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CHAPTER 2: DEVELOPING SELF-AWARENESS
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, students should be able to:
Describe why self-awareness is important to professional effectiveness and well-being
Describe how the self-concept is constructed and how it affects their worldview and behavior
Develop a personal brand that is consistent with how you want to be perceived by others
Discuss how culture influences their self-concept, particularly their tendencies
toward independence and interdependence
Discuss how technology is changing the way we think about ourselves, others, and relationships
Describe the issues faced by the postmodern manager
Learn why it may be helpful to develop multiple selves rather than a solid stable sense of self
Describe self-monitoring, as well as its consequences on effectiveness and careers
Identify their self-monitoring style and how it may influence their ability to achieve their goals
CHAPTER PREWORK AND CLASS ACTIVITIES
Readings
- Chapter 2: Developing Self-Awareness
- A Brand Called You at This Website has the full text of one of Fast Company’s most well-known and controversial articles, "A Brand Called You” in which Tom Peters makes the controversial case that, "Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head of marketing for the brand called You.” This article stimulates great discussion. I recommend that instructors ask students to read the article and then ask them what they thought of it. Did they like it? Not like it? Like and dislike it at the same time? Why? Is there a gem of useful knowledge in there for everyday life? Most students find some gems of good advice in this article. Students often will note that there is a strong individualistic bias, and that this kind of thinking may not work in collectivist cultures.
Recommended Student Prework
Assessments
Ask students to complete the chapter assessments before they read the chapter. For all these assessments, it’s important to stress that one style is not generally better or worse (or more effective) than the other. Rather, students should consider the consequences – for better and worse – of their preferred styles, as well as when their styles are most and least appropriate. Students should also consider how to best leverage the benefits of each style and develop respect for people who bring different styles to the table:
- Box 2-4: Self-Assessment Personality Inventory. This is very similar to the familiar Myers-Briggs Assessment and Keirsey-Bates Assessment. These assessments categorize people’s thinking styles on four dimensions: introvert/extravert, intuitive/sensing, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. The main point is that people have different ways of viewing the world; however, we often tend to think that other people think just like us, and we prefer to interact with people who are similar to us. Students can also go to to complete a free online version of a similar assessment. They can get a more detailed assessment if the pay the fee on the website.
- Box 2-5: I am… The main point is that people tend to have self concepts that emphasize independence or interdependence. This self-assessment helps students think about whether they have a more independent or interdependent self-concept using researcher Harry Triandis’ private, public, collective model of the self-concept. This information is useful for debriefing the part of the book chapter that describes the influences that independent and interdependent self-concepts have on thinking, feeling, and behaving.
- Box 2-6: Self-Monitoring. Self-monitoring refers to a person’s willingness and ability to read and adapt to other people. This helps people think about the degree to which they are high or low self-monitoring and the consequences of their monitoring style on their effectiveness and careers. Students often assume high self monitoring is generally better than low self monitoring, but this is not the case. High self-monitoring has some advantages (e.g., better boundary spanning, slight edge on promotions), and low self-monitoring has different advantages (e.g., finding jobs that fit one’s interests).
Debrief these assessments at appropriate times throughout the class, depending on when you discuss each of the topics. Remind students that each of these styles has positive and negative consequences, so it’s helpful to understand the strengths and limitations of each style. Understanding the different styles can help people be more accepting of people whose styles differ from their own and indeed leverage alternative styles.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
I. Why is self-awareness important to long-term success and well-being?
- Self-awareness is the hallmark of effective managers. We can’t manage others effectively unless we learn how to manage ourselves first. Successful managers:
- Know what they want, understand why they want it, and have a plan of action for getting it
- Know how their styles, strengths, and weaknesses influence their ability to reach their goals
- Understand how they are perceived by others and how these perceptions affect their ability to gain support
- Have a special combination of self-confidence, humility, and adaptability that enables them to appreciate the views and styles of others and to thrive in the ambiguous, imperfect and often stressful world of management
B.Two examples of types of managers with low self-awareness:
- Empty suits: They have “much form, style, and dress-for-success dash; little substance skill or managerial accomplishment” (Walter Kiechel). Although such managers emphasize form over substance and self-promotion over self-understanding, they are not necessarily without competence. They may be “bright and effective, but in a very predictable, very cubby holed way” (David Campbell).
