In the last episode, we described the Essential Leadership Cycle and why it is effective at helping leaders focus on the right attributes to get better performance. I hope listeners immediately used some of the recommendations at the end of the podcast to start making changes in their intentional leadership. In this episode, I am going to discuss the first and probably the most important of the elements of the ELC – Self and Team Awareness. The attribute is interesting because there are two parts, but they are inextricably linked, and should always remain that way. It is vital to understand yourself, your personality tendencies, what you know, and start to realize what you don’t know. It is also then vital to understand the same things about your team. A leader who assumed they knew a lot about human performance – they weren’t using the right terminology and they weren’t using the right leader behaviors because they never learned them; they assumed they did. They went on to lead an organization where they assumed the knowledge and skills of the workforce related to HOP concepts, principles, and tools. Because their paradigm related to HOP was flawed, it took only one senior leader engagement to help them realize that they never really learned the correct science and application of HOP, they just learned the concepts in a broad overview. They also were educated on how individuals with different personalities interact with risk differently at all levels of the organization. They became self-aware of their strengths and potential limiters, and how a failure to manage these elements of personality was adversely impacting organizational performance. The leader then engaged with the workforce and discovered that there were many misunderstandings of HOP concepts and tools that were leading to misapplication of the concepts and science, and not getting the results that the leader wanted and expected. In the leaders’ engagements with their direct peer team and the senior leadership team, they discovered that the leadership team was not effectively educated, nor effectively utilizing the leadership attributes of HOP to improve performance. This discovery of Team Awareness drove the leaders to seek out help in discovering what they needed to do, and how they needed to do it and to discuss WHY they should be focusing on their language and behaviors, and WHO should be “doing” HOP. Within a week of their shift in leader knowledge and behaviors, the leaders started getting different and more effective information from the workforce that led to some major and immediate changes in the way they approached errors, deviations, and violations. In the big picture of performance improvement, the first step is leaders being aware of their own knowledge and capability, strengths, potential limiters, and personality tendencies – and then those of the people around them. This vital first step ensures that the rest of the Essential Leadership Cycle can be used as a framework for leading with Intent.Download the E-Colors App from any app store. Take the Personality Diversity Indicator to both discover your E-Colors AND to see your strengths and potential limiters. Have your home mate and a near workmate do the same and have a discussion on self and team awareness with them. We want you to experience this because it will be vital for your self and team awareness as we discuss the attributes of potential limiters and strengths throughout the podcasts, and this will allow you to both be more knowledgeable and to start to reap immediate benefits from each podcast. Go ask your workforce the following question: What am I not doing, or what might I not know about the attributes of failure and success that may limit my ability as a leader? Go ask a few workers: What are we missing related to what YOU need to reduce the probability that we have an incident? Compare the two and chalk up the difference to a realization of Self and Team Awareness.

Next time on the Essential Leadership Cycle podcast, we will visit the next attribute of the cycle – Shared Vision and Values. This has been your host, Rob Fisher. Thanks for listening, and, remember Intentional Leadership starts with YOU!