Sean: It's a matter of awareness. Here's the thing for a leader like me, for example, to be aware, you're the CEO, you're the president, you're the founder. Here's the problem. Not a lot of people will say to your face that, "Hey Sean, this is the problem with you." And sometimes we could be blindsided to it. Totally unaware that we have that problem.

The problem is people don't want to speak up to you because you're the founder and CEO. How do you get over that? What's the solution for that?

Jason: [00:04:43] That's the question that I get asked a lot in my coaching with leaders. One of the things that people say is that, how do I get more self-awareness if nobody speaks up? Right?

So the idea of speaking up is the idea of safety. It's actually boiling it down is it’s really safety. When you get safety, you get transparency. You get, "Hey, Sean, that really sucked what you just did." You know, you get somebody who can actually say that to you because they know that tomorrow they won't get fired.

So the idea of safety, and how do you create that safety is actually through the first conversation you had with that person, the very first conversation, and it builds on that. So for example, if you, if they ask a question. So, let's say they say, "Sean, I think you are a bit, you are reacting too fast," right?

"You're a bit rational. That I think we should think about this," that first response that they have gives them the historical records of: What should I do in the future? And if you say something like "you don't know anything," oh, if you say something like "I'm the boss," then that is a historical record in his mind to say that, you know what, then that's true and I will behave differently after that. And slowly the voice gets quieter and quieter.

So for a leader, one of the most important things is that - anyway, when I go through organizations, I know whether that organization has safety. They call it psychological safety. You can call it relational safety.

But If people are asking questions and they're able to actually question you back, "why do you say that?" I know that the organization has safety. If nobody's speaking. Because all, when they think back or when they hear historical records or we can call it "gossip" or so, historical records of other people, "you know what you, you spoke to Sean, I'll tell you what, you know, James, you spoke to Sean two years ago. Yeah. Where's he now he's not here. Yeah, he's gone, I don't think so be careful."

So any kind of data we want to build on it and every one of us. There's a ton of historical data. It's very ingrained and we call that culture. So what you want to do is that you want to start to be very careful at very small things, because you can change the thing about history is that you can start writing a new one.

So the next time somebody asks you a question, Sean, in front of people, for example, use that as a way of demonstrating the, "Hey, you know what? That's a great question. There is no stupid question. That's a really great question. I appreciate you sharing with me that. Yes, I'm rash. A lot of times I'm rash about this and you know what I appreciate you, and I hope that you can carry on to share me these things. Because as a leader, I need information. The more information I have, the more data I have, the more I can make better decisions.

If you say it that way, you will see a change in the historical records and you'll get more and more of these questions coming to you.

And when you have that, you have more data points coming in. And when we have more data points you higher self-awareness.

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack

Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack