Start With A Win - The Journey to Self-Awareness with Dr. Tasha Eurich

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Our guest on this episode of the Start With A Win podcast is Dr. Tasha Eurich, New York Times bestselling author of Insight and experienced executive coach and researcher specializing in self-awareness. Tasha and her team have spent the past seven years researching these four questions:What is self-awareness?Where does it come from?Why do we need it?How do we get more of it?Essentially, they have boiled down the definition of self-awareness to: “the will and skill to see ourselves clearly.” This level of self-knowledge includes both internal (who we are at our core) and external self-awareness (how people see us). Self-aware individuals possess both internal and external, which sets them apart from the 80% or so of people who think they are self-aware but are not. Tasha has found that there are many internal barriers that people set up for themselves that keep them from attaining self-awareness and that gathering internal and external feedback helps to break down these barriers. When focusing on internal feedback, Tasha recommends a daily habitual practice of asking yourself these three questions:What went well today?What didn’t go well today?What can I do to be smarter tomorrow?Soliciting external feedback is more about asking the right people than asking the right questions. Tasha says that these people should want you to succeed and be willing to say the difficult thing when necessary. If you are interested in learning more about your self-awareness journey, consider taking the free assessment at the link below.Free Self-Awareness Assessment:https://www.insight-book.com/quiz Connect with Tasha:https://www.tashaeurich.com/https://www.insight-book.com/ https://twitter.com/tashaeurich?s=20https://www.linkedin.com/in/tashaeurich https://www.facebook.com/TashaEurich/ Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. And coming to you from Denver, Colorado via the virtual studio, Adam Kanto, CEO of Remax here with Start Within. And Mark, did we hit our YouTube audience this morning? I think we kind of missed out on that, didn't we? Yeah, you know, the YouTube audience, you know, if we don't have some sort of nugget in the intro, there's always the dance that they can see and virtually participate in. So if you're not subscribed on YouTube or watching any of the YouTube stuff, head over to YouTube and you can see the intro dance. I love it. So, hey, well, let's just jump

right into today's show. What do you think about that? I'm excited about today's conversation. I actually have done some podcasting in the medical space with Tasha earlier this year with a company that we work with. And so when I heard her and her talk, I was like, oh, she would be great for Start With A Win. And this month, we are highlighting successful business women. And so I'm glad that she gets to be a part of this month of recording. I love that. So our guest today is Dr. Tasha Urich. Dr. Tasha is an organizational psychologist.

This is like one of my favorite spaces, by the way, if you haven't been listening to me for the past couple of years. So she's an organizational psychologist, executive coach, another one of my favorite spaces, researcher, and New York Times bestselling author. Her primary areas of expertise are executive coaching, executive team development, and leadership, and high potential development programs. So I don't know if you've listened to Tasha's TEDx talks, but they've been viewed more than 7 million times. I encourage you

to go out there and check those things out. Her mission in life is to help people become the best of who they are and what they do. This is interesting because you got to have something in order to accomplish that. And that something is self-awareness. So Tasha's worked directly with over 20,000 leaders and spoken live to hundreds of thousands more on every continent but Antarctica until they build their next event center there. So she works with clients like Google, Salesforce, the NBA, Walmart, and even the White House leadership team for crying out loud. So let's welcome Tasha to the show. Tasha, welcome to Start With A Win.

Thank you. I'm really happy to be here. Well, thank you. I mean, this is exciting because this is like one of my favorite things to talk about. You specialize in helping people and individuals, you know, organizations, whatever, understand the importance of this thing that we're kind of all afraid of called self-awareness. We shouldn't be afraid, but yes, it is a big, meaty topic. And as we'll see, a lot of people have more work to do than they think. Oh, totally. I mean, I've listened to your TED Talks. I've read a lot of your research. This is really fascinating. And you just didn't go out there and go,

hey, I think I'm going to wing it on self-awareness. You actually did a ton of research. So let's go down to the kind of the foundation of this. How do you define self-awareness and why are most of us less self-aware than we think? So you're exactly right. I had heard, this was maybe about seven or eight years ago now, and I kept hearing this term self-awareness and people were throwing it around in Forbes articles, or they were talking about their boss and their boss's lack of self-awareness. And it really had become a management buzzword. And at the time, I had been coaching senior executives, CEOs, C-suite teams for 10 plus years. And I really wanted to know if my anecdotal evidence was actually scientifically true.

