What is awareness of others and how can it benefit you?
The cornerstone of Emotional Intelligence and one of the 6 key competencies of the Genos Emotional Intelligence model. Awareness of others is about perceiving, understanding and acknowledging the way others feel. Which helps us identify the things that make people feel valued, listened to, cared for, consulted and understood.
Being aware of the people around you may be the key to your success in your career. According to global research, the impact of having awareness of others in leaders and employees contributes tremendously to the overall success of an organisation.
Leaders who are empathetic and emotionally intelligent consistently outperform their counterparts. This is because they can tailor their leadership style to each situation at hand.
The most effective people in organisations constantly sense how others are reacting and fine-tune their responses to advocate positive interactions. As a result, establishing true connections with one another enhances relationships and performance.
How do we develop our awareness of others?
- Make time to get to know the people you work with, what they enjoy or find challenging about work, their personalities and values.
- Pay attention to the way others are feeling, their body language, facial expressions, and the tonality of voice and adjust yourself to better fit together.
- Ask open questions about others’ thoughts, feelings and perspectives when appropriate.
- Acknowledge other people’s hard work, thoughts, feelings and perspectives. Consult with others when making decisions, especially ones that will also affect them or their work.
At the heart of being aware of others is empathy. True empathy combines understanding both the emotional and logical rationale that goes into every decision. If we develop this level of awareness and empathise with others, we are better able to adapt, persuade and motivate our team to achieve greater results.
How can being aware of others impact your workplace?
Stronger Connections/Relationships
Being more aware of others means we are constantly looking out for our team and with this, we will be able to build a stronger and meaningful bond in the team which simply leads to increased productivity and a more positive interaction overall.
Conflict Management
Not to be mistaken by avoiding conflicts, but rather sometimes conflicts are necessary. Especially when a certain topic or concern needs to be worked through. What being aware of others provides is better management when it comes to conflicts and by being aware of others, we can understand other perspectives and conflicts will be much healthier and will have a positive impact on productivity and teamwork.
What values can being aware of others teach you?
Empathy
Being aware of others primarily defines being able to empathise with others.
Perspective
By being able to empathise we gain new perspectives and can take on the ability to see through the lenses of other people and be the ‘diffuser’ in the team.
Respect
To have the ability to push our own opinions and judgement aside and truly listen and seek to understand the views from another person’s perspective.
Compassion
Compassion involves taking action on behalf of another person. This action is a result of being able to see, feel and respect other’s perspectives.
Start developing your awareness of others today!