77 Self-Aware Leadership Unplugged: Alex Jaworski Takeover

Welcome to another enlightening episode of The Knowing Self, Knowing Others Podcast! In today's episode, we have a unique twist as our host, Nia Thomas, hands over the reins to guest interviewer, Alex Jaworski. 

Alex Jaworski is a seasoned professional in the retail and restaurant industry, with over 14 years of experience. Nia and Alex connected through the #fancyfriday hashtag on Linkedin, lead by the brilliant Matt Dunsmoor, who joined the show a few weeks ago.  

Nia and Alex explore the fascinating world of self-aware leadership and the critical role it plays in today's ever-changing work environment. Nia shares her expert insights on the relationship between self-awareness and leadership effectiveness, the impact of organizational hierarchies on leadership, and the importance of care, authenticity, and humility in leadership. Additionally, they explore the concept of the "self-awareness superhighway" and its potential to transform leadership journeys. 

Get ready to embark on a thought-provoking discussion that will challenge your perceptions of leadership and self-awareness. Tune in to gain valuable insights and practical tips for fostering self-aware leadership in your own professional journey!

Transcript

Nia Thomas [00:00:04]:
Hello, and welcome to the Knowing Self, Knowing Others podcast. I'm your host, Nia Thomas. Join me as

Nia Thomas [00:00:10]:
we talk to today's guest. Today, I'm joined by Alex Jaworski and it's not an ordinary show. So Alex and I have been communicating via LinkedIn for a little while because we're both connected through the hashtag that, Matt Dunsmore uses, which is fancy Friday, and we both happen to post on fancy Friday. Alex and I were talking a couple of weeks ago, and he asked me a very interesting question. He asked me whether I've ever had anybody as a guest interviewer on the show. Now that has never happened before until today. So today, I'm completely handing my show over to Alex Jaworski, who is gonna be my guest interviewer. Now Alex has a background in retail and the restaurant restaurant industry, and he's been working in those industries for about 14 years.

Nia Thomas [00:01:02]:
And during that time, has developed an interest in leadership, which is where our conversation started. So, Alex, I'm handing over my episode to you and into your capable hands.

Alex Jaworski [00:01:15]:
Yeah. Thank you very much. And to describe you a little bit, you are an expert leader who talks the talk and walks the walk. You are academically awarded thought leader in self awareness and practices self aware leadership everywhere you go. You are a frequent blog writer and a passionate podcast host, which today, I guess, I'm I'm in the the that seat. You're on a mission to develop self aware leadership through reflection, recognition, and regulation. Welcome to your own show. How does it feel to be on the other side this time?

Nia Thomas [00:01:48]:
It's a little bit strange, to be honest, but I am looking forward to it.

Alex Jaworski [00:01:52]:
Great. Great. So, Nia, how do you define self aware leadership?

Nia Thomas [00:01:58]:
Very big question. For me, self awareness and leadership sort of combine, and and through my research, they they have come closer and closer. Watchers and listeners will have probably heard me say this before. My definition of self awareness has got 3 layers. So people will have possibly heard 2 layers, so internal self awareness and external self awareness. The way I describe it, it has 3 layers. I discovered that there is this connecting layer in between that internal self awareness and external. I describe it as reflection of your hard and soft skills, but I tend to call soft skills relational skills because I think calling them soft skills is a bit of a misnomer.

Nia Thomas [00:02:41]:
So it's reflection of your hard and relational skills, recognition of your impact, and regulation of your behavior. And all of those three things come together to create an effective leadership model for people who've already picked up my book, which is in the the picture here for anybody who's watching the video. If you're already reading my book, you'll have picked up the information about my self awareness compass, which has got 9 elements to it. So there are 9 directions to the compass. Which care, humility, authenticity, listening, behavior, and lots of other things. So it's 9 compass points altogether. Those three layers and those 9 compass points come together to create my definition of self aware leadership.

Alex Jaworski [00:03:25]:
So what are your thoughts on the relationship between self awareness skills and leadership effectiveness skills?

