Are You Better Than Average?

Organizational psychologist Dr. Tasha Eurich in her book, Insight, talks about the importance of self-awareness. Researchers have found that we think we are smarter, nicer, funnier, better leaders, etc. than we really are. They found that there is almost no relationship between self-assessed performance and objective performance ratings. In other words, we possess an “almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”

Dr. Eurich discusses three blindspots that hinder our self-awareness:

• Knowledge Blindness (opinions are formed more on beliefs we have in ourselves, not on how we perform).

•Emotion Blindness (blindspots caused from distorted perceptions about what we think we feel)

•Behavior Blindness (essentially, a distorted self-evaluation).

However, there are avenues to overcome these blindspots. Three approaches that can help individuals recognize their blindspots and improve their self-awareness are:

•Honest feedback from co-workers

•Coaching

•Recurrent self-reflection