Ep #15 | 95% Of Us Think We Are Self Aware - WRONG!

Most leaders believe they're self-aware. The research disagrees — dramatically.

In this episode, Kate and Sam dive deep into one of the most underused leadership skills in small business: genuine self-awareness. Not the "I know myself pretty well" kind — but the kind that closes the gap between how you think you show up and how others actually experience you.

They cover:

• The Tasha Eurich research that stops most people cold (the 95% vs 15% stat)
• The difference between internal and external self-awareness — and why you need both
• What a 360-degree LSI assessment revealed about Kate's leadership (and why she cried)
• Why fixed mindset blocks self-awareness before you even get started
• The Enneagram — what it is, why it's confronting, and why that's exactly the point
• Curiosity, vulnerability, and comfort with uncertainty as the three-part path forward
• Psychological safety at work — and why it starts with the leader knowing themselves first

Whether you've never taken a personality assessment or you've done them all, this episode will give you a fresh lens on why self-awareness isn't a one-time exercise — it's a lifelong practice.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Tasha Eurich — researcher and author on self-awareness; her TED Talk is a great starting point
• LSI (Life Styles Inventory) — 360-degree behavioural assessment tool
• The Enneagram — nine-type personality framework; free test available online (Kate recommends getting some support interpreting your result)
• Myers-Briggs — useful particularly for career direction
• BankCode — four-colour personality profile (Blueprint, Action, Nurture, Knowledge); fun in a team setting
• Ted Lasso (Apple TV+) — Sam's recommendation as an unlikely masterclass in curiosity and self-awareness
• Kate's Happiness Key eBook — includes links to the personality tests discussed; reach out to Kate directly for access

Next episode: Emotional Intelligence — Daniel Goleman's four-layer model, starting with self-awareness as the foundation.

Coming up: Leading from your values, a wrap-up episode, and the Bali Business Retreat.

Workshop — 24th June: Details at thrivingbusinesspodcast.com

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Kate De Jong, PhD | Inspired Business 🌐 Website: https://katedejong.com/ 📱 Instagram: @katedejong.inspiredbusiness ✉️ Email: kate@katedejong.com

Sam Morris | The O8 🌐 Website: https://www.theo8.com/ 📱 Instagram: @the_o8crew ✉️ Email: sam@theo8.com

Thriving Business Podcast 🌐Website:   https://www.thrivingbusinesspodcast.com/ 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Thriving Business, the podcast for ambitious business owners who want systematic growth without the burnout. Hosted by Kate Deong and Sam Morris, these business powerhouses bring you proven frameworks and real strategies to help you build a business that actually thrives.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hello and welcome back to the Thriving Business Podcast, everybody. Very excited to be here with you today on a topic that I do happen to love a lot. And it's the topic of self-awareness in the leadership quadrant. How are you today, Sam?

