4 Ways to Develop Greater Self-Awareness at Work

You’ve likely heard of emotional intelligence, or EI, a term popularized by Dan Goleman’s 1995 book. The concept has become extremely popular, backed by a history of research demonstrating numerous benefits, both personally and professionally, for individuals with higher levels of EI. Fortunately, there is also good evidence for the case that EI can be developed with intentional practice.

The predominant model of emotional intelligence encompasses four domains: self-awareness, self-management, interpersonal awareness, and relationship management. The self-awareness components are fundamental, as they serve as the foundation for the ability to effectively manage one’s own emotions and navigate interpersonal interactions and relationships. Below, let’s focus on four specific practices for developing greater emotional self-awareness at work.

1. Pay Attention to Relatively Stronger Feelings and Label Them. People vary in the typical range of intensity in their emotional experience within a day and across multiple days. Pay attention to occasions when your feelings (both negative and positive) are stronger than your normal baseline. What word(s) or phrase(s) would you use to label or describe your emotions at this point? Don’t be surprised if this seems difficult at first. We’re usually not raised to make more than very crude distinctions among our feelings, let alone develop a rich vocabulary to describe or communicate emotions. (A quick internet search for “list of emotions” returns numerous results.)

2. Reflect on Factors That Seem to Explain Your Current Feeling. Why do you seem to be experiencing this particular emotion or set of emotions at this time? We do not always have accurate insight into all the relevant factors, but it is important to try. The key is to notice patterns, which likely indicate ways that you tend to interpret events, your strengths and weaknesses, and emotional “sore spots” that get rubbed the wrong way. Each of these is unique to you, and gaining self-awareness about them is vital as a first step to managing them to be both happier and more productive.

3. Lean Into Emotions and Learn What Happens. When we experience relatively intense negative or uncomfortable feelings, we tend to do what we can to move away from them. That makes sense; those negative emotional states are probably not a healthy place to dwell. However, by always and immediately trying to escape these normal experiences, we miss the opportunity to learn some things that are important for our emotional intelligence. Try intentionally choosing to stick with some such experiences, simply observing where it leads and reflectively considering questions such as:

• What might this emotional reaction indicate about the situation or events that preceded it?
• Is it possible that my negative emotional reaction is more intense than would be the case for others experiencing similar circumstances? If so, why? What might my reaction indicate about my interpretation of the experience, my history, or my tendencies?
• What do I imagine or fear might happen if I let the feeling persist and didn’t work against it? What are those assumptions based on?

Engaging in this process involves some degree of detachment from your experience so that you can play the role of detective and scientist. You’re both stepping back to examine the larger context, and possibly performing an experiment to see what happens. Often the results are profound, as you may learn that you may have more control over your emotional reactions than you imagined and that the unexamined assumptions and fears about where negative feelings might lead are unrealistic.

4. Solicit Feedback From Others. So far we have focused on forms of self-awareness that have to do with in-the-moment emotional experience as well as patterns or tendencies over time and across situations. Another important aspect of self-awareness is insight into how others experience us. We tend to carry around a set of assumptions about how we are viewed by others, perhaps mainly based on our self-image and our intentions regarding our interpersonal interactions and relationships.

It is highly likely that there are at least some discrepancies between what we think about how we are experienced by others, and their perceptions of us. Learning of those discrepancies can be uplifting when they are in our favor, and disheartening or threatening when they are critical (compared to our self-image). So, it is important to be genuine in seeking feedback, and being ready to receive it and consider it without getting defensive. Trying to explain how or why other peoples’ experiences of us are wrong or inaccurate quickly sends the message not to provide such feedback again, even if asked (and imagine how our defensiveness further shapes their perceptions of us).

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We are more likely to receive useful feedback if we provide some specifics as to what we'd like to learn. So, rather than ask someone, "What do you think of me?" try, "In an effort to achieve self-improvement, I'd find it valuable to know how I seem to come across to others. Would you mind sharing a few descriptors that come to mind if someone asked you what I am like?" Even more specific might be something like, "In the meeting this morning with the team, I wondered whether I might have come across as too critical of Jason's idea. What was your take on how I sounded?" Regardless of the wording, it's important to communicate a genuine interest in, and openness to, the other person's perceptions, rather than seeming to seek a particular response.

Common threads across the different forms of self-awareness and methods for improving them include intentionality and investment of time and energy. For those reasons, it is easy to rarely if ever get around to the endeavor, especially when life seems busy without adding these to our to-do lists. Of course, like most things, these processes become easier with practice.

Why invest in working on your degree of self-awareness? As they're foundational to emotional intelligence, it is only with awareness and insight that we hold the possibility of greater emotional self-management. Increasing self-awareness does not automatically result in better self-control, but is a prerequisite.