Recognising Your Impact on the Blinds, Rationals, Shapeshifters and Haters

Hello KSKOers

The Gods of analytics were clearly looking down on me the other day. An article from the British Medical Journal from 2022 – yes, ‘22 – appeared in my social media feed. Why that should have happened, I have no idea, but it was clearly the universe at work. So, rather than look a gift horse in the mouth, I grasped the opportunity to learn more. And do you know what? It made for very interesting reading. Join me in reflecting on the BMJ article all about Blinds, Rationals, Shapeshifters and Haters by Dr Partha Kar and how that links with my 3 layer definition of self-awareness and getting feedback from good people.

Looking forward to joining you on your learning journey!

Recognising Your Impact

What is self-aware leadership? Well it’s made up of 3 layers:

• Reflection of skills: An ability to recognise your hard skills and relational skills, like thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values and strengths, through reflection and introspection.
• Recognition of impact: An ability to recognise how your hard skills and relational skills are received by, perceived by and impact others.
• Regulation of behaviour: An ability to read and understand the emotions and intentions of others and respond and act wisely in social exchanges by regulating and making choices about what you say and do.

That central layer or recognition is really important: it’s the element of awareness of our impact on others. It’s influenced by our levels of stress and our ability to read the room. It’s also about our ability to understand that people’s reactions and responses to us are directly impacted by what we do and say to them. What goes around comes around, right?!

As the saying goes – we can’t change others, we can only change ourselves. So, on that basis, the only tool we have in our armoury to influence others is our behaviour. When we make different choices about our behaviour, we change others’ behaviours and we build better relationships!

Relating to Others

The article in the British Medical Journal which I came across recently focused on ‘Understanding how others relate to you’, which is essentially an exploration of the ‘recognition’ layer of the self-aware leadership definition. Dr Partha Kar says that people tend to fall into a few familiar groups in our lives.

Blinds: Unshakeable supporters who lift you up.

Firstly, you’ve got the Blinds: the people who love you unconditionally, no questions asked. They’re often close friends or family, and they’re the ones you can lean on without hesitation. You need to spend more time with them.