- Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Certification
- Emotions Self Awarenessdialectical Behavioral Training Techniques
- What Is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
- Emotions Self Awarenessdialectical Behavioral Training Certification
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) provides us with an effective approach to look in excruciating detail at events in our lives that have not gone well so that we can better understand how such. Self-awareness means knowing your values, personality, needs, habits, emotions, strengths, weaknesses, etc. With a sense of who you are and a vision of the person you want to become, a plan for professional or personal development can be created.
An African proverb says, “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside can do you no harm.”
Self-awareness is one of the most important skills for success. How you behave and respond to external situations is governed by internal mental processes. Self-awareness uncovers any destructive thought-patterns and unhealthy habits. This leads to better decision-making and behavioral responses.
Here are 12 exercises for greater self-awareness:
1. The three why’s.
Before acting on a decision, ask yourself “Why?” Follow up your response with another “Why?” And then a third. If you can find three good reasons to pursue something, you’ll have clarity and be more confident in your actions.
Being self-aware means knowing your motives and determining whether they’re reasonable.
2. Expand your emotional vocabulary.
The philosopher Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
Emotions create powerful physical and behavioral responses that are more complex than “happy” or “sad.” Putting your feelings into words has a therapeutic effect on your brain; if you’re unable to articulate how you feel, that can create stress. Here’s a great list of “feeling words” to help with labeling your emotions. Increase your emotional vocabulary with one new word each day.
Related: Are You Emotionally Intelligent? Here's How to Know for Sure.
3. Practice saying 'no' to yourself.
The ability to say “no” to yourself to put off short-term gratification for the long-term gain is an important life-skill. Like a muscle, it is strengthened with exercise. The more you practice saying “no” to small daily challenges, the better you can withstand major temptations.
There are plenty of daily temptations -- social media, junk food, gossiping, Youtube. Make a goal of saying “no” to five different temptations each day.
4. Break visceral reactions.
A person without self-awareness runs on auto-pilot, and responds with knee-jerk reactions. Self-awareness allows you to assess situations objectively and rationally, without acting on biases and stereotypes.
Take a deep breath before you act, especially when a situation triggers anger or frustration. This gives you time to re-assess whether your response will be the best one.
5. Be accountable to your flaws.
Nobody is perfect. Being aware of your flaws, but failing to accept accountability, is leaving the job half-done. We’re often critical of others, while ignorant of our own flaws. Self-awareness helps turn the mirror on ourselves and prevents hypocritical behavior.
Iteration and self-improvement only happens once you recognize a flaw. Create a habit of acknowledging your mistakes, rather than making excuses.
6. Monitor your self-talk.
There is non-stop commentary in our heads that is not always helpful. A little bit of negative self-talk can spiral into stress and depression.
Pay attention to the way you respond to your successes and failures — do you pass off your achievements as luck? And crucify yourself after failures? Positive and negative feedback-loops will form in your mind based off how you respond to successes and failures. Being tough on yourself needs to be balanced with self-compassion. Celebrate your wins, forgive your losses.
Related: How Talking to Yourself Can Help You Be More Successful
7. Improve your body language awareness.
Watching yourself on video can be a cringeworthy experience, but awareness of your body language, posture, and mannerisms improves your confidence.
Slouching, or taking a “low-power-pose” increases cortisol and feeds low self-esteem, while standing tall or taking a “high-power-pose” stimulates testosterone and improves your performance. Using hand gestures helps with articulating your thoughts and affects how people respond to you.
Record a speech or presentation and evaluate your posture and hand gestures. Watch videos of skilled speakers and adopt their mannerisms to improve your own.
8. Play “Devil’s Advocate.”
Taking an opposing view forces you to question your assumptions. Your 'default' beliefs and worldview are not always reasonable; it’s healthy to “argue against yourself” and see how your views hold up.
And you’ll give your brain a good workout. Processing challenging information stimulates new neural connections.
9. Know your personality type.
Knowing your personality type allows you to maximize your strengths and manage your weaknesses. Understanding your “strengths” and “talents” can be the difference between a good choice, and a great choice. (Strengths are skills and knowledge that can be acquired, while talents are innate).
Start with understanding where you fall on the introvert/extrovert spectrum; know your Myers-Briggs type; and then conduct a personal SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats).
10. Practice self-evaluation and reflection.
Keep a journal and track your progress. How would you rate your current level of self-awareness out of ten? Think about how often you say regretful things; repeat bad habits; make absent-minded decisions; and have erratic thoughts.
Set regular goals, break big goals down into smaller milestones. Ask yourself at the end of each day, “What did I do well today?” And, “How can I improve on this tomorrow?”
