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1
The Meta-Skill of the Twenty-First Century
The men burst in with urgent news to report. A party of 35 enemy scouts had been spotted roughly seven miles away, camped out in a rocky ravine. What would the young lieutenant colonel decide to do?
The pressure was on, and he knew it. After all, this was a time of war, and he alone was responsible for the 159 recruits he’d led into the field. Despite the fact that the colonel was a 22-year-old rookie with zero combat experience, he’d somehow found himself second in command of an entire army. Not only did he have to act quickly and decisively, he needed to prove himself to everyone who was watching. This would be a crucial test of his military prowess, but he had no doubt he would ace it. The supremely self-assured young man was just itching to show his superiors what he was made of.
Those men in the ravine? They were clearly planning to attack, he confidently (and, as it turned out, inaccurately) concluded. So the colonel ordered a sneak assault. In the early hours of May 28, his troops descended on the unsuspecting party, who didn’t stand a chance. In less than 15 minutes, 13 enemy soldiers were dead and 21 were captured.
Brimming with pride over his victory, the colonel returned to camp and began firing off letters. The first was to his commander. But before even recounting news of the battle, the emboldened leader took the opportunity—in the form of an eight-paragraph diatribe—to grouse about his pay. His next letter was to his younger brother, to whom he nonchalantly bragged about his fearlessness in the face of enemy attack: “I can with truth assure you,” he wrote, “I heard the bullets whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.”
His self-congratulatory correspondences completed, it was time to plan his next move. Convinced that the enemy was about to launch a revenge attack, he realized he would need to find a better location for their camp. After crossing a nearby mountain range, the colonel and his men found themselves in a large, low-lying alpine meadow. The grassland was surrounded on all sides by rolling hills dotted with bushes and a dense pine forest. Surveying the area, the colonel declared it the perfect defensive location and ordered his troops to begin preparations.
A few days later, he looked on proudly as his men put the finishing touches on their circular stockade, which consisted of scores of upright seven-foot logs draped with animal skins. And because it could hold only 70 men at once, he’d ordered them to dig a three-foot trench for everyone else to crouch in. The colonel thought it was marvelous, assuring his commander that “we have with nature’s assistance made a good entrenchment and by clearing the bushes out of these meadows prepared a charming field for an encounter.” He knew they’d be outmanned, but “even with my small numbers,” he reported, “I shall not fear the attack of 500 men.”
Unfortunately, not everyone agreed with the confident young leader. One of his many questionable decisions was the placement of the fort. Because it was built on such soft ground, a light shower of rain would turn the meadow into a swamp, and a downpour would flood the trenches and drench their ammunition. What’s more, they were so close to the woods—just 60 yards away—that enemy marksmen could sneak up undetected and effortlessly fire on their fortress at close range. As for the fort itself, the colonel’s allied commander—a seasoned battle veteran—insisted that “that little thing upon the meadow” simply would not hold.
Undeterred and convinced that he knew best, the colonel dismissed these arguments out of hand, furiously proclaiming the commander and his army to be “treacherous devils” and “spies.” A minor rebellion followed, with the allied commander and his followers fleeing in fear (incidentally, this fear turned out to be extremely well founded). In the battle that was to come, the colonel wouldn’t find the bullets whistling past him to be quite as charming.
And that battle would be momentous. So momentous that the colonel’s mistakes would change the course of history. In the years since, historians have attempted to explain how the operation went so tragically wrong. Many have appropriately criticized the colonel for “advancing when he should have retreated; for fighting without awaiting sufficient reinforcements; for picking an indefensible spot; for the slapdash construction of the fort; for alienating his . . . allies; and for shocking hubris in thinking that he could defeat the imposing [enemy] force.”
But the colonel’s downfall can’t be attributed simply to tactical errors, flawed maneuvers, or the lost trust of his men. Examining them alone overlooks their root cause: at the most basic level, the colonel lacked the single most important, and yet least examined, determinant of success or failure—whether on the battlefield, in the workplace, or anywhere else. That quality is self-awareness.
While a precise definition is more complex than it first seems, self-awareness is, at its core, the ability to see ourselves clearly—to understand who we are, how others see us, and how we fit into the world around us. And since Plato instructed us to “know thyself,” philosophers and scientists alike have extolled the virtues of self-awareness. Indeed, this ability is arguably one of the most remarkable aspects of being human. In his book The Telltale Brain, neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran poetically explains:
Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars. Apes live, contend, breed and die in forests—end of story. Humans write, investigate, and quest. We splice genes, split atoms, launch rockets. We peer upward . . . and delve deeply into the digits of pi. Perhaps most remarkably of all, we gaze inward, piecing together the puzzle of our own unique and marvelous brain . . . This, truly, is the greatest mystery of all.”
Some have even argued that the ability to understand ourselves is at the core of human survival and advancement. For millions of years, the ancestors of Homo sapiens evolved almost painfully slowly. But, as Ramachandran explains, about 150,000 years ago, there was a rather explosive development in the human brain—where, among other things, we gained the ability to examine our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as to see things from others’ points of view (as we will learn, both of these processes are absolutely critical for self-awareness). Not only did this create the foundation for higher forms of human expression—like art, spiritual practices, and language—it came with a survival advantage for our ancestors, who had to work together to stay alive. Being able to evaluate their behaviors and decisions and read their impact on other members of the tribe helped them, to use a slightly more modern reference, not to get voted off the island