Nia Thomas [00:03:32]:
This was a question that I really posed in my research because that was the very question that I wanted to know. And the more people that I spoke to, the more literature that I read, it became apparent to me that if we don't understand the impact that we have on others, there is the potential that our working relationship's gonna become quite negative. So the more and more I looked into it and the more I talk to people about it, even now, it's becoming clear to them that there is a clear link. And it's of interest to me that the more conversations I have is that self awareness underpins so much of our behavior. And if we are talking about behavior in the workplace, we're talking about relationships, then all of those things culminate to create effective leadership because I think we are moving away from a very pyramid shaped hierarchical structure within organizations. So we're moving to more fluid, adaptable, flexible organizational shapes. And that flexible, adaptable organization is very much reliant on relationships. And relationships are reliant on our behavior, which is reliant on self awareness.

Nia Thomas [00:04:42]:
So I think self awareness and leadership are inextricably linked.

Alex Jaworski [00:04:46]:
So what are your thoughts on the relationship between self awareness skills and leadership effectiveness?

Nia Thomas [00:04:53]:
The more research I'm doing and the more conversations I'm having with people, it's becoming more and more apparent to me that there is a very clear link. When I carried out my research, the the evidence was all pointing to the fact that self awareness underpins leadership. And if you think about how we work and and how our working world is changing from that pyramid shaped very hierarchical structure of the industrial paradigm to the the knowledge paradigm that we're now moving into where organizations are more fluid and adaptable and flexible, relationships pin underpin everything. And if our behaviour underpin relationships, then self awareness underpins behavior. So for me, there is a very clear link between self awareness and leader effectiveness. And the more conversations I'm having about self awareness and self aware leadership particularly, the more I'm discovering that self awareness underpin many things within our working world. When we're thinking about, diversity and inclusion, it is underpinned by our self awareness. When we think about communication, it's underpinned by our self awareness.

Nia Thomas [00:06:05]:
So I think the this conversation, you know, about the link between self awareness, I think under self awareness really is a foundational element to our behavior.

Alex Jaworski [00:06:16]:
Okay.

Nia Thomas [00:06:16]:
In the industrial paradigm in in which we are now moving out of, organisations were very hierarchical. So you had a a very senior person at the top, and you had the people at the bottom of the organisation where the pyramid became widest. And those individuals at the bottom of that pyramid were far less involved in making decisions. All of the the thoughts, the blue sky thinking, and the decisions were made at the top of the organization, and they were pushed down and people at the bottom were told what to do. This in in this knowledge based paradigm that we are shifting into, we are all far more vested and included in the decisions that our organizations are making. We have needs around having visions, missions, and beliefs aligned with the organization that we work in. We need to be more involved in the decision making of the organization, the strategy of the organization. Whereas in the industrial paradigm, it was we tell you what to do when you do it.

Nia Thomas [00:07:18]:
Whereas that doesn't sit well within organizations now. We are moving away from that. So that need to have very effective

Francesca [00:07:34]:
podcast has a new feature. You can now send a text message directly to the show. Check out the show notes in your favorite podcast player, and in the top left of the notes, you'll see a link to text the show. Click on it to be taken to your messaging app and send a text directly to Nia and this week's guest. Join the community and be a part of our learning journey.

Alex Jaworski [00:07:56]:
Yeah. Okay. So do you believe that effective leaders can be found on all levels in both the knowledge and the industrial hierarchies?

Nia Thomas [00:08:07]:
Leaders at all levels is something that I'm really interested in. If we think about the industrial paradigm and the shape of organizations, leaders may have been within the different layers of organizations, but they weren't empowered. They weren't given the opportunity to speak up. Now as we move into this knowledge paradigm where what we know, what we think is shared within organizations is is becoming far more important for us to to be able to identify our leaders at different levels and to empower them, to give them a voice because we need to hear what those experts at different levels of organizations are saying. So to answer your question very simply, yes, I think we can find leaders at at all levels of organizations. But I think as leaders, we have to make sure that we empower people and open those opportunities up for people that if they have leadership traits, no matter how small they are, they are given the opportunity to test them out, to practice them, and to grow and nurture them.

Alex Jaworski [00:09:08]:
Very good. So do you believe that all the leaders on all all those levels have the same have similar self awareness skills?