11. Ask for constructive feedback, regularly.
We all have blind spots in our thinking patterns and behaviors. Asking for regular constructive feedback cuts through any self-deceit or one-dimensional views you might hold. But only ask people you’d consider mentors — those who understand you; whom you respect; and will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Certification
12. Meditation.
Meditation is a foundational practice for improving self-awareness. To focus solely on your breathing is to focus on a key internal process. You’ll become aware of how your mind wanders, and get better at snapping out of distractions.
For beginners, start with ten minute sessions. Find a quiet place to sit, breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Count your breaths silently, pulling your mind back when it wanders. See how many breaths you can string together.
Related: Meditation Isn't Just For Hippies: Here is How it Can Help Entrepreneurs
Emotions Self Awarenessdialectical Behavioral Training Techniques
In a Nutshell
With our busy schedulesit might be difficult to find time to think about who we are, our strengthsand weaknesses, our drives and personalities, our habits and values. Besides, many of us just aren't inclined to spend much time on self-reflection. Even when personal feedback is presented to us, we're not always open toit, because honest feedback isn't always flattering. Consequently, many of us have a pretty low level of self-awareness. That's unfortunate, because self-awarenessis an essential first step toward maximizingmanagement skills. Self-awarenesscan improve our judgment and help us identify opportunities for professionaldevelopment and personal growth.
In This Issue
Does Eisner Have CEO Disease?
The board members who ledthe coup that brought current CEO Michael Eisner to Disney in 1984 arepoised to lead another coup. Earlier this month Roy Disney (nephewof founder Walt Disney) and his ally on Disney's board, Stanley Gold, resigned. On their way out the door, the duo wrote scathing critiques of Eisner'sleadership and vowed to lead stockholder and employee revolts against him. Specifically, Roy Disney and Gold criticized Eisner's failure to developa successor, empower the creative staff, and generate marketable innovationsand programs.1 For years press reports have suggestedEisner is a politically minded manager who develops power bases betterthan he develops executives.
Michael Eisner could verywell be suffering from what Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee refer to as 'CEOdisease' in their best-selling book,Primal Leadership. Theydescribe CEO disease as 'the information vacuum around a leader createdwhen people withhold important (and usually unpleasant) information.'2 Eisner is the prototypical candidate for CEO disease. He is notoriousfor filling Disney's board of directors with cronies and others who wouldbe unlikely to be very critical of his decision-making and performance. Consequently, he can act with virtual impunity and caprice. It wouldbe risky for an executive to criticize Eisner's actions or choices. Hence, Eisner is unlikely to be offered much of the constructive criticisma CEO needs to improve his or her performance.
Just as being able to seeyour reflection in the mirror helps you to fix your hair, feedback on yourcharacteristics and behaviors helps you to develop your management skillsand improve your judgment. Self-awareness--i.e., knowing your personalcharacteristics and how your actions affect other people, business results,etc.--is an essential first step toward maximizing your management skills. Self-awareness is the antidote to CEO disease.
Key Areas for Self-Awareness
Human beings are complexand diverse. To become more self-aware, we should develop an understandingof ourselves in many areas. Key areas for self-awareness includeour personality traits, personal values, habits, emotions, and the psychologicalneeds that drive our behaviors.
Personality. We don't normally change our personalities, values and needs based on whatwe learn about ourselves. But, an understanding of our personalitiescan help us find situations in which we will thrive, and help us avoidsituations in which we will experience too much stress. For instance,if you are a highly introverted person, you are likely to experience morestress in a sales position than a highly extroverted person would. So, if you are highly introverted, you should either learn skills to copewith the demands of a sales position that requires extravert-type behaviorpatterns, or you should find a position that is more compatible with yourpersonality. Awareness of your personality helps you analyze sucha decision.
Roy Disney and Stanley Goldwould say that Michael Eisner's personality is too controlling. Hehas buffered himself from threats to his tenure as CEO by co-opting theboard of directors and by micro-managing the executives he should be developingand empowering. As a result, his performance as CEO has suffered.
Values. It's important that we each know and focus on our personalvalues. For instance, if your first priority is 'being therefor your children' or 'your relationship with God,' it's very easy to losesight of those priorities on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis. During the workday, so many problems and opportunities arise that our listsof 'things to do' can easily exceed the time we have to do them. Since few (if any) of those things pertain to what we value most, it'seasy to spend too much time on lower priority activities. When wefocus on our values, we are more likely to accomplish what we considermost important.
Habits. Our habits are the behaviors that we repeat routinely and often automatically. Although we would like to possess the habits that help us interact effectivelywith and manage others, we can probably all identify at least one of ourhabits that decreases our effectiveness. For example, if you area manager who never consults your staff before making decisions, that habitmay interfere with your ability to build your staff members' commitmentto the decisions and their decision-making skills as well.
Needs. Maslow and other scholars have identified a variety of psychological needsthat drive our behaviors such as needs for esteem, affection, belongingness,achievement, self-actualization, power and control. One of the advantagesof knowing which needs exert the strongest influence on our own behaviorsis the ability to understand how they affect our interpersonal relationships. For instance, most of us have probably known people who have a high needfor status. They're attracted to high status occupations, and theyseek high status positions within their organizations. Such peoplealso want the things that symbolize their status. They insist thatthey be shown respect, and they want privileges and perks that people oflower status can't have. Sometimes these people fight for thingsthat others see as inconsequential--like a bigger office. Needs causemotivation; and when needs aren't satisfied, they can cause frustration,conflict and stress.
Emotions. Emotional self-awareness has become a hot topic of discussion recentlybecause it's one of the five facets of emotional intelligence. Understandingyour own feelings, what causes them, and how they impact your thoughtsand actions is emotional self-awareness. If you were once excitedabout your job but not excited now, can you get excited again? Toanswer that question, it helps to understand the internal processes associatedwith getting excited. That sounds simpler than it is. Here'san analogy: I think I know how my car starts--I put gas in the tank, putthe key in the ignition, and turn the key. But, my mechanic knowsa lot more about what's involved in getting my car started than I do--heknows what happens under the hood. My mechanic is able to start mycar on the occasions when I'm not because he understands the internal processes. Similarly, a person with high emotional self-awareness understands theinternal process associated with emotional experiences and, therefore,has greater control over them.
How Self-AwarenessMakes You More Effective
Self-awareness helps managersidentify gaps in their management skills, which promotes skill development. But self-awareness also helps managers find situations in which they willbe most effective, assists with intuitive decision making, and aids stressmanagement and motivation of oneself and others.
Skilldevelopment. Improvement projects should normally beginwith an assessment of the gap between the current situation and the desiredfuture situation. Having an accurate sense of who you are helps youdecide what you should do to improve. Often, self-awareness willreveal a skills gap that you want to work on.
Knowingyour strengths and weaknesses. Self-awareness helps youexploit your strengths and cope with your weaknesses. For instance,if you are someone who is good at 'seeing the big picture' that surroundsdecisions, but not as good at focusing on the details, you might want toconsult colleagues and subordinates that are more detail-oriented whenmaking major decisions. Cooperation between big-picture-orienteddecision makers and detail-oriented decision makers can produce high qualitydecisions.
Developingintuitive decision-making skills. Leaders with well-developedemotional self-awareness are more effective intuitive decision makers. In complex situations, intuitive decision makers process large amountsof sometimes unstructured and ambiguous data, and they choose a courseof action based on a 'gut feeling' or a 'sense' of what's best. Sls deco hanging jumping polessugars legacy stables. Thistype of decision making is becoming more important for managers as therate of change and the levels of uncertainty and complexity in their competitiveenvironments increase. Managers who are highly emotionally self-awareare better able to read their 'gut feelings' and use them to guide decisions.
Stress. Jobs that don't suit your personality tend to give you more stress thanjobs that are more compatible. This is not to say that you shouldnever take a job that conflicts with your personality. However, beaware that you will need to work extra hard to develop the skills for thatjob, and there are jobs that would be less stressful for you.
Motivation. It's very difficult to cope with poor results when you don't understandwhat causes them. When you don't know what behaviors to change toimprove your performance, you just feel helpless. Self-awarenessis empowering because it can reveal where the performance problems areand indicate what can be done to improve performance. In addition,awareness of your psychological needs can increase your motivation by helpingyou understand and seek out the rewards that you really desire such asa sense of accomplishment, additional responsibility, an opportunity tohelp others, or a flexible work schedule.
Leadership. When we understand 'what make us tick'--what gets us excited, why we behavethe way we do, etc.--we also have insight into what makes others tick. To the extent that other people are like you (and, of course, there arelimits to the similarity), knowing how to motivate yourself is tantamountto knowing how to motivate others.
Practicing This ManagementSkill
You can become more self-awareby seeking feedback from the people who know you, completing self-assessmentsurveys, and hiring an expert like a professional counselor or executivecoach.
Asksomebody. If you have open, trusting relationships withthe people who know you, you can ask them for feedback about your personality,habits, needs and values. Research shows that your coworkers, friendsand family members CAN provide valid assessments of your personality. But, they do NOT ALWAYS provide an accurate assessment. For instance,I once asked my undergraduate students to describe my personality on thefour Myers-Briggs personality dimensions, and they described the exactopposite of my actual personality. Their ratings described the personalitythat is appropriate for a teacher, and they also rated me as an effectiveteacher. So, they saw me act like a teacher in my role as a teacher,but those behaviors are not representative of my behaviors in other roles. There are two lessons in that: (1) You can develop skills for a rolethat doesn't match your personality. (2) People who only see youin one role can only describe your behaviors in relation to that role. Analogously, if you mismanage your time so that you spend too much timeon things that don't matter much to you, people will have a very differentperception of your values than you do. For instance, maybe you saythat your family is important to you, but how do you spend your time?
