Awareness in Action

Author: Dean Tuckey

I completed a personality assessment several years ago. I thought that most of what I read in the report seemed accurate. However, I strongly disagreed with the suggestion that I wasn’t much of a team player. I prided myself on being supportive, trusting, and someone who would sacrifice for the greater good of the team.

I remember testing the report’s assumption that I didn’t play nicely in the sandpit. I asked my colleagues for their perspectives. I remember one of the team saying, “Yeah Dean, you’re really collaborative…as long as we’re doing it your way”. I recall that my immediate reaction was one of denial. Fortunately, I kept my thoughts to myself as self-perception collided with reality.

Supportive, trusting and a team player were how I defined myself. Up until that moment, my subconscious had successfully manipulated my interactions with others; ensuring that my perception of myself as the ultimate team player remained intact. Now I was confronted by the fact that how I saw myself and how others experienced me were different.

We all have blind spots; the things we don’t recognise in ourselves, but others do. The goal over time is that how we see ourselves and how others experience us align. This is helpful because an accurate self-perception enables us to better recognise the impacts our behaviour has on others and to make necessary adjustments.

It was helpful for me to be able to identify when I was being autocratic rather than perceiving all my team interactions as collaborative. The increased level of self-awareness was not about shifting to be the ultimate ‘team player’ but making more deliberate choices and recognising when a situation called for more independent or collective input.

PVW Partners has a range of psychometric tools for leaders, employees and teams that aim to improve levels of self-awareness so that people can become more effective in the workplace.