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Oh, I'm good, Kate. I'm I love this quadrant because I love that this is where you're really shining. And I love to learn from you. Thank you for that. I'm excited to talk about the topic today.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Yeah, yeah. And similarly for you, I was realizing this going around the wheel in this way has really helped us both identify where our strengths are, aren't they? And mine was definitely quad quadrant one, I guess, the revenue generation, and then this this quadrant on the leadership and mindset and personal growth. And you um are an absolute star in the um systems, automation, AI, profitability, money management. And so we've we've got the whole skill set covered, Sam, between you and I.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Yeah. Isn't that interesting? You know, we all apart from the fact like we just like working together, but isn't it interesting that we we fit so nicely with complementary skill?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Absolutely. It means that when people work with us, they get the full suite, the full suite of skills that every business coach really needs to be able to coach effectively. So yeah, it's fun. So, yes, the topic of self-awareness. The reason I love this um is because there's a very interesting stat that I'll share with you up front. And it was um a study done by a great lady called Tasha Urig. She did a TED talk about 10 years ago. And uh, yeah, she um she did this big study of thousands of people to figure out um what is self-awareness and how many people are self-aware. The the results were quite staggering. 95% of all people think they are self-aware. So if you go into a room and you say, who in this room thinks they're self-aware? Everyone will put their hand up. The actual numbers and and research shows that any at any one time, only 10 to 15 percent of all people actually are what you would be defined as self-aware. So this means that the majority of us, you know, 85% around um around that amount, are not seeing ourselves clearly, or we are not, we do not perceive ourselves as other people fully perceive us, if that makes sense. It also means we are not aware of our blind spots, we're not aware of the little things that we do that other people notice, you know, that that might be negative behavioral patterns that are um not serving us or other people, but they're blind to us and that they're called a blind spot because we can't see them, right? Yes. And there's two there's two types of self-awareness. So there's internal self-awareness, which is your own understanding of your own feelings. You've got emotional literacy, you can say, I feel jaded today, or I feel skeptical, or I feel um lethargic, or you've you've got a vocabulary to name your a full spectrum of emotions. You're always in touch with how you feel. You're also aware of your own strengths, your own values, you know, your own desires. Someone who's very self-aware internally knows themselves intimately, if you know what I mean. So they've done a lot of the inspection and the work, whether it's personality tests or whether they've done a lot of deep diving journaling or therapy, they know themselves well. But then you've got external self-awareness. So this is where um people on the outside. Um, let me just pull up the actual definition because I don't want to get it wrong. But um you need both internal and external um self-awareness to be truly self-aware. And let me just explain that um a little bit better. Uh, where are we? Um so external self-awareness is understanding how other people actually experience you, it's the outside view of you. Whereas internal, as I said, it's how clearly you see your own values, emotions, strengths, and weaknesses. Um, that's what most people mean when they say I'm self-aware, it's their inside view. But external self-awareness is what other people say about you. And interestingly, truly self-aware people, um, the internal and the external um awareness are evenly matched. So what you feel about yourself is how other people experience you. But isn't that the optimal state to be in? Yes, but the majority, so this 85% that we're talking about, their perception of themselves internally is not how other people perceive them externally. And this is where these assessments, like three 60-degree feedback tools and all of these, are so important because they give that person an external view of how they're perceived. So you can imagine someone you've worked with, right, who's um um not very self-aware. Most of us can think of someone who's like that, and they might have this behavioral pattern that's really irritating, but they seem completely oblivious to it, or they don't seem to even notice they're doing it. And that's so that would be an example of a mismatch where they think they're showing up one way and um others are perceiving them differently. And so the only way you can actually become truly self-aware over time is to seek feedback from others and to realign that that perception from internal versus external. They need to match and line up. And I can give you some examples of um, you know, my the very first 360-degree assessment I did for myself. Um, I was in a leadership position in back in my engineering days. This would be 20 years ago probably. Um, and I was running a team, I had probably eight staff under me, and here I was thinking that, you know, I'm a really good leader, I'm so I'm so approachable, I'm friendly, I'm I'm knowledgeable, uh, you know, all these things. And we got um as as part of our leadership within the company um that I was working in, as part of our role, we had to undertake these um 360-degree assessments every year. And this is the first one I'd ever done. And I got feedback from the eight staff below me, the two two colleagues at the same level as me, and two managers above me. And it gives you this was the LSI system, which is great because it gives you a visual. You get a wheel that um it's got three segments: blue, red, and green. Blue are all the really good behaviors. Um, they're all the positive interpersonal skills that you know um that show up. Collaboration, inclusivity, optimism, all those sort of good behaviors. And then you've got the red behaviors which are aggressive behaviors, and then you've got green behaviors, which are passive aggressive behaviors. And I had lots of blue, so lots of positive, which was really good, but I had almost no red. So a healthy spectrum, you should have a little bit of red, a little bit of green, and mostly blue. I had a lot of blue, no red, um, meaning I had no assertive skills, and lots of green, lots of passive, passive aggression skills, um, behaviors. And I just looked at it, it was like, oh my gosh. Um it was so, and then so you get two wheels presented to yourself, one how you perceive yourself, and the other one how others perceive you. And I was just flawed by this. And I actually, like when I stared at it, I just felt my eyes sting. All of a sudden I was crying, and like, oh my gosh, how did I not know? Um, you know, these behaviors that that I apparently do and other people notice, but I um I just don't realize that I'm doing them. And I'm just pulling up what some of the, yeah, the the green behaviors are um things where you might seek approval, you might constantly check in, you might try to be liked by everyone and constantly seek validation. You might have a really high level of agreeableness and you might have difficulty saying no. You might conform and be overly compliant, you might rely heavily on others to take decision to make decisions or take action, and you might avoid difficult situations or steer clear of conflict. And I'd and it my team could see that that's I was showing those behaviors, but I just could not. I thought I was strong, assertive, um, you know, at um yeah, and so that was my first foray into that self-awareness gap that the um Dr. Tasha Urich refers to. And and a lot of people just go through their entire life not ever being aware of what that gap is, you know. And but that for me was that was the catalyst for a very long journey that I'm still on, as you know, trying to learn to understand myself more and um and and you know, bridge that gap between how I show up and how others perceive me. And it's not easy because um you have to seek feedback, and the feedback's not always comfortable. Um, and so that stops people from seeking it.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

