Archive for Self-Management

You need to know how to ask good questions in order to have good listening skills. Most leaders and professionals need to put some effort into cultivating the skill of asking good questions that build effective work relationships. Here are 4 tips on how to ask good questions: 1. Facilitate the other person’s creativity with [...]

To be at our best in self-management, we need to take good care of ourselves. We cannot fully tune into our own feelings and needs plus those of others, if we are “running ragged” and frequently feeling overwhelmed. We need to nurture ourselves by being present to our needs, so that we can also be [...]

Knowing how to discern you own deepest needs and values is like hitting the bulls eye. All too often we settle for hitting a ring away from the bulls eye, a lesser need or value. When act on that, we do not get what we really want because we have not yet even figured out [...]

We can make better decisions when we separate things into two steps: 1) Becoming aware of our needs and values and, 2) Choosing a strategy to satisfy our needs and honor our values. We often rush into action and collapse these two steps into one fast reaction. Taking the time to get clear about our [...]

To improve our self-management, we need to become more aware of our needs and values so that we can act in accordance with them. Often we are only vaguely aware of our needs and clarifying what need is most important at any given moment will energize us. Likewise, when we honor our values with our [...]

To improve our self-management, we need to recognize our feelings that are on a deeper level. These are feelings that we have difficulty naming at first. Being able to name them gives us more insight into what is really going on inside us. Then we can choose behaviors that appropriately match our feelings. There are [...]

To improve our self-awareness and self-management, it is crucial to be fully aware of our feelings. Unfortunately, our childhood upbringing often teaches us to bury our feelings. “Big boys don’t cry,” is a message most boys hear often. Some girls hear it too, “Big girls don’t cry.” In response they learn to bury their sad [...]

Self-awareness is the foundation of self-management, which is a key aspect of emotional intelligence. Do you want to have more control over your emotions and behavior? Here is a way to start. First, you need to recognize how valuable it is for you to develop your self-awareness. Consider what Dag Hammarskjold, a famous Secretary General [...]

Every day, it seems, the news gets worse about bank failures, unemployment, etc. The nation seems to be in gripped fear and insecurity. Into this scene comes a new leader, a new team, talking about hope. Is there anyway we can hope? Is this all smoke and mirrors? Conventional wisdom would say we’re in for [...]

The Dean of Harvard Business School, Jay O. Light, has written about the importance for leaders of having soft skills like self-awareness. CEO Magazine, Sept/Oct. 2008, p. 53, quotes Light: “Self-awareness, for example, is a very important leadership skill. To what extent can you teach self-awareness in a classroom?” Also on p. 53, The Dean [...]