And what I mean by that was the leaders who were willing to look at themselves in the mirror, to question the assumptions they were making about themselves, to get sometimes very humbling feedback from the people they live and work with, they were always more successful than the people who, if I say this somewhat jokingly but also true, lived a life of blissful ignorance. So, I assembled a research team from all over the country, and we basically wanted to answer four questions. The first was, what is self-awareness really? Number two, where does it come from? Three, why do we need it? And four, which was the most important for us, was to, you know, how do we get more of it? And we spent years on this program. We're actually still working on it.

It took us almost a year to just empirically define what is this term that we're all throwing around called self-awareness. So that was actually, I mean, it was sort of naive that I thought, well, you know, we'll read a thousand journal articles and we'll figure out what this is. But the good news was we were able to arrive, I call it simplicity on the other side of complexity. So self-awareness is the will and skill to see ourselves clearly. And it's made up of two different types of self-knowledge that are independent, but also both very important. So the first is something we named internal self-awareness. And essentially what that is, is it's kind of what we all think

about when we hear that term, right? It's knowing who we are, what we stand for, what we want to achieve and experience in life. But at the same time, there's this pesky thing called external self-awareness. And what that really means is understanding how other people see us. And in our research, what we discovered, and again, this is thousands of people all around the world that we got to study and learn from, is that it's not enough to just have one of those things. It's not enough to know what we stand for if, for example, we don't know how we're coming across and all of our employees or families or friends think that we're a jerk and vice versa. It's also

not enough to know kind of how we're coming across if we don't understand and appreciate how we can live a life of meaning and purpose and enjoyment. So it's a lot in there, but I think if you really boil it down, that's what self-awareness is really about and what the journey is about. That's powerful. And you talk in a lot of your speeches, your book, everything like that about this like 85 to 90% versus like 10 to 15%. Can you unpack those numbers for us? Because I think people will be surprised how actually self-unaware most of society is. Right. And I'll come back to that on my own self-awareness discoveries as we were doing this process. But here's the bottom line. In our research, we have discovered that about 95% of people all around the world, all different age groups, demographics, industries, believe that they are self-aware. So the joke I always make about this is, if 95% of us think we're self-aware,

only 10 to 15% of us are. That means that on a good day, 80% of us are lying to ourselves about whether we're lying to ourselves. So it's pretty scary. It's a pretty arresting data point. And another thing just to mention is when I started this process, I was like, wow, I'm an organizational psychologist. I help other people be self-aware. Who better than me to help other people discover this important skill? And one of the things that became abundantly uncomfortably clear to me very early on was I was in that 80%. And so we really are in this journey together, all of us. Do you think that's a conscious effort to break out of that 80% for every, I mean, even for those that fall into that self-aware group, don't they have to put forth a conscious effort

to stay self-aware? Otherwise we kind of fade into society with all the distractions going on. That's right. So there are lots of, you know, probably more than we can cover today, but there are a lot of internal hardwired barriers to seeing ourselves clearly. And we live in a society that's almost tempting us to become more self-absorbed and less self-aware. And what we discovered, one thing we did in our research program is we studied people who didn't start off as self-aware. Right. So think of the least self-aware person you've ever met. Imagine that that person really understood

all of a sudden who they were, how they came across. And what we discovered was every single one of them at some point, whether it was through a shattering or surprising experience, whether it was because they set a goal for themselves, they decided that it was better to be braver but wiser. And what that meant is essentially to say, no matter how self-aware I think I am, there's always going to be more that I can and should discover.

And so it's not a self-loathing. I think sometimes people misunderstand that and they think, well, that Tasha is telling me that I should just tell myself that I'm terrible and I'll never get self-aware. And it's actually very much the opposite. When we make that commitment to see ourselves clearly, number one, there's a lot of positive surprises that I think are very gratifying. But number two, I believe that knowing is always better than not knowing. Because when we know, we have a choice and we're empowered to make it versus just sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.

