Developing More Situational Awareness

SUMMARY

Human beings are unique, and although in our vocabulary we have developed names, understandings, and groupings of emotions, not everyone experiences those emotions in the same way. In fact, when people are feeling a certain way, they may even label them differently from you.

So, you need to remember that social intelligence needs to come in, and this is the ability to be aware of what could be going on in the emotions of the other person or group. Then, using the skills of reflective listening and having a lot of empathy and understanding, you might actually know what it is that they are feeling.

This week, I will help you develop more situational awareness by being able to use what you understand about your emotions to navigate them in a healthy way.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you find it hard to understand what is going on with the emotional current when working with a group, whether at the workplace, in your community, or anywhere you are working with a gathering of people?

It is challenging enough to understand what is going on for ourselves emotionally, and we have done a lot of work on that.

So, stick with me because this week, I want to help you to be able to read the room.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around social intelligence by helping you to develop more situational awareness.

Over the last few weeks, we have been talking about the area of intelligence that helps us to work with people. We have done a lot of work on our own emotional intelligence and being able to use what we understand about our emotions to navigate them in a healthy way.

However, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, if we apply those same principles alone when working with others, misunderstandings come in and that causes conflict.

We talked about the fact that human beings are unique, and although in our vocabulary we have developed names, understandings, and groupings of emotions, not everyone experiences those emotions in the same way. In fact, when people are feeling a certain way, they may even label them differently from you.

So, you need to remember that social intelligence needs to come in, and this is the ability to be aware of what could be going on in the emotions of the other person or group. Then, using the skills of reflective listening and having a lot of empathy and understanding, you might actually know what it is that they are feeling.

By looking through their lens instead of yours, you get the true picture for them rather than going: "Okay, this is how I feel when I experience that emotion."

Doing this will enable you to have an accurate assessment and, therefore, remove misunderstandings. When you are able to do that and be more socially aware, you will get a different result.

We talked about empathy last week, which is the key and most critical social awareness element.

It says: "I want to understand."

It is not apathy that says: "I don't care."

It is not sympathy that says: "I feel sorry for you."

It says: "I'm not sure I know what you're going through, but I'm willing to find out. I'm willing to open my mind and allow myself to seek to understand before getting my point across."

Now that you have got those skills about working with an individual, you need to take that to the next level because when you get into a group of people, you have got all these human beings with their own uncertainties, frailties, fears, and strengths all coming together.

You have got the emotions of individuals causing a collective feeling in the room. This can make it a little bit uncomfortable, and being able to ask, work with, and understand one person is challenging enough. Now, you have to get that for all the people that you are working with.

Unfortunately, when you get this wrong, you don't read the political currents or see the group's influential relationships and you get hit with surprises in behaviour, and things happen. Whether it is in your workplace or other areas of your community, you will go: "Wow, where did that come from?"

So, having situational awareness is important for a leader to be able to work with people to influence them to go in the direction that you want to take them.

It is certainly a skill that I had to develop. I remember in my corporate career; I was just totally focused on me. I just did my work and was really good at it. But the relationships I built along the way were not healthy. This is because I was focused on myself, and I put my head down and my tail up, and I just did what I knew how to do really well.

However, to become a different leader who was able to navigate with others, what it is that we wanted to do, I had to learn to not only keep my eyes on what I was doing but to widen my view so that I could see what was going on around me as well.

The first thing that you and I need to do is to continue to look at what it is that we are doing, but look around and have the spatial awareness and that sensory acuity that says: "I can feel some other stuff going on right now as well."

When you are able to have situational, organisational, or community awareness on a larger scale, you are able to identify things before they come up as a problem.

One of the biggest challenges in the business world right now is the attraction and retention of great people.

So, situational awareness is a key skill of a leader.

How do you develop this?

Firstly, you need to keep an eye on yourself, but you also need to keep an eye on everybody.

I am not talking about keeping an eye on people in a micromanaging way. I am talking about being present and available to see and hear what is going on around you.

This is why I believe that a leader is totally different to a manager.

A manager manages the process, but a leader inspires and takes people on a journey. So, it is not about ticking boxes and getting tasks done; it is about building relationships. As you are building these relationships, you want to see things from the group's perspective.

So, understanding what your team are feeling right now is critical.

For you to do that, there are a few things that you can bring into your daily and weekly schedule that are going to help you with that.

The first thing is to flip that mindset first and go, "I need to have a wider angled view here." Instead of having a focused lens that is just looking at where I am going, I need to use a wide-angled one that captures what is going on around me as well.

The second thing that you need to do is to schedule and block out space in your diary when you have conversations with others.

You can interview your team individually; you can see how they are going. You can do that organically and casually as well as periodically doing that as a purposeful activity.

Situational awareness is something that we all need to develop. You need to have an understanding of what could be going on. To do that, you need to be present and available.

I want to encourage you to start looking at ways to know more about how your people are feeling. The only way to do that with certainty is to get them involved, to ask them, to give them an opportunity to be able to give you a true understanding so that you can then resource them in that so that they can navigate forward with you.

Well, that is it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue this conversation around social awareness by looking at a key element of leadership, and that is having an orientation towards the service of others.

I will see you then.