So I'm wondering from from our last episode, Kate, when we spoke about fixed versus growth mindset, I'm I'm trying to draw parallels here between the mindset types and your self-awareness. Yeah. Because I imagine and I could be wrong, but I imagine that people with a fixed mindset would not score highly on any self-awareness scale.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

No, no, they wouldn't because they're fixed in their views about themselves, they are not open to learning new information um necessarily. Yeah. And funny enough, my colleague James Bryden and I are writing a book at the moment. I think I've mentioned it to you. It's yeah, it's about um um, it's called wisdom, the the mixture of wisdom with with with dumb. So accepting that you can know a lot and be very wise, but at the same time, you need to acknowledge there's still a lot you don't know. And it's holding those two what we call paradox. You know, it's a every everything in life is a paradox. You've got to be able to hold the tension between two seemingly opposite things. Um and so, in a fixed the the qualities of um self-awareness are in our view, curiosity, you've got to be very curious, um, vulnerable, you have to be willing to get vulnerable to cultivate um self-awareness and comfort with uncertainty. So you have to be uh comfortable with not being in control of everything. And those three qualities, in our the reason we're writing this book, we believe if you cultivate those three qualities, you are on the path to greater self-awareness because you're constantly seeking new knowledge, you're constantly willing to get uncomfortable, and you're constantly willing to sit with what you don't know and be okay with it. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Yeah. Did did you watch Ted Lasso?

SPEAKER_01 11:48

No, it's on my list. Oh that's about the soccer coach, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Yes, one of the most brilliant shows I've ever watched. And and I think when we talk about curiosity, at the forefront of my mind is Ted Lasso. Right. Because he sort of brought to everybody who watched the show brought to our attention the importance of being curious.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

It's my favorite world in your world.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Yes. And I think the more I'm listening to you talk about self-awareness today, I'm just running the highlight drill through my brain of that show. And and it's a masterclass in learning self-awareness. And that's what the character Ted Lasso brings to everybody he's in contact with.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Right. I've got to watch that before. That seems like essential watching, especially before we publish our book on this hot topic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Yes. Yeah, it's it's in a it's a phenomenal show. The character development and the story arcs are brilliant. But be ready to laugh, cry, and everything in between on in just about every episode.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

That sounds like my favorite kind of movie. Yeah. And what are the reasons you cry? Is it because of the vulnerability that people have to um get vulnerable to have the growth?

