CORPORATE SUFI: Growing your awareness wing Your Awareness

Self-awareness is the starting point of every personal quest for growth. It clarifies your path ahead, enabling you to achieve the vision you have set out for yourself. Awareness is the essence of the present moment. It brings to light the important need to take charge of your life and make it authentic and meaningful.

Being self-aware is an ongoing practice of mindfulness. So, how do you increase your self-awareness?

A simple way is to write a regular journal. It can be as little as jotting down a few bullet points before you go to bed. Ask yourself: What did I learn about myself at work today? What did I learn at home? What made me happy and what made me unhappy today, and why? What are my goals?

Awareness is also practiced through active listening – listening with your eyes, ears and heart. Always give your undivided attention and remain non-judgmental. Your relationship with your family can become tenuous without active listening because a deep understanding of each other is missing. The same applies to business relationships with customers, colleagues or other stakeholders. You can enrich every relationship with active listening.

In the corporate world, being aware of the moods of individuals and teams can offer valuable insights. You need to know if your employees feel valued or demotivated. Heightened awareness helps you fix situations where your employees may feel less than great.

Awareness also means you have a deeper understanding of what is going on in your business. You are aware of what is most important to you. Being aware means not only that you are clear about your vision, mission, values and strategy, but also whether your team and your actions are aligned with them.

Challenge yourself with the following “How to” exercises:

1. ACCEPT that your awareness can always be enhanced.

2. ASK yourself: What frustrates me? What bothers me? What excites me? What do I do well? What can I do better? What does success mean to me? What makes me happy? What takes me away from who I am?

3. HAVE one-to-one meetings with associates, customers, family members, colleagues and your spouse to find out how they’re feeling. Keep an open mind during discussions and listen actively.

4. SHARPEN your awareness of your team members: Are they putting in their best? What are the gaps between actual outcome vis-à-vis the expected outcome? Who are the performers/non-performers? What will take them to the next level?

5. DEEPEN your awareness of your business. Evaluate what is being achieved from a qualitative and quantitative standpoint, and have a mechanism for evaluation. Then, determine the one thing you can do which gives you the highest leverage on your time, and focus on that. Set goals and evaluate your progress regularly.

6. DEVELOP a deeper awareness of your offerings: What are their strengths and weaknesses? Which products and services do clients really like and which do not add much value?

7. BE AWARE of your customer mix: Who are the 20 per cent of customers giving you 80 per cent of the business? Give special focus to those customers.

8. KNOW the 10 per cent of the work you need to do that gives you 90 per cent results.

Then put priority on focusing on the 10 % work.

9. WRITE a journal about what’s going on in your life – to get to the root of any problem. Write in a journal before addressing a problem or read your journal before going for an important meeting. This will raise your awareness!