Nia Thomas [00:09:18]:
No. I think self awareness is related to an individual. So the fact that you have leader within your job title, I don't think that such is suggestive of somebody who is self aware. We often talk about leadership when we talk about management, and we know that leadership and management are different things. Sometimes within a role, you have to do both things, but I don't think doing both things is necessarily synonymous with self awareness because we we talk about people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs who were at the very pinnacle of organizations. They were mavericks. They are mavericks, and they have phenomenal technical ideas, but their ability to establish personal and human relationships is something that we all hear about within the press that they are not particularly effective. So I think the fact that you are a leader in an organization, a senior manager in an organization does not necessarily mean that you have high self awareness.

Alex Jaworski [00:10:14]:
Alright. So I I I'm gonna go off top of the globe here. But in a hierarchical structure, how far down the pyramid in terms of, like, I don't know, title levels do you think you need to have enough self awareness to communicate?

Nia Thomas [00:10:27]:
I think you need to have self awareness at all levels because unless you are working in an organization where you don't work with any other humans, then self awareness matter. But anywhere where you work, where you're working alongside another human being, you need to have self awareness. Because as I said, if self awareness underpins our behavior, behavior underpins our relationships, and relationships make the world go round. I think the the level you are in an organization, your role or your position, that doesn't matter because good relationships and good communication are all required.

Alex Jaworski [00:11:05]:
Do you believe that leaders at the most strategic levels have greater self awareness than, leaders at other levels?

Nia Thomas [00:11:13]:
Well, this is an interesting question. And when I went into my research, I thought the answer was going to be yes. So the literature that I reviewed in the main identified that people at the most senior level of organizations were the most self aware or people in training to take on those roles. If you read my book and you read my thesis, you will, see that I've I've I've reviewed many pieces of literature that talk about that. The people who are at the most strategic level have more self awareness. But within my research, when I was talking to people, they were telling me the absolute opposite. What they were identifying is that peep as people get nearer to the top of organization, those pyramid structures that we've been talking about, that people seem to leave their self awareness behind. And, the conversations I've had have suggested there may be lots of different reasons for this.

Nia Thomas [00:12:07]:
It might be that because we get further away from the people who are working operationally, that we don't have that detailed knowledge of what happens on that shop floor and on at that operational level. Or it might be that we have this idea that we've gone far enough up the ladder now that we don't need to worry about other people's opinions. There are different schools of thought around why this may be happening, but not necessarily is what we are saying. There there are definitely examples of people who are at very senior levels in organizations who are very self aware. But the feedback that I'm getting is that, generally, this is not a correlation.

Alex Jaworski [00:12:48]:
Do you have some examples of companies on both ends of the stick that you maybe could share?

Nia Thomas [00:12:54]:
I've certainly been very lucky to all here work in organizations where if you haven't had very self aware senior executives, there have been individuals who have sat to their left and to their right within the organizational structure, who have been emotionally aware. And I think if you're a leader, that's part of your role is to be able to draw the strengths from your team so that across the team, you you fill each other's gaps and and you have a broad range of strengths and weaknesses and and challenges and abilities across that board. So I think I've been lucky, but I've certainly, observed others within organizations who are very highly technical and struggle to really step into that emotional zone so they are not able to understand the challenges that people have if they are in a difficult emotional situation at home. Maybe they have the caring duties or elderly relatives at home or early bereavement. You can't put that at the door when you walk into work. And there are individuals who are unable to really understand the human impact on the world of work for the the life that we have outside of the world of work. So I've seen both elements, but I think that example that I gave of balancing up where you have less self aware and more self aware people on a on a team, I've certainly seen that working very well.

Alex Jaworski [00:14:20]:
Do you think the generational gaps have anything to do with the effectiveness of leaders or the self awareness, like, their own personal self awareness? Do you think the generational gaps, like, does gen x have different self awareness than millennials?

Nia Thomas [00:14:36]:
I don't think that I'm hearing differences within self awareness. I think there are differences between individuals' needs, values, and beliefs within the world of work. But I'm I think I'm probably quite troubled by the conversation that's happening about the different generations. I was talking to Matt Densmore only, a couple of weeks ago about the challenge where we have I think we will have around 5 generations in the world of work at any one time, which is the greatest number of generations that we've ever seen. And I think to talk about generations differently just adds fuel to the to the fire that we have ageism in the world of work. So for me, I would rather talk about individuals and how individuals' behavior, impacts relationships and how would the underpinning self awareness impacts behavior in relationships. I'm not seeing a generational issue. My experience is that age grouping is less helpful to us than if we get to know individuals and their specific needs and their values and their beliefs.