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Yeah. And I think too, as as the series, you know, as the series, there's four three seasons, and as those seasons progress, obviously you become more invested in the characters. But the character development and the transitions they all go through. And and I really do think it is this journey of self-awareness and and you know, personal and mindset growth that they all go on. And so there are different points in in different episodes and different series where the characters have the realization and have that uh reflection and self-awareness, you know, and that light bulb moment when they're like, Oh my god, what what have I done? And you know, and and they're really emotional moments because those moments cause them to be very vulnerable.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yes. So and that vulnerability is key. And just to share a story that um happened last week, actually, I went to an um event where they had a guy speaking and he was all about the psychology of success. And um I happened to sit next to a guy who was in his late 60s, I'd say, very experienced businessman from the Netherlands. So I recognized the Dutch culture immediately. Um, and um very straight-laced, you know, and left, it's it's it's black and white, it's left and right, it's you know, lives in a very logical world. And anyway, I'd he runs a um a very successful company in in um agricultural maintenance and things like that. And as this speaker started talking, it was clear that it was getting into the the terrain of feelings and beliefs and and things that you might have come to learn to think believe about yourself from your childhood upbringing around messaging that you um things that you might have picked up around around your value or you know your worthiness and whether you need to basically he was trying to help people in the room identify some of the ways in which they limit themselves from a mindset perspective. And he had sort of a process that he walked us through with music. So he'd have he'd ask a question, you know, for example, what are some of the things that someone would say that would make you small? And then he'd have this sort of music, and you'd and I was looking around the room, and it looked like most people were trying to engage with the process, you know, doing the doing the right thing and engaging. The guy next to me had his arms folded, he was not happy. He and um yeah, you could tell he was he was thinking this is a waste of time, and then he'd go, and then the the facilitator would lead us into a positive, you know. Now imagine if you could drop all of those beliefs, all that small messaging, and step into something that is the opposite that of that. You're invincible. And I could see the guy, the Dutchman next to me, getting increasingly irritated. And yes, occasionally the facilitator would stop the process and get you to chat with your neighbor. And I turned to him and asked him, he had his arms folded and he said, I'm not getting much out of this at all, to be honest. And I said, Oh, yeah, it's it's a bit different, isn't it? And um, he just shook his head, and then we continued, and then the guy eventually just got up and walked out of the room. And it just struck me that yes, maybe the process is a bit um cringy, as my kids would say, you know, but and you know, you really had to it was a it was a good process because I did end up getting quite some some helpful stuff out of it, but it just reminded me that someone who and and I know from other colleagues that this man has some negative behaviors that don't serve him in business, right? And yeah, and and it's also clear just the way he behaves that he's um he's got his way of doing things, and and I so he'd say he'd be what we call the fixed fixed mindset kind of person. He knows it all, doesn't need to be told anything. And it just reminded me that when you're missing curiosity and vulnerability, he completely shut himself off from that opportunity to actually learn something about himself or get some new insight because he was too terrified or too arrogant, maybe, to get vulnerable or get curious. And it's his lot at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Arrogance a defense mechanism for fear anyway, though.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, arrogance, um, um, dogmatism, they're all fear mechanisms for not wanting to to be out of control, right? And you need to know things, you need to be certain, and that's why that other quality of being comfortable with uncertainty is so important, because you have to be able to say sometimes, I don't know, and and be comfortable with that, and to not have all the answers, to be okay with not having all the answers.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Um I I don't know is one of my favorite things.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

But you're a naturally curious person, Sam.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Yeah, but when you hear I don't know, I get really excited because that's like that's just giving me something else now that I'm gonna go and learn about.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

That's right. I'm gonna go and research that. Yes. Which brings us actually to um, you know, yeah um well, yeah, just to wrap that up, you are a naturally curious person, as I said, and you are someone who's able to get vulnerable, right? So, and I'm sure being a mother of five, then you you you can't have it together all the time. You have to be uh comfortable with vulnerable being vulnerable, right?

SPEAKER_02 19:02

So um But can I tell you okay, when my kids were little, I I I had a I had a friendship with somebody, and that friendship, I can't remember exactly how, but that friendship was a little bit disrupted. And in the conversation that we were having, she said to me, You're not open and you're you're a very difficult person to know. That shocked me because my self-posession, my my self-perception was I I was an open book, like I just I told everybody everything. I was probably a little bit, you know, too much information on the top. Isn't that interesting that my perception was one thing, and then she's telling me we don't really know who you are? The other thing that I that I that used to come to me as a constant shock when the kids were little was that other people would say to me, Oh, you've got it all together, you know, you're the super mum and all that sort of stuff. And I would look at them and I I would in my head, I would be sitting there thinking, How can you not see that I feel like I am constantly falling apart and failing? I am on this treadmill that's set way too fast, and I am constantly dragging myself trying to keep up with life. But the external perception was oh, look, look at you go, you're doing all the things and you you're being super mum here and you're doing this and doing that. And I look at that and I'm like, oh my god, that is not my reality. Yeah. Fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Yeah, well, the um just on the first point about the friend that said you're not open, there's you know, projection is also another thing, though, isn't it? Where people project their own um things they don't like about themselves onto someone else, like it could, she could have been projecting, who knows? Um yeah. Um anyway, we digress, but yeah, yeah, it is interesting. I think as women, particularly, we've been trained to to keep the mask of everything's fine. And and people were so shocked when I told them I'd yeah, I'd be I'd had um all the chronic fatigue for 10 years. People have been working with, they're like, oh my gosh, but you seem so switched on. I'm like, yeah, because it's a mask that I've you know, I've perfected the mask and I'm so good at wearing the mask. If I take it off, I fall to pieces, you know. And yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

That's that's in a lot of ways, that's the lifeline, isn't it? Just you know, keep because if you stop, you're gonna have to deal with the realities of what's really going on.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah, of the all the decisions you've made and how much out of alignment they might be with who you really are. All the yeah.