Another limitation on thevalue of the feedback you get from family, friends and especially coworkersis that they may not be completely candid with you. This is wherethe trustfactor looms large. Unflattering feedback is the type that has themost potential for helping you develop your management skills, but it isalso the most difficult to give and to accept. People aren't verylikely to give you unflattering feedback if there isn't a high level oftrust in your relationship with them .. unless they don't mind harmingthe relationship. For this reason, many experts (e.g., Ed Eppley,Area Manager for Dale Carnegie Training,and Ellen Van Velsor of the Center for CreativeLeadership) suggest that managers find a way to get anonymous feedbackfrom staff members and co-workers.
Questionnaires. One of the ways to improve the quality of the feedback that you can receivefrom other people is by asking them to fill out a psychometrically soundinventory of your personality, values, needs, or habits as they perceivethem. Those surveys are composed and structured in such a way asto maximize the accuracy of the feedback they generate. With thehelp of a facilitator, the surveys can be completed anonymously. You can also fill out surveys yourself as a means of self-assessment.
Seekprofessional help. Professional counselors and executivecoaches can be a great source of feedback to help you develop your self-awareness. Of course, not everyone who calls herself a coach is qualified. Youshould evaluate the training and certifications of counselors and coaches. Nevertheless, executive coaching is a great resource, and it's a growingarea of management consulting. Coaches not only help you get a betterpicture of who you are; they also guide you through self-improvement. Often coaches collect anonymous evaluations of their clients from theirsubordinates, superiors or anyone else who is in a position to providehelpful feedback. Good coaches know how to effectively collect anddigest the feedback. Professional counselors, such as guidance counselorsand clinical psychologists, are also great resources. Guidance counselorscan provide inventories of your personality and interests. Clinicalpsychologists can help you understand and work on aspects of your personalityand habits that interfere with any facet of your life, including work.
In Summary ..
To perfect your managementskills, the best place to start is self-awareness. Self-awarenessmeans knowing your values, personality, needs, habits, emotions, strengths,weaknesses, etc. With a sense of who you are and a vision of theperson you want to become, a plan for professional or personal developmentcan be created. Moreover, self-awareness allows you to motivate yourselfand manage your stress better, helps you with your intuitive decision making,and helps you to lead and motivate others more effectively. Self-awarenessis very useful.
Photo Credit
AP Photo/Peter Cosgrove:e-mailed to me from Yahoo! News; news.yahoo.com.
Notes
- Grover, R. (2003). Stalking a wily prey at Disney. BusinessWeek Online, Dec. 2. Retrieved December 11, 2003 from http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2003/nf2003122_5238_db035.htm.
- Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A. (2002). Primalleadership: Realizing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston,Mass.: Harvard Business School Press. (The definition of CEOdisease appears on page 93.)
About theNewsletter and Subscriptions
LeaderLetter is writtenby Dr. Scott Williams, Department of Management, RajSoin College of Business, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio. It is a supplement to my MBA 751 - Managing People in Organizations class. It is intended to reinforce the course concepts and maintain communicationamong my former MBA 751 students, but anyone is welcome to subscribe. In addition, subscribers are welcome to forward this newsletter to anyonewho they believe would have an interest in it. To subscribe,simply send an e-mail message to me requesting subscription. Of course,subscriptions to the newsletter are free. To unsubscribe,e-mail a reply indicating that you would like to unsubscribe.
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A Good, Clean Joke
In a certain suburban neighborhood,there were two brothers, 8 and 10 years old, who were exceedingly mischievous.Whatever went wrong in the neighborhood, it turned out they had had a handin it. Their parents were at their wit's end trying to control them. Hearingabout a priest nearby who worked with delinquent boys, the mother suggestedto the father that they ask the priest to talk with the boys. The fatherreplied, 'Sure, do that before I kill them!' The mother went to the priestand made her request. He agreed, but said he wanted to see the youngerboy first and alone. So the mother sent him to the priest.
The priest sat the boy downacross a huge, impressive desk he sat behind. For about five minutes theyjust sat and stared at each other. Finally, the priest pointed his forefingerat the boy and asked, 'Where is God?' The boy looked under the desk, inthe corners of the room, all around, but said nothing.
Again, louder, the priestpointed at the boy and asked, 'Where is God?'
Again the boy looked allaround but said nothing. A third time, in a louder, firmer voice, the priestleaned far across the desk and put his forefinger almost to the boy's nose,and asked, 'Where is God?'
The boy panicked and ranall the way home. Finding his older brother, he dragged him upstairs totheir room and into the closet, where they usually plotted their mischief.He finally said, 'We are in BIG trouble!'
The older boy asked, 'Whatdo you mean, BIG trouble?'
His brother replied, 'Godis missing and they think we did it.'
ever!