Alex Jaworski [00:15:44]:
So tell us more about your book and the inspiration behind it. Why did you relate self awareness as to a journey on a superhighway?

Nia Thomas [00:15:51]:
Okay. So I I promised myself that I would write a book when I finished my doctorate because one of the things that I wanted was to make my doctorate useful to people. And an academic work of 90,000 words, is of limited interest to people within the business community. So I set about translating my doctoral thesis into a business book that was useful to people. That was the the main driver behind my book. Why is it called the self awareness superhighway? Good question. The more people that I've spoken to, it's become very clear that self awareness is a journey. It's not a one and done.

Nia Thomas [00:16:29]:
And every day, we are we are experiencing different things. So we will come across different people. We will work in different organizations. You will have external factors such as COVID and and cost of living crisis that will change the environment we are living in. And we are constantly having to renew our acquaintance with ourselves. The the self that we knew yesterday might be different tomorrow because we've had a different life situation happen. I I talk about births, deaths, marriages, moving house, divorce, etcetera. All of those things change us.

Nia Thomas [00:17:04]:
And then if you think about all of those things next to people in our world of work who come and go, We have to get to know ourselves right alongside these new situations. That means we are on a constant journey. But the superhighway part is about it's not just an ordinary road. It's not just an ordinary journey because we if we are looking down and we are in traffic and we are looking at the road ahead, we might miss all

Alex Jaworski [00:17:29]:
these signals that colleagues

Nia Thomas [00:17:29]:
and people are telling us around us, and we'll miss that feedback that's coming from around us. A self awareness superhighway is this elevated position where we really have a better 360 degree view of our lives and the views that others have around us and the impact that we're having on other people. So the the superhighway is is a different kind of road. It's not your commoner garden road that we travel on every day. It's a road that we have to turn off and be very specific in journeying along that road because it's a road that we have to pay attention to. It's a a journey that we have that we have to explore, that we have to be very mindful of who's around us and the impact that we are having.

Alex Jaworski [00:18:17]:
So as a superhighway, the first word that comes to my mind is quick and fast. You relate it to more as direct. So is there a difference between the 2 in your opinion, or is it just that it's constant and that's more of what the superhighway part is all about?

Nia Thomas [00:18:36]:
Well, I think the superhighway is different for everybody. If you're reading my book and you think that a superhighway looks like that, that might be what your journey of self awareness is aligned to. For me, when I think about a superhighway, it's a it's a big expansive highway, which means I can I can see for miles that it's high off the ground, and I've got a good view of the ground below? So I can see the trees. I can see the city. I can see lots of lots of vistas in the distance. So that's what it looks like for me, but that doesn't mean that might not be what it looks like for you. So it might be that the speed of the traffic on that highway might be something quite relevant to you. Something that I would really want readers to take away is that your superhighway looks like whatever you want it to be, and the vehicle that you're journeying could be look something quite different to mine.

Alex Jaworski [00:19:29]:
So what are some of the example skills and behavior that you you personally associate with self awareness?

Nia Thomas [00:19:35]:
As I mentioned at the beginning, there are 9 points to my self awareness compass, compass, and these 9 points were things that people were either saying repeatedly or was coming out of the literature repeatedly. The very first direction of my compass is care. Care is something that is described to me as leaders care but it's also something that is described as leaders don't care. So what also became very apparent to me when I was doing my research is that people describe things by what they are as well as what they are not. And often we can describe what something isn't more succinctly than what something is. So when we are talking about care within leadership, it's sometimes easier for people to say, I know when a leader doesn't care. Because when care is apparent, it happens around you and you don't necessarily notice. But when it disappears, you know what that feels like.

Nia Thomas [00:20:33]:
So when you have a leader who doesn't care, you feel left out, you feel like your voice isn't being heard, you aren't given an opportunity to be involved in decision making. But when care is existent in an organisation, you have all of those things. So there are definitely examples both of what care looks like and what care doesn't look like. In in terms of my, self awareness compass, there's chartable. That's the chartable compass. And these, 9 let letters create the mnemonic chartable. So as I said, it starts with here, and it moves to humility, authenticity, etcetera. So I think when we're thinking about authenticity, it's about doing the things that we say we're going to do.