unknown 21:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

So yeah, it's um and I Reason I got into the path of engineering, um, which I knew clearly for me when I was young was not the right path for me, was because I didn't have the ability to stand up to my dad or to disappoint him or my mum. And that's and that's the green behaviors I was talking about in the 360-degree assessment. And people saw that in me, that I didn't have the courage to stand for, like take a stand, um, to you know, make the hard decisions at at my own detriment. And I still struggle with that, to be honest, but I've come a long way. But yeah, it got to that point in midlife that I realized I don't actually know myself. I've spent my whole life trying to be this person that I thought, and this is a common theme I hear from so many people. You know, it's just seems to be a pattern we get into, particularly as women. Um, I've just spent my whole life trying to be what I thought everyone thought I should be. And now I've realized I've got my ladder up against the wrong building. You know, and I have to take that ladder down and climb back to the bottom and start again and figure out which building I do want to climb up. And and to do that, I need to figure out who I am and I need to develop self-awareness, and I need to, you know, what are my strengths, my weaknesses? Who am I really if I'm authentically being myself and not trying to be something that everyone else wants me to be or thinks I should be? Yeah. So um, anyway, on that front, some of the tools that helped me on the self-awareness journey. Um, one of my favorite ones in terms of getting to know yourself is the Enneagram. Have we discussed that one before, Sam?

SPEAKER_02 23:35

Oh, we have touched on it, Kate, and you promised that you would go into it in more depth when we hit this quadrant.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Oh, right. Yeah, and the um we probably don't have a lot of time to do a deep dive in it, but I would highly recommend everyone have a look into it because there's nine types. The reason I love this um this profile, I guess you could call it, is it's ancient. It comes from the Sufi times, you know, Ro Rumi and the from Persia in the in the Middle East, like thousands of years ago. So it's old, and people noticed back then that there were these nine different types of people, and um then modern psychology jumped on it in the 1960s and now, and then you know then it became sort of a profiling tool. It is it is kind of more not a lot of organizations um use it though, because it's quite spiritual slash um esoteric, but it's it it requires my personal opinion, it's too confronting for most organizations to use it because it's not just looking at surface pattern behaviors, like the LSI that I mentioned at the start, which is the C360 degree assessment, it's looking at your behaviors. That's what people see on the surface, but the Enneagram gets to the core of who you are, what you're most afraid of, what you most desire, what your coping mechanism, your survival strategies are, how you cope in the world. And it's so it gets very vulnerable. You have to get very vulnerable. And and so most organizations are not going to introduce something like that into their stuff because you know they probably should, but because that's where real self-awareness starts. But do you know what, Kate?

SPEAKER_02 25:20

You know, one of the one of the statistics we spoke about on the last episode was that, you know, in Australia, we we've hit 99% of businesses are small businesses. To me, this is a great opportunity to influence and shift how we do things because you and I both know how valuable these tools are. And and keeping them out of business is is a mistake. Considering small businesses holding the majority here in this country, this is the opportunity for small businesses to use these tools and make them the new standard, you know, um and and to make it acceptable to include these things as part of your business model because they play such an important role in improving things, you know, not only for leadership, but for employees and stakeholder relationships and everything.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Yeah, yeah. Um because once you know yourself really well, you can understand why you do certain behaviors. And and for me, the Enneagram gave me enormous compassion, not just for myself, um, because when I could see that all these behaviors that I'd adopted were because of these beliefs that I'd um taken on really early in my life. And but then I figured out what my sister was, and my dad, and my mom, and my other sister, and my brother, and all of a sudden I just went from feeling angry and resentful towards my mother to feeling enormous compassion for her, and oh my gosh, I didn't realize this is what you've been thinking about yourself or about life. And and I can see where now you do those things because you're trying to um, you know, compensate for uh all these other things, and it's a really um cathartic therapeutic tool, I find. And the fact that it's from the Sufis, which I have a particular love for with Rumi, and you know, that time, they were very introspective, self-reflective people that were cared for the collective that everyone, it was all about let's understand each other so we can all thrive, sort of thing. Um, yeah, and then and the Enneagram's funny because I was working with an Ennegram consultant at the time, a lady, she was the one that put me onto it. She was uh she worked in the church actually, helping people do the Enneagram, where I guess it's more acceptable because that's more of a spiritual place. And she kept saying, She got my results and she said, Oh, you're a type three, and and I was like, No, I read the type three description. I was like, No, that's not me. I hate those people. And usually the usually we end up being being the type that we most don't want to be because we we see, you know, when it's like the the mirror, isn't it? When you see the bits of yourself that you don't want to acknowledge, you don't want to own them, and therefore you're like, no, that's not me then. But in the end, I had to acknowledge, okay, yes, I'm the achiever. Um, but that means the the achiever is so driven to achieve because underneath they believe they're not valuable unless they're achieving. And yeah, so um, and but the the the the shadow behaviors of that, like they've got lots of great qualities, highly um competent and you know, creative and all these good things, but the shadow side is they're image conscious, they can be vain, they can be um what's the word? Um um come across as fake, or you know, like there's there's a whole lot of shadow qualities.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