I mean, it's so powerful. When you look at self-awareness foundationally, everything else kind of emits from that in how we view life, how we view ourselves. You could walk up to somebody and go, are you a good driver? And they go, oh yeah, I'm an awesome driver. And they're a terrible driver or something like that. Or somebody's being wheeled down the hall in a hospital. They just had a heart attack and they go, well, I'm healthy. I don't know what's going on. And you're like, well, really you're not. I mean, there are all these different aspects of people being aware of where they stand in this universe of how they treat themselves, how they treat others, their emotional response, emotional intelligence, all these different

aspects. And it's interesting when you take a look at your research, foundationally, it creates growth in everything when you take a look at that for what it's truly worth. And that's why I'm so enamored with what you've been doing here. I love the part more than anything because this is a relationship-based world. And I think it's been magnified through COVID and things like that where people are so much more ultra-sensitive to us. But can you talk about how this affects our influence and relationships and how that leads to our sales outcomes, things like that? Yeah. I think all those questions are really important. So at this point in our process, again, seven plus years later, I'm even more confident that self-awareness is something I

call the meta skill of the 21st century. So I'm just going to give you a couple of outcomes. I'm going to rattle them off, but know that there are literally 10 times more. But for the purposes of this audience, here's a couple that might be relevant. So people who are self-aware, who grow and develop and sustain their self-awareness, are better performers at work. They're more promotable. They're better communicators. They're more promotable. They're better communicators. They're more influential.

They are less likely to lie, cheat, steal, behave unethically. They are more effective and respected leaders. They're better salespeople. There's even evidence, and I think it's pretty compelling, starting to emerge across multiple studies, that companies who are not just led by self-aware C-suite teams, but who have large numbers of self-aware employees are more profitable. So when people tell me, oh, this self-awareness stuff that you study, I've been meaning to get around to developing my self-awareness. It is truly a business imperative. And it's not just the work-related outcomes that we will see. If anybody has been, for example, trapped in the house with your family or a spouse or children,

maybe teenage children in particular, there's a lot there too. So people who are self-aware tend to have more rewarding and sustainable romantic relationships. They have deeper and more meaningful friendships. And I saved the best for last. Ready? People who are self-aware, who are parents, tend to raise more mature, less narcissistic children. Whoa, that's a big one. I wish I had that line when I was a police officer. It's crazy. There's almost nothing that it doesn't impact, which is why sometimes it can be difficult for people to fully appreciate it, right? Because it's like, you know, it seems too good to be true, but empirically these benefits

just come up time and time and time again. Totally. So is there a process our listeners can leverage to gather kind of enlightening, actionable feedback that improves their interactions with relationships, customers, things like that? Absolutely. This is one thing that I specialize in. I think the research is fun and exciting, but if there aren't very tangible, practical ways that we can apply these learnings, it doesn't really get us anywhere. So that's what I focus on with my executive coaching clients and sometimes my friends and family if needed, and also myself. So let me just give you two. One is an internally focused tool, and then the other is a very sort of quick and easy way to get some good feedback from someone

else. So the first tool is called the daily check-in. And when we studied these, we called them self-awareness unicorns who didn't start out self-aware, but who really were able to dramatically improve that clarity that they saw themselves with. habitual practice where every evening, whether it was brushing their teeth or on their way home from work or when they were getting ready for bed, they basically asked themselves three essential questions. And they didn't spend an hour journaling about it. They didn't spend 30 minutes talking to their significant other. They just kind of went through them in their head and answered them very succinctly. So the first question is, what went well today? The second question is, what didn't go so well today? And the third question is, what can I do to be smarter tomorrow? And what I love about that practice is it avoids a lot of the pitfalls that we have

discovered scientifically that sometimes, even with the best of intentions, we can overthink things, particularly when it comes to introspection and self-reflection. So it's just a great tool. And my opinion is if you can do it three to five times a week, that's a pretty big win and more than most people are doing. So that's the first tool. The second tool is if you're feeling like maybe, let's say you're a leader in an organization and you're getting a bunch of people to try to charge forward with you and you turn around and there's nobody there. That's called feedback. I had a CEO say that to me once. So there's ways, particularly for powerful people, to be able to get better, more candid feedback.