Nia Thomas [00:21:21]:
It is about being open when we don't know the answer to everything. It's about asking for help from others. And when you don't have authenticity within your organization, none of those things are apparent. It's both what we do and what we don't do are the things that suggest to others, are we caring, are we authentic, are we humble, etcetera.

Alex Jaworski [00:21:44]:
So if someone was starting from absolute 0, which the 9 compass points do you think is critical to prioritize first and why?

Nia Thomas [00:21:51]:
That's a really good question. One of the things that is really important is that we understand ourselves to work out where we need to journey on our self awareness superhighway. I've created a self awareness assessment quiz that will help people to understand which of the nine directions they need to travel. I wouldn't suggest any of those nine points until I'd had a conversation with somebody and we had worked through which of those nine directions they felt that that would be most helpful for them to travel. I think in terms of somebody who's starting from scratch, you need to do that work to identify your own your your own reflection. So to do that first layer of the self awareness, definition, so reflection of your hard skills and your relational skills. You need to do that. You need to understand your impact on others to do that element of recognizing your impact, And you need all of that information to help you work out which direction of the self awareness compass you need to move.

Nia Thomas [00:22:59]:
So for me, one of the directions that I always need to move in is listening. Because as an introvert, we sometimes struggle to find the gap in the sentence to be able to come in and share our point, which sometimes makes it sound like we're not listening. I'm always on the journey to improve my active listening skills. But it might be that if may if you did that assessment quiz, Alex, you would find that maybe reflection was something that you wanted to work on. So the first thing that you would be looking at would be actioning around your behavior, your understanding, and some activities around reflection. That would be the first thing on your to do list from from that self awareness superhighway. So the 9 points are designed to be useful, but to be most useful, you need to have done that assessment before you start.

Alex Jaworski [00:23:52]:
Very good. So they're all symbiotic with each other

Nia Thomas [00:23:55]:
is essentially. Definitely. So if we want to be the most effective and self aware leader that we can, what we want to do is to push out our scores on all of those 9 compass points so that when I carry out the assessment of myself and you carry out an assessment of me, our scores are as far away from the center of that self awareness compass as possible. That's the idea is that we keep journeying out into those nine directions to become better and better. And, of course, we never get to that end because it's a it's a lifelong journey.

Alex Jaworski [00:24:29]:
Very good. Well, Nia, thank you for having me as your guest host today. It was a pleasure to interview you. Thank you for having me.

Nia Thomas [00:24:36]:
Thank you. It's been absolutely brilliant. And it's certainly been a change to be on the other side of the microphone.

Alex Jaworski [00:24:43]:
Thank you.

Francesca [00:24:44]:
Are you looking to improve your business position of greater awareness? If so, the self awareness superhighway, charting your leadership journey is the book for you. Here's just a fraction of what you'll learn, what self awareness is and why it's critical for your reputation, how increased self awareness will boost your business relationships, how you can leverage self awareness to excel in your leadership, practical steps to develop your self awareness skills, how you can capitalize on constructive feedback from others, how you can be at the forefront of people centricity in the hyper digital age. Even if you focused on only one development tool to move in one direction on your superhighway, you'll have achieved growth worth more than the price of the book. In the self awareness superhighway, you'll discover the 9 chartable compass points to guide your unique journey of learning, growth, and leadership development. Explore the directions of care, humility, authenticity, and more to map your journey from just leading to self aware leadership. Be guided by people centric signposts and directions and navigate workplace roadblocks and trip hazards. Get insights from guests of the knowing self, knowing others podcast, and reflect on your own experiences. Recognize your impact on others and explore your opportunities for change based on informed choices and expanded awareness.

Francesca [00:26:18]:
You can buy your copy from Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, Foyles, Blackwells, and other good online and high street bookstores. Grab a coffee, find a comfy chair, and dive in.

Nia Thomas [00:26:32]:
Thank you for joining me on today's show where we discuss self aware leadership with thinkers from around the globe. If you want to make sure that you keep in touch with what's going on in the world of self aware leadership, head over to my website and sign up to my newsletter. Looking forward to having you on my learning journey.