Uh and every every with the Enneagram, like you said that when that when you were first identified, you were like, no. Yeah, this is something that you can work at to change if you want to be something else. No, or this is the essence of who you are.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

This is the essence of who you are. It is it's half nurture, half nature. So partly you're just wired that way. The other half is sort of that's how you were created and formed, and these are therefore this the blueprint for how you form. So you can't you don't become another type, but what you do is each type on the nine of the nine types has a spectrum of healthy to unhealthy. And the idea is that you move. When I first did the um assessment, when I did the 360-degree assessment, I was very much on the unhealthy end of my type, on the unhealthy end of three. And my work has to be to move slowly up to the healthy end of the three scale by through self-awareness and observing when I'm doing those behaviors and questioning what my motivation is, and and um not trying to get approval validation through external, but but getting it internally, and each type has its challenges, you know. So um it it's its growth path. And that's why I love it, because once you identify where you sit, then there's a whole roadmap for how you can grow on that, um, which is a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_02 30:31

It is, it is, and I think, yeah, yeah, I think we we miss the mark in leadership by failing to explore who we are.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And because we don't get curious, vulnerable, or uncertain. We're always our culture is trained to do the opposite. We're trained to be certain, to be um in control, you know. Um can yeah, to have the answers and to be strong, don't show any weakness. That's sort of how the system trained us. So this is the opposite, it feels like the opposite.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Why is that our system? Why have we accepted that as our system?

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Yeah, good question. Uh I think it's changed.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

I've got and researched that answer later because I am curious about why this is so.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Yeah. Yeah. And it's it is there's a lot of people working in that space. I have a client who works in toxic, um, she helps people that work in toxic um work environments. You know, she's a clinical counsellor. Um, and basically, yeah, the the work is helping people manage um other people in their environment who are not self-aware and are displaying dysfunctional behaviors that they have to then you know deal with. And yeah, it's a whole thing for sure. And I think the big word at the moment in society for this topic is psychological safety. That's the new buzzword, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Yes. Yes, and you know, we we are now mandated as business owners, if we have employees, to ensure the psychological safety of our staff. So very, very important thing that business owners understand. Uh, because if you don't have an understanding of it and you don't do the work yourself, then we're certainly not in a good position to be able to recognize it and and and act on it for the people that you're in charge of.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Absolutely. And there is such a huge gap between, oh, you need to make sure your environment is psychologically safe for your employees and what is psychological safety? And how do I cultivate a psychologically safe work environment when I'm not self-aware, my staff are not self-aware. This is the odds because 85% of all people are not self-aware. So um, yeah, how do you bridge that self-awareness gap to create psychological safety? Because psychological people feel psychologically unsafe when it's not okay to speak up and and and and share what you're thinking or feeling or seeing around you when um when you are reprimanded or punished, even if it's not overtly, somehow through behaviors you're punished for for being um curious or vulnerable, you know. So it's creating those toxic environments where it's not spoken out loud, but people just know certain behaviors are not tolerated, or do you know what I mean? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

And yes, I I do think that it it is the unspoken rules that you follow that are actually more damaging than the spoken rules.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Yeah, for sure. And and a company can have its values on the walls and all these, you know, um principles of behavior, m ethics and behavior, but if no one's if the leadership is not expressing or walking those values or actively living those values, people just absorb whatever the you know the the vibe is from the leadership. And yeah, and that's you can create I've worked in some very toxic workplaces, and which is why I love working by myself.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

