activity that has to do with “the open self”. Here both the person "knows himself" and also "is known by others." Another area would be made up of those feelings, motivations and preferences that we have and know but that we hide from others. The person knows her feelings but the rest ignore them and the name that has been assigned to this quadrant is "mask".We can say that organizations that have a strong tendency to define roles very clearly together with their denominations may be guiding organizational participants to adopt the mask of the function they exercise. It is common that here - and especially at the beginning of the relationship - intimate aspects are hidden.
I know them but I keep them hidden from the other. Many people - men - can make statements of the type "I hate my wife" instead of pointing out specific aspects that happen during the relationship they have on a daily basis.
It is known that in most group meetings and interviews, much time is spent by both parties to talk “about the least important” and what has less relationship with the original objective of the meeting. It is even common for some meetings to be terminated without even having discussed the underlying issue. There is a third quadrant where we do not know ourselves but we are known by others, which we call the “blind area”.
In this area there are thoughts, motivations, attitudes, and preferences that we have but are not aware of; however other people recognize them since we reveal them through our actions and our words. Authoritarian people are not always recognized as such but can be defined as people "who are convinced that staff cannot be given autonomy" and in their daily actions under the rather authoritarian style they do not even observe the discomfort of their subordinates. Operating within this fourth area is extremely risky as it is similar to walking blindfolded. Finally, a fourth area is the one that has not yet been explored between the parties, it is stored in the unconscious and we can say that it is simply unknown to both us and the group.It is called as the area that has to do with the "unknown self." It is common that it is unknown what exactly this fourth window contains, but what we do know is its very existence.
Lucio Anneo Seneca pointed out more than 2,000 years ago that "We always have the vices of others before our eyes, and ours behind our backs".
That is why both the corporate manager and the employer should learn to cultivate this skill before acting. One way to describe Self-awareness, in restricted terms, has to do with the ability to recognize a feeling or emotion while it is occurring. And in the broadest sense self-awareness is the ability to:
1. Recognize a feeling-emotion while it is occurring.
2. Warn (be aware) of the thoughts (judgments, desires, evaluations) that are happening in our mind, particularly if they are linked to the feeling we are experiencing.
3. Recognize one or more emotions or feelings derived from the thoughts regarding the first feeling.
In addition, and in terms of our personality, Self-awareness includes recognizing in us –by observation and reflection- strengths and weaknesses. This recognition is in itself a sign of strength. In the movie 'La Fuerza del Cariño', one character says to another: 'His greatest strength is perfectly knowing his weaknesses'. And it's an excellent phrase to describe that psychological fact: Self-knowledge IS a strength.
However, self-awareness is not as simple and direct a function as it might seem at first glance, and even less with regard to our emotions. If I say that I am angry, maybe I am, but I may also be wrong or that information is very incomplete. You may actually be afraid, jealous, or both.
How do we get an exact awareness of what is happening to us (in the body) and what we are feeling (in the mind)?
This question is answered by the principle of self-awareness, the first step of Emotional Intelligence, because it only occurs when affective information enters the perceptual system. And let's keep in mind that our desires, feelings, attitudes, personality traits, and behaviors make up our affective universe.
For example, in order to control our irritability, we must be aware of which is the triggering agent (s), and what is the process by which such a powerful emotion arises; Only then can we learn to appease it and use it properly. To avoid discouragement and motivate ourselves, we must be aware of why we allow certain facts or negative statements about us to affect our mood.
To help others help themselves, we must be aware of our emotional involvement in the relationship.
The total lack of self-awareness is alexithymia, which means 'inability to verbalize one's feelings'. The reason is that individuals with this disorder are unable to go beyond body impressions. When asked, for example, what they had felt when a loved one died, they answered: 'an upset in the stomach'.
Although the term self-awareness refers to the patient and sustained effort we make to know and understand ourselves as much as possible, it includes the ability to listen to other people who reflect to us parts of our identity and our behavior that we cannot observe (such as defense mechanisms).
