Ch. 13: Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is one of four components of emotional intelligence, the other three being self-management, social awareness, and relationship management (Gulati, Mayo, & Nohria, 2016). For the purpose of this blog post we will be discussing self-awareness, the propensity for individuals who advance quickly in their careers to have a decrease in self-awareness, and how that change relates to emotional intelligence.
According to the text emotional intelligence, at its core, is the capacity for recognizing ones feelings and the feelings of others to be better capable of motivating ourselves, and for managing our emotions and relationships productively (Gulati, Mayo, & Nohria, 2016). Self-awareness can be defined as the extent to which individuals are consciously aware of their internal states and interactions or relationships with others (Sutton, 2016).
I live in NW Arkansas, which happens to be the birthplace and home to Walmart, Tyson, JB Hunt, and several other large corporations. Climbing the corporate ladder seems to be commonplace for executives in this area. Often it occurs that an individual advances in these fields at a rapid pace, and in doing so it's not uncommon that they grow in their belief that they are very good at what they do. How else would they have rose in the ranks so fast? These lofty ideals often plant a seed of high personal value, which can often grow into something that can decrease an individuals overall self-awareness. This high value can also increase the likelihood for overconfidence bias to occur, which happens when an individual is overly confident in their opinions, experience, and intelligence and can mask us from the truth (8 Types of Bias in Decision Making – Timely Blog, 2018). The truth, in these cases, being that they have stopped self-examining and engaging in personal reflection, which is the foundation to self-awareness. Hubristic pride has manipulated this individual to believe that they can do no wrong, therefore causing them to stop examining their behavior and any harm that it might cause (Kenton, 2019). Self-awareness is consequently nonexistent as they have stopped seeing themselves as an individual with flaws or any need to grow.
Image created by me, photo found at Unsplash @scottweb
I live in NW Arkansas, which happens to be the birthplace and home to Walmart, Tyson, JB Hunt, and several other large corporations. Climbing the corporate ladder seems to be commonplace for executives in this area. Often it occurs that an individual advances in these fields at a rapid pace, and in doing so it's not uncommon that they grow in their belief that they are very good at what they do. How else would they have rose in the ranks so fast? These lofty ideals often plant a seed of high personal value, which can often grow into something that can decrease an individuals overall self-awareness. This high value can also increase the likelihood for overconfidence bias to occur, which happens when an individual is overly confident in their opinions, experience, and intelligence and can mask us from the truth (8 Types of Bias in Decision Making – Timely Blog, 2018). The truth, in these cases, being that they have stopped self-examining and engaging in personal reflection, which is the foundation to self-awareness. Hubristic pride has manipulated this individual to believe that they can do no wrong, therefore causing them to stop examining their behavior and any harm that it might cause (Kenton, 2019). Self-awareness is consequently nonexistent as they have stopped seeing themselves as an individual with flaws or any need to grow.
Image found @pixabay by geralt
Growth can only occur when an individual recognizes their flaws and their mistakes. Emotional intelligence is what allows this to happen by utilizing the four concepts discussed above. Individuals advancing quickly in their career need to pay careful attention to this concept to prevent this from occurring.
References
- 8 types of bias in decision making – Timely Blog. (2018, December 27). Memory. https://memory.ai/timely-blog/8-types-of-bias-in-decision-making
- Geralt. (n.d.-a). EQ. Pixabay. Retrieved December 28, 2020, from https://pixabay.com/illustrations/emotional-intelligence-eq-iq-4682765/
- Gulati, R., Mayo, A. J., & Nohria, N. (2016). Management: An integrated approach. Australia: Cengage Learning.
- Kenton, W. (2019, December 1). Hubris. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hubris.asp
- Sutton, A. (2016, November 1). Measuring the Effects of Self-Awareness: Construction of the Self-Awareness Outcomes Questionnaire. PubMed Central (PMC). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5114878/
- Webb, S. (2017, January 7). green plant. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/hDyO6rr3kqk
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