Council Post: Back To Leadership Basics: Don’t Forget The Psychology Of Business

The biggest mistake I see business leaders make time and time again is only looking for the next big trend, the next great marketing idea or the newest technology, with little regard to the underlying psychology of business. I believe that the most effective leaders who run thriving companies understand the basics of psychology and how it affects their companies. Yet, these skills are often not taught in business school.

Business is fundamentally about humans interacting with one another, and anywhere you have human interaction, psychology can play a massive role. There are a number of ways psychology appears in business, the most obvious being when influencing and understanding other people and their behaviors; the least obvious, and probably much more important, use is when understanding yourself.

From my perspective as the co-founder of a commercial real estate firm, self-awareness is one of the cornerstones of success in any field, industry or life endeavor (in addition to emotional intelligence, communication skills and real productivity strategies).

I’ve written before on the importance of self-awareness. This is because leaders play a big role in whether an organization grows. A quote famously attributed to Peter Drucker, one of the most influential thinkers on management, sums it up well: “The bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle.” From my perspective, one of the biggest drivers of a leader’s ability to grow and scale lies in their ability to recognize whether they are truly aware of what behaviors, habits, patterns and beliefs they have, as well as any assumptions they hold that might or might not be true.

It affects the entire company’s behavior. If a leader doesn’t dig into themselves, they’re missing a huge opportunity to create results. You can massively self-sabotage if you don’t have a clear understanding of your own psychological picture and your emotions, strengths and weaknesses. It’s not an easy journey. It takes commitment and a lot of work, but the results are powerful.

Taking Steps Toward Self-Awareness

So you want to be more self-aware, but you don’t know where to begin? Below are three steps I recommend to help you start the journey toward growing your emotional intelligence and becoming self-aware:

1. Meditate. Meditation is a helpful way to improve your self-awareness and ability to manage your own emotions. I’ve meditated every day for more than five years, and I’ve tried all kinds of different meditative practices. I recommend meditating for 10-20 minutes per day. To get started, do something simple, such as using a guided meditation app or recording. I typically like to meditate either first thing in the morning or at the end of the day. I recommend finding a simple way to get started and make a commitment to meditate for a week or two to see what it’s like. Don’t get discouraged at first if you don’t master the practice on day one.

2. Journal. You can start small here. Set aside even just five to 15 minutes a day to journal about your emotional state. Write down what you are feeling and thinking to really help you to crystalize your thoughts. I’ve found that writing down how I’m feeling also helps to get it out of my system.

3. Implement a contemplative routine. A contemplative routine is just carving out specific time to step back, look at the big picture, consider your goals and priorities, and evaluate whether the way you’re spending your time is aligned with them. If not, what can you do to remove the things that are not aligned with what you want to be doing? How can you spend more time on the things that actually matter?

It can be easy to get swept up in trendy advice or new-age ideas for being a better leader and growing your business. But I encourage all leaders to stick to these time-tested and proven skills that truly contribute to growth and happiness.

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