- Expansive executives: Unlike empty suits who look out for themselves, expansive executive are genuinely committed to the success of their organizations. They set high standards for their work and the work of others. They make heroic efforts to meet their own high standards, typically working longer and faster than others. They tend to be very competent, ambitious, and successful in conventional terms—high salaries, high-level positions, and substantial organizational power. Yet beneath their success lie serious problems because they:
a)Gain their sense of self-worth primarily through their needs for control, mastery and professional success
b)Pursue these goals at all costs, often sacrificing their health and relationships
c)Are running a race they can’t win because their goals are too high, and they are always performing below the impossible standards that they set for themselves, so they are always disappointed with their own performance
C.Lack of self-awareness may be an occupational hazard of managerial work because:
1.It is difficult for managers to find time for self-reflection because of:
a)Long work hours
b)Fast work pace
c)Tight deadlines
d)Workflow interruptions
e)Unexpected crises
f)Fear of being “dejobbed”
g)Busy personal lives:
1)Managers may take work home with them.
2)Managers may need to balance the demanding schedules of dual careers, often while caring for dependent children and aging parents.
2.High-potential people don’t want to change what they see as a “winning formula” (Kaplan, Drath, and Kofodimos).
3.Because of status differences, managers may shut themselves off from people who can provide them with useful insight and feedback on how their behavior affects others, and direct reports may be hesitant to provide honest feedback.
4.Managers may “hire people in their own image” and are thus more likely to receive reinforcement for their ways of seeing and acting rather than useful criticism.
D.The Brand Called You (Tom Peters)
1.Well-known management consultant Tom Peters, in his controversial Fast Company article titled “The Brand Called You,” advises managers to know themselves, understand their customers, develop unique and marketable competencies that help them stand out from the crowd, reinvent themselves if necessary, and then package and sell themselves.
a)To be in business today,” says Peters, “your most important job is to be head marketer for the Brand Called You.”
b)Seeing oneself as a unique, marketable, and portable product may be a reasonable survival strategy in today’s fast-changing and competitive economic environment.
c)Yet, seeing oneself as a product to be bought and sold can also leave one feeling alienated from oneself and others and of questionable loyalty to one’s own organization, particularly if one has a collectivist rather than individualist orientation.
d)As a professional, though, it’s your responsibility to help others place you where you can make your best contributions, and proactively letting others know where you can best add value is one way you can do that.
e)To create the Brand Called You, Tom Peters suggests that you answer the following questions:
1)What do I do that I’m most proud of?
2)What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value?
3)What do my colleagues and customers say is my greatest and clearest strength and most noteworthy personal characteristics?
4)What have I done lately – this week – that added value to the organization (and that was noticed by others)?
5)In what way is what I do difficult to imitate?
f)The Internet has made it possible – even advantageous – to build your brand online as well. Recruiters and college admissions personnel are going online to conduct background checks on potential employees and students, searching Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. for additional information, including “red flags”; this is called the “shadow resume”
1)You should Google yourself to see what others see about you online.
2)You should the build your online brand to be consistent with the image you want to present.
E. What are some of the high costs of self-esteem? (Jennifer Crocker)
1.Self-Esteem refers to one’s general feelings about his or her self-worth.
2.People who have high self-esteem do tend to be happier, have more self-confidence, and expect to have a good future, but they are no more likely to get higher grades, show more kindness toward others, have better job performance, greater leadership ability, or positive citizenship behavior.
3.High self-esteem can backfire if one ties one’s self-worth to high academic achievement, looking good to others, or having abundant material success, these goals can backfire by creating excessive stress, physical problems, and even increased drug and alcohol abuse. People with these goals can also use unethical means to attain these goals. People can cheat on exams, take drugs to maintain high energy, or engage in unhealthy behaviors such as sunbathing in order to “look good”.
4. If we want to achieve greater benefits and fewer costs associated with high self-esteem, we should focus not only on whether one has high or low self-esteem, but also on how one pursues feelings of self-worth. Strategies based on achieving external standards – such as how one appears to others through grades, appearance, or material possessions – are less likely to bring benefits that are strategies based on contributing to others, living in accordance with personal values, and having the desire and ability to control one’s behavior when they may be harmful to oneself and others.
