Welcome!

It’s GiANT here.

We’re excited to have you for this week’s edition of the Relational Intelligence at Work newsletter.

The primary goal of this newsletter is to support you on your personal growth journey and to equip you with the skills and knowledge you need to excel as a leader.

As a leader, one of the most beneficial things you can do for yourself and for those around you is to follow the crucial advice we give every GiANT client…

You must know yourself to lead yourself. And you must know others to lead others.

For today’s message, we’re going to get into exactly how to do that.

Let’s dive in…

“How much time do you spend learning about yourself?”

We spend countless hours every week meeting with founders, CEOs, and business professionals who manage hundreds and even thousands of people.

They’re some of the busiest and most successful people on the planet, and yet when we ask this question, the answer is almost always, “Well, not very much if any at all.”

This is a big mistake.

If you’re not properly leading yourself, how are you going to effectively lead others?

Think of the classic advice of, “You cannot pour from an empty cup.”

This is why we developed the tool that we now use seemingly every single day at GiANT, Know Yourself to Lead Yourself.

Here it is below:

In short, it helps you answer the question, “What’s it like to be on the other side of me - and why?”

It gives you a simple, visual way to consistently understand how your tendencies and actions impact others and affect your own reality.

You can either start at the bottom by identifying your tendencies (i.e. natural, ingrained patterns of action) and working around to reality, or start with your current reality and work backward to get to the root cause of a situation.

In any case, with a clear knowledge of this pattern, you can then intentionally choose healthier, more productive actions that create the relationships, environment, and results you want.

This is “Leadership 101.”

When everyone is consciously “knowing themselves to lead themselves,” many unnecessary and unproductive issues can be eliminated.

While we certainly use this tool to break down problems, that’s not all we use it for.

As leaders, we also use it to identify the healthy and productive habits to multiply so that we can reinforce healthy leadership behaviors in ourselves and others.

So, how does one go about learning more about themselves? What should they do?

Well, you can start by carving out time each day or each week and intentionally spending it by yourself, learning about yourself.

Leave your phone at home, grab a journal and a pen, go outside if you like the outdoors, and be present with yourself.

After that, the next best advice I can give is to take the 5 Voices Assessment…

(You can take the free 5 Voices Assessment HERE).

It is the best personality and leadership development tool out there and will help you understand yourself and your own unique voice and leadership style.

Once you get to know yourself, you get to know your tendencies.

Once you get to know your tendencies, you get to know what kinds of outcomes and situations those tendencies put you in.

From there, you have the awareness to create better habits, leading to better outcomes and a better reality.

You can do the same with others. Once you get to know others, you get to know their tendencies and how to best lead them.

That's all for today's newsletter! Thanks for reading!

Keep learning and growing.