- How the Head Integrates with the Heart "
"The person who does not understand the feelings behind his actions does not really understand himself"; Dr. David Visctott
Emotion and consciousness can work together, helping us to discern the appropriate courses of action. Integrating emotion, observation and reason is really the key to Emotional Intelligence. Our emotions make the first evaluation of events. They evaluate events from the point of view of how they affect our well-being. Thus, we can automatically feel sad, scared or happy without having had a conscious thought.
Once we have an emotion, we need to observe and think about it and the context in which it occurs, and decide what to do, whether to continue towards what it prompts us to, change direction, or try to transform it.
The awareness of an emotional state and its observation are a great help: providing knowledge to the realm of feelings produces an effect similar to the impact of an observer on the quantum level of physics, altering what is observed.
Our Emotional Intelligence implies an integration of many voices within our being: both the emotional and the rational voice, both internally generated voices and externally acquired ones. It is this integration that constitutes our sense of who we are and provides us with the best guide to healthy living.
Because the purpose of Emotional Intelligence is that we consciously manage our emotions, so that they do not manage us. Keep in mind that the reactions to our emotions can keep us distanced from ourselves.
Finally, Self-awareness is also closely linked to Empathy, because when we manage to see ourselves objectively or from 'other people's shoes', we understand how our attitude affects others, and the ineffectiveness or uselessness of most unconscious emotional flows, and This is an essential step for transformation, since if we do not realize it, it will be difficult for us to modify what does not serve or harm us.
The fact of feeling like a victim many times comes from the inability to respond at the moment –intellectual and emotional- to an attack or questioning of another or other people.
Self-awareness allows us to understand that we have not been able to respond adequately (or as we would have liked) at the time, and it will give greater rationality to later soliloquies (rumination), to correctly face the situation with that person or people, also preventing strong feelings of anger, hatred, guilt or fear.
Stages of Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is not a noun that indicates 'existence' or 'nonexistence', it is not like a button that has two positions: 'on' or 'off'. Self-awareness is a process, and as such it has degrees or levels.
In that sense, we can examine that there are 4 possible phases of Self-awareness, the first being that we are going to see the highest possible level of Self-awareness, and the last being the lowest level, but in itself not negligible. Let's reflect on the fact that this level makes a very important difference, in a person, as to whether or not it exists.
The first phase consists of preventing the appearance of an unwanted or inconvenient emotion thanks to the early detection of physical signals or the type of subjective thoughts that appear in the mind.
During the second phase, if a strong emotion has already been triggered (for example anger), through awareness the executive has to try to moderate its intensity, adding interpersonal recognition, which can be with apologies when it is appropriate. correct and accompanied by a repair in the event of possible damage caused.
In phase 3, and provided that the event has already been triggered and its intensity could not be moderated, the professional must be guided to carry out the (intrapersonal) registration and limit its duration, adding interpersonal recognition, which may be with apologies when it is correct and accompanied by a repair in the event of possible damage caused.
Entering the fourth phase, the executive confronts a situation where he has not been able to limit either the intensity or the duration, therefore he performs the intrapersonal registration and interpersonal recognition, which can be with apologies when it is correct and accompanied by a repair before a possible damage caused.
What does Daniel Goleman tell us about self-awareness?
Self-observation allows for an even awareness of passionate or turbulent feelings.
At the very least, it manifests simply as a slight reversal of experience, a parallel stream of consciousness that is 'meta': suspended above or to the side of the main stream, aware of what is happening rather than being immersed and lost in the same. It is the difference that exists, for example, between feeling a murderous rage towards someone and developing the self-reflective thought: 'What I feel is anger', even while one is angry. In terms of the nervous mechanics of consciousness, this subtle shift in mental activity supposedly signals that neo-cortical circuits are actively controlling emotion, a first step toward achieving some control.
This awareness of emotions is the fundamental emotional competence on which others are built, such as emotional self-control.
In short, self-awareness means being 'aware of our humor and also our ideas about that humor', in the words of John Mayer, a psychologist at the University of New Hampshire who, together with Peter Salovey, is the one who formulated the theory of Emotional Intelligence.
Self-awareness can be an attention to more internal states that does not provoke reaction or judgment. Although there is a logical distinction between being aware of feelings and acting to change them, Mayer believes that for all practical purposes the two are often linked: to recognize an unpleasant mood is to feel the desire to overcome it. This recognition, however, is distinguished from the efforts we make not to act out of emotional impulse.
