On the Self-Awareness Superhighway, September '24
Reflections Newsletter: Looking Back to Go Forward
👋🏼 Welcome
Hello KSKOers and welcome to new subscribers!
It’s the last day of September! Summer disappeared in a blink and the children have been back in school in England and Wales for a whole month already. The Autumn equinox was a week ago and tomorrow starts the last half of the UK 2024-25 financial year. Looking back really does help you reflect and appreciate the distance you’ve travelled, the experiences you’ve had and the things you’ve achieved. Join me in reflecting on September and looking forward to October.
Here’s a quick look at what’s in this month’s Reflections Newsletter…
📒 Book News: THE SELF-AWARENESS SUPERHIGHWAY
🎙️ Podcast News: ‘The Knowing Self Knowing Others Podcast’
💡 5 Top Tips to Build your Self-Awareness
📖 September Blogs
👥 Events in September
🔭 Forward View to October ‘24
🔎 Some other articles you might like to read
📒 Book News: THE SELF-AWARENESS SUPERHIGHWAY
In September, I did an ‘In Conversation With…’ event at the Chicken and Frog Bookshop in Brentwood, Essex, UK. I absolutely loved it! It was great talking about my book and answering audience questions. I’m now looking forward to organising some more book chat events to meet people and share my knowledge and findings about self-aware leadership and its impact on you and your impact on others.
🎙️ Podcast news: ‘The Knowing Self Knowing Others Podcast’
From September, my podcast moved from weekly to fortnightly. I was joined by Kate Jones talking about deeply human workplaces and Fabrice Desmarescaux talking about the benefit of integrating eastern wellbeing techniques with western leadership and management.
Read the top takeaways from my conversation with Kate and Fabrice and take a listen to the episodes……
💡 5 Top Tips to Build your Self-Awareness
Experience, particularly experiential learning, is the ninth and last direction on my Self-Aware Leadership Compass. So, let’s consider self-awareness through the lens of experience. Here are 5 top tips on how to develop your self-awareness practice with experience in mind:
1. Reflect on Your Experiences: Engage in regular self-reflection to draw insights from your personal and professional experiences. Take the time to analyse what you’ve learned from successes and setbacks, and identify areas for improvement. Use reflection to adapt and refine your approach to challenges.
2. Seek Out Learning Opportunities: Actively pursue opportunities for growth, whether through direct experiences like shadowing, volunteering, or taking on new roles, or through indirect experiences like mentoring, masterclasses, or feedback from others. Learning through diverse experiences helps build both hard and relational self-awareness skills.
3. Share Your Stories and Insights: Foster a culture of learning by sharing your experiences with others. Storytelling is a powerful way to help others learn from your journey. Create opportunities for storytelling within your organisation, encouraging knowledge transfer and collaboration.
4. Embrace Feedback and Adaptation: Regularly seek feedback from colleagues, mentors, and team members to gain an external perspective on your behaviours and actions. Use this feedback to continuously evolve and adjust your leadership style, staying open to constructive criticism.
5. Cultivate Humility and Resilience: Approach your leadership journey with humility, understanding that growth comes from learning, making mistakes, and adapting. Build resilience by navigating through adversity with the mindset that each challenge helps you become a better version of yourself.
These tips will help you develop deeper self-awareness and grow your self-aware leadership skills.
📖 September Blogs
My podcast now goes live fortnightly. In the in-between weeks, I’m doing more writing and here are the blog posts I’ve written in September…
👥 Learning and Sharing: Events in September
I held my first webinar on self-aware leadership to celebrate the International Week of Happiness at Work. The topic specifically linked self-aware leadership with happiness at work. 100% of attendees gave it 5/5 when asked the question ‘How would you rate the workshop/webinar in terms of interest and enjoyment?‘!
I had an absolutely brilliant conversation with Jon Rennie on the hugely popular Deep Leadership Podcast. We talked about all things self-aware leadership and got into the detail about my book, The Self-Awareness Superhighway. Watch our episode here...
I also joined Robert Digings on his podcast, Highly Relational and had an excellent conversation! You’ll probably remember I updated you in my August newsletter that I’d popped in to London to record the episode with Robert in the fully set-up and kitted-out podcasting studio - which was a great experience!
Take a listen here….
🔭 Forward view to October ‘24
Early in October, I’ll be heading to Prague to attend a face to face Chief Happiness Officer training programme. I’ve been wanting to do this training since I discovered it early on during COVID, about 4 years ago! I really wanted to do it face to face and as I’ve never been to Prague, I’m taking the opportunity to knock two things off my bucket list at the same time. If you want to become a Chief Happiness Officer, there are still places available. Find out more at Woohoo Unlimited.
On the 1st October, I’ll be sending you my article ‘The Self-Aware Leadership Compass Quiz - 9 Directions for Excellence’. Head over to my website to take the Quiz and let me know what you discover!
Here’s an early notice of my November webinar. Join me on 21st November for The Self-Awareness Superhighway: Charting Your Leadership Journey webinar from 4pm - 5pm London time (GMT). Join me to discover, explore and grow! Because you’re a newsletter subscriber, you can access the event for free via this Zoom Link. For everyone else, booking can be made via eventbrite and payment is by donation.
Looking forward to having you on my learning journey!
🔎 Some other articles you might like to read
Nia is an expert leader who talks the talk and walks the walk. She is an academically awarded thought leader in self-aware leadership and practices self-aware leadership every single day in her role as a Director in a Children’s Charity.
Find out more about Self-Aware Leadership by getting your very own copy of The Self-Awareness Superhighway now!