What we've discovered is it's actually less about how you ask for feedback. That's the way so many of our management development training programs focus. But what we encourage people to focus on is actually, who do you ask for feedback from? So people in our study who got great feedback really had two criteria that they looked for in folks to regularly tell them the truth, especially when it was hard to hear. So the first thing they looked for were people who were on their side. And call me an optimist, but I believe that's most people in our work and our life. But to really say, even if I'm not best friends with this person, do I believe they want me to

succeed? So that's the first criteria. The second is, at the same time, do I also believe or have I seen them be willing to say something really difficult when it needed to be heard. So that could have been, maybe they gave me feedback in the past that was helpful. Maybe I see them in meetings and they're always the person who's playing devil's advocate or, you know, again, saying that thing that no one else is willing to say. And so if you put those two things together, you get what we have named a loving critic. And if you're like a lot of people, you know, anyone who's listening to this, you might have maybe two or three people who fit

both of those criteria. And that's okay. What we discovered from our study participants, our self-awareness unicorns, was it's really not about quantity. If you can get two or three of these loving critics who are kind of poised to give you that regular feedback, that's a way to just get a completely game-changing improvement in the level of honesty that you're getting. So those are the two I'd offer that are hopefully pretty simple and pretty powerful. Fantastic. I mean, just some great tools for developing ourselves, our leadership, just taking a step into this. But ultimately, I'd love for people to go out and check out your book, Insight. Can you tell us where to find your book and where can we find you on social media to learn more about your research and findings?

Sure. So Penguin Random House would want me to tell you that my book, Insight, is available wherever books are sold. It's pretty easy to find. There's a paperback and a hardcover. I'm everywhere on social media, Tasha Urich. But the one thing I would want to offer your listeners and the folks watching this is a free tool that we put together. It was actually just for the launch of Insight a couple of years ago, but it's been so popular that we just left it up for free in a sort of bold move to make the world more self-aware. And it is a five-minute free self-awareness assessment. It's basically a smaller version of our 60-plus item 360 on self-awareness. But you take it, 14 questions, five minutes, you answer some questions about how you see yourself. You enter the email address of someone who knows

you well. They fill out those questions on your behalf. And you get this nice little report that really tells you a high-level picture of your internal and external self-awareness. And then a couple of things that you can do to become more self-aware. So a couple of tools that are similar to the tools we just talked about. So if anybody wants to take that, it's totally free, no strings attached. You can find it at insight-quiz.com. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that gift with our audience. We really appreciate that.

And ladies and gentlemen, you can also hire Tasha to speak at your events. Go ahead and check her out on her website. She does a fantastic keynote. I highly recommend it. Tasha, I have one final question that I ask our speakers on our show, our guests, and I'm sure you've got some great insight into this. How do you start your day with a win? This is going to sound, you know, maybe too trivial to mention, but it actually

makes a big difference for me, especially in a quarantine COVID world. So when I wake up, I try to find one thing around the house that I can do to, you know, whether it's laundry, whether it's picking up a room just for five or 10 minutes so that I can start my day off with something that I've accomplished. And what I found is, you know, there's positive momentum in getting things done. So then when I sit down to answer the, you know, however many emails have come to me that evening, I feel ready and able to get a second one. Awesome. Thank you for being on Start With A Win. We appreciate all that you do. And thanks for that insight to quote the book there. Everybody be sure and check that out. And don't forget, Start With A Win.

That's right. And hey, thank you for listening to Start With A Win. If you'd like to ask Adam a question or tell us your Start With A Win story, give us a call and leave us a message at 888-581-4430. Don't forget to go onto iTunes and subscribe, write a review and rate the show. And for more great content, head over to startwithawin.com. You can also follow Adam on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.