- How gender differences influence emotions
Edward Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, who has studied the intensity with which people experience their emotions, believes that, in general, women experience positive and negative emotions more strongly than men. And regardless of sex differences, emotional life is richer for those who notice them more.
Finally, it is suggested that executives and professionals give consideration to the Bohart and Pennebecker findings.
Art Bohart, in an ingenious experiment, showed that people in treatment who encouraged both the expression of unresolved angry feelings and reflection about them, resolved their feelings more effectively than those in a different condition, in which they were it encouraged only one of the two, either expression or reflection.
In this test, the synthesis was the winner. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that integrating bodily-felt feelings into one's consciousness and being able to symbolize feelings in words promotes good health. Pennebaker, in an admirable demonstration of the importance of symbolizing and organizing one's feelings, has shown how writing about the emotional experience of traumatic or upsetting events, just four times, for twenty minutes each time, has significant effects on health and welfare.
Writing emotional journals helps people make sense of their experience. They develop a narrative account or story that makes their experience more coherent.
In the book "Professional Suicide or Organizational Morder" (already cited) it is pointed out that what people conceive and are aware of strongly influences their way of acting. To the extent that managers are not aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of their organization and also its products and services, they can become vulnerable towards their opponents.
Managers, executives and managers of companies in the United States of America have been exposed for more than 50 years to learnings about how to know themselves through various methodologies (Johari window - Sensitivity Training). There are organizations with many years of existence that have specialized in this important component within the behavioral sciences, and especially linked to the corporate world. The same does not happen in the countries to the south of the United States where the majority of their corporate executives as well as the entrepreneurs are largely unaware of these important contributions.
Self-awareness makes corporate managers and entrepreneurs see that any "program" that they have had regarding "themselves" and their particular way of operating, is no longer efficient, that is, it ceases to be perpetuated for the future.
Bill Gates shows a clear conception of self-awareness - and of the strength of his contenders - when during each annual dinner before his entire staff he declares: "I want to remind you that Microsoft Corp. is only two or three years away from its failure." It is a pity that our entrepreneurs in Latin America have a different conception. We learn with self-awareness regarding perception and also knowledge of our own emotions.
As a demonstration of the lack of self-awareness we can mention the finding of Dr. Carl Frost. In his work (already cited) Daniel Goleman makes mention of Dr. Carl Frost who is one of the main founding fathers in the implementation of participatory schemes in organizations, who carried out a consulting job in Sweden, in one of its leading companies: Volvo. Next we are going to repeat the text where Goleman mentions this specific work by Dr. Carl Frost.
“Although the managers (at Volvo) seemed very content and even happy to extend their vacation, Frost felt the need to ask questions, to bring to the surface data that Volvo people seemed to ignore. The bottom line was that the company was losing the global race for the automotive market: its manufacturing costs exceeded those of all the major automakers in the world; its workers took twice as long as the Japanese to assemble a car and sales abroad had dropped, in recent years, by 50%. ”
“The company was in crisis; their future (and that of their workers), in danger. Yet, according to Frost, everyone acted as if there was no problem. Nobody seemed to see any relationship between the vacations they were taking and the worrying future of the company. "
“This carefree attitude was a sign of a disturbing failure in communication; It allowed Volvo workers to ignore any link between their situation and the fate of the company. This disconnect, says Frost, meant they didn't take on much responsibility in helping the company become more competitive. ” “The inoculation against these collusions consists of forming a more honest and open organization in its internal communications. This requires an atmosphere where truth is appreciated, no matter how anxious it may cause, and which takes care of listening to all facets of an issue. But such a debate is only possible if people feel free to express their opinion without fear of punishment, revenge or ridicule. "
I would like to approach the end with a question:
Can senior managers of organizations, businessmen, union leaders, and political leaders create an environment where people feel free to express their opinion without fear of punishment, revenge or ridicule?
The quality with which we can answer this question in the future must have a lot to do with the economic and social development of Latin America. And the lack of an acceptable response must condemn us to "be where we are today."
