Optimizing Leader and Team Potential by Heightening Self-Awareness

What would you do differently if you considered your impact on those around you?

By Senthiyl S S G, Director (Consulting), Arbinger Singapore/Malaysia | July 23, 2015

One of the questions leaders need to consider is why they spend or need to spend a significant amount of time correcting others?

Wouldn’t the time spent correcting others be more productively utilized if our direct reports were to correct themselves?

The answer is a big YES!

The question then is how do we reduce the time needed or spent correcting others?

Many organizations try to recruit the right people so that they spend less time correcting and fixing problems.

While recruiting the right people is a key strategy, even with the right people many organizations are nowhere near optimizing the potential of the teams.

To optimize the individuals, leaders, and the teams potential, there is, I believe, an additional strategy that organizations need to consider seriously:

Create and sustain a strategy to heighten self-awareness in the team and invite people to start feeling deeply responsible for their impact on others.

When we empower individuals, leaders and teams start feeling responsible for the impact they have on others, the naturally occurring outcome is that there is more ownership in the team, and higher levels of intrinsic motivation to do the right thing in more and more situations.

However, currently most of the self-awareness approaches are primarily “outside looking in.” These are either via feedback or profiling tools. The problem with these approaches is that they do not have the ability to provide the much-needed continuous moment-to-moment awareness that leaders’ and individuals need!


    1. Empowering individuals with a language to develop deeper feelings of responsibility for their impact on others and
    2. By embedding intuitive activities within our daily processes to heighten self-awareness, leaders, teams and organizations can dramatically optimize their time on focusing on results rather than on correcting others and fixing problems.

Arbinger’s books Leadership and Self Deception and The Anatomy of Peace suggests a powerful language and framework to heighten self-awareness. The rationale creates a fundamental shift in mindset that is a key component for heightening self-awareness.

Learn more about an impact-focused way of working and being. For more information, please visit www.arbingersea.com.