F. What’s a well-intentioned manager to do about self-awareness?
1.There are no shortcuts.
2.There are many long and winding paths to personal and professional growth, and each comes with its own possibilities, limitations and trade-offs.
3.But self-awareness begins by understanding the self-concept—our beliefs about who we are and how we got to be that way.
II.The self-concept: I think, therefore I think I am
A.People differ from each other in many ways, including (but not limited to) worldview, skills and abilities, learning styles, problem-solving styles, and interpersonal styles.
1.Although some of these differences may be inherited, researchers agree that genes are not our destiny, accounting for only between 5–50% of our personality.
2.Our social environment shapes one of the most powerful influences on our behavior: our self-concept.
3.In one study, researchers taught a group of students that intelligence is influenced by the environment and that the brain develops new connections throughout life especially when faced with difficult challenges. The students who were taught that intelligence can change with effort became significantly more conscientious (a characteristic that is thought to be influenced by genes) than did students who weren’t taught that intelligence can change with effort. Researchers have also found that people can become more optimistic (another characteristic thought to be influenced by genes) by learning how to manage their beliefs and developing behaviors that increase their optimism and happiness.
4.Jason Zweig, Wall Street Journal Financial columnist gives an example about how his “investing personality” may be influenced by his DNA, yet also explains that his investing style is also influenced by his family upbringing and extensive reading he has done about investing.
B.What is the self-concept?
1.The self-concept is an internalized set of perceptions that each of us has about ourselves that is relatively stable over time, consistent across situations, resistant to change, and of central importance to us.
2.The self-concept:
a)Is made up of our beliefs about our personalities, interests and skills, strengths and weaknesses, what makes us similar to others, and what makes us unique
b)Influences our everyday thoughts and actions, including how we see the world, what we perceive to be threats and opportunities, how we make decisions, how we cope with stress, how we define success, and how we behave toward others
c)Influences our fundamental beliefs about who we are, who we should be, who we can be, who we can never be, and who we are afraid of becoming (Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius)
C.How is the self-concept constructed?
1.The self-concept is, in large part, socially constructed throughout our lives in our families, schools, workplaces, communities, and other social institutions and practices such as the media, language, norms, rituals, and reward and punishment systems. It is influenced through:
a)Genetic predispositions although genes are not our destiny because they interact with our environments and our ability to learn from our experiences
b)Interpersonal relationships
c)Group influences
d)National cultures and subcultures
e)Media that influences us through exposure to possible selves, management gurus, and role models
f)Technologies of saturation (transportation, communication, and information technologies) that expose us to a broad range of people and experiences
2.These institutions socialize us into ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that enable us to “function well—naturally, flexibly, and adaptively—in the types of situations that are fairly common and recurrent in [our] cultural context” (Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kityama).
D.Cultural influences on the self-concept
1.One of the most fundamental lifelong challenges we face is to reconcile our basic needs to be both connected to and separate from others, to be both “a part of” others and “apart from” others.
2.Some cultures promote an independent self-concept (often labeled individualistic), and other cultures promote interdependence with others (often labeled collectivist) (Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama).
3.Western nations are more likely to promote independence and Eastern nations are more likely to promote interdependence. In the United States, the saying goes, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease. In Japan, the saying goes, “the nail that sticks out gets pounded down.”
4.See Table 2-1, Differences between the Independent and Interdependent Self-Concept.
5.See Table 2-2 for Hofstede’s country-by-country individualism index based his classic studies of over 116,000 primarily male employees in 40 nations. The United States is rated the most individualistic with a score of 91, and Venezuela is rated the least individualistic with a scale of 12.
a)The independent self-concept (be true to yourself, follow your dream, be the best you can be)
1)Values: Separate from others, be unique, self-sufficient, and self-promoting; value self-actualization and individual freedom from social constraints over social obligations; value personal rights over mutual obligations; value pursuit of happiness over personal sacrifice.
2)Focus: Private self (“Who am I and what do I need and want?”) tends to be more developed that the public self (“What do other people think of me?”) and the collective self (“I am a member of this community”) (Harry Triandis).