How About You?
Do you have personality clashes at work or at home? How well do you know yourself and them? Are there relationships that confuse you and take you off track? What about managing the behaviors of those around you who challenge you. How do you react to them?
One take-away, I found, from self-awareness, is that it opens your eyes and mind to the behaviors you see in others. It gives insight into how to manage those differences from your perspective. I know in my life this self-knowledge has helped me navigate some complicated relationships. I don’t always get it right, but even with hindsight, I know where I went wrong and what I could have managed better.
Knowing who you are and why you say, do and react in the way that you do will help you in some very important ways. I know I can now read a situation either with a colleague, friend or client much quicker than before I had this self-knowledge.
In the key relationships, I ask the other party(s) to complete the same discovery as I have done. I’ve never had a no. This makes for very interesting conversations around the mask we wear to hide who we really are from each other, or the issues we face that concern and cause a reaction from us. More importantly, the mutual insight sets the relationships up to be far more genuine and transparent and this, above all else, leads to trust.
Back To My Story
I am who I am. Since early childhood I’ve been reserved, passionate about injustice, fearful of aggressive behavior, sceptical, spontaneous and risk averse. But knowing these inherent behaviors has given me an insight not only into who I am but more importantly into the behaviors of others that can keep me on course and also take me off course.
I know how to manage me. I know where my confidence comes from. I know that self-knowledge has opened many doors of discovery for me, not just about me, but also those I work with, family and friends.
As financial advisors, your confidence to build long lasting relationships with your team and clients and meet their individual needs will go up dramatically the more that you know who you are and thereby believe in yourself. Having this knowledge will help you choose the right clients which is what successful advisors do and also increase your referrals. Ultimately, it will help you increase revenue and improve productivity. You may even find yourself adapting your role to becoming a “behavioral coach,” which after all is what you are doing when successfully serving people.
Carol Pocklington is chief insights accelerator at DNA Behavior, with offices in Atlanta, Ga. DNA Behavior International is a human performance acceleration business which uses a proprietary “behavior tech” platform to help advisors know, engage and grow all their employees and clients to deliver customized experiences.