But see, we need more people like you, Kate, in leadership, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Yeah, well, that is what partly why I've always been passionate. I've I've written e-books on the topic, and this book will be the first real book on the topic of self-awareness and emotional intelligence and how important it is. And we're hoping that this is just a really simple framework for people to become more self-aware. If you just practice curiosity, vulnerability, and comfort with uncertainty. That is the path. Um, but for a lot of people, that's quite hard. But you've just got to the first step is awareness of when you're not being curious or when you're not being vulnerable, if you're choosing not to, you know, be curious. And yeah, so I definitely long term would love to help bridge that gap. And with every business owner I'm working with, you know, I usually we start with figuring out their bank code personality, which is the fun multicolored one with four colors that we've talked about before. Which, yeah, um, it's a great simple way of figuring out what's important to someone. And that's what I was going to say before. When you were talking about when you don't know something, that's just an opportunity to go learn it. That's because you in your bank code, you are high in knowledge, which means you love to seek new knowledge, you love to understand, you love to go to first principles. And for you, that's the fun of life is understanding things.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

Um, but isn't that a negative trait though?

SPEAKER_01 35:48

No, that's a positive trait.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

Yeah, but I'm thinking now, like, is this is that an insecurity of mine, and then I discover things that I don't know, and I feel like I have to go now and learn it.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Maybe. I suppose everything's got its positive and negatives, but yeah, uh I think overall it's it means that you have an open mind and you're willing to learn constantly, which is what you need in business.

unknown 36:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

And a lot of us benefit from that. This is why the two of us work so well together, I think, because we do we do share those characteristics, I think.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

We do. We when we did our bank curs, you and I were the same. We were high knowledge and high nurture. Um, nurture is all about relationships and authenticity, and then you've got the action types, which are all about the they're sort of the Alex Ormosi's of the world. They love the big stages and the Tony Robbins, and they love materialism and winning and going big. And um, there are a lot of the influences online, you know, they love that that game. And then you've got the blueprints who love the box, they love the rules, they love the process, the guidelines, the principles, the dutiful, ethical ones, and yeah, and figuring out where, you know, what your order is of those four qualities of um blueprint, action, nurture, knowledge really helps you just understand yourself at a surface level compared to your colleagues. And that's a fun one to do in a room with colleagues because it's surface level. You don't have to go too deep, do not, but you can still learn a lot about yourself and others by doing it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

But in wrapping up, um, we we don't have a lot of time for this episode today, but we could unpack so much more of it. But I could share my um happiness key ebook, which has um all these personality tests that we're talking about. It's got the Enneagram, because that you can do a free test for the Enneagram and get a you sometimes you need a bit of help working it out, but you can endeavor to do that yourself. I love the Enneagram, I love Myers Briggs just for helping people career-wise, and um, and the bank code, so I can share those if people want to take a deeper dive. But the next episode we go into emotional intelligence. So Daniel Goldman defined the four layers of emotional intelligence, and the first layer is self-awareness, and then it goes into self-management, self-regulation. There's a there's a there's a I might have got that wrong, but we'll go further into that next time. But the foundation for everything is that self-awareness, which is why we spent some time talking about that today. And yeah, um, for everyone listening, you probably are in the you know, 85% of people that are not self-aware. I still put myself in that category. Um, because I think it's just a lifelong process of you know, self-awareness is a it's a project. You've got to it, you you need to, it's it's not you become self-aware and then that's it. It's an ongoing, you know, path of curiosity and vulnerability and seeking feedback and and taking on the feedback and yeah, just learning and growing all the time. But as a result, we become better humans for it and better business leaders, most importantly.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

So yeah. Any final thoughts, Sam?

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Uh no, no, I am going to stick with uh jumping into I I think I'm gonna do the Enneagram again. I did it years ago and I can't remember, but yeah. I'm curious now and I I want to know more.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

So memory, I've got a feeling you were type seven, maybe the the um enthusiast, but I could be wrong. You liked variety and um anyway, we shall find out to be continued. Yes, yeah. Well, everyone, we hope you found you found this valuable today. We'll be back next time for our episode on emotional intelligence and um that then that the absolute finale will be um on leading from your values, and then we've got a wrap-up episode where we encapsulate everything we've learned from the wheel and then the Bali retreat. So, for more details, go to thethrivingbusinesspodcast.com. Um we've got lots of exciting things coming up, including our workshop on the 24th of June that we hope to see you at. Thank you so much, everyone. See you next time. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

You've got the strategies. Now let's build the systems. Whether you're joining our workshops or transforming at our barley business retreat, we're here to help you scale without the burnout. Visit Thriving Business Podcast.com to join our community. Until next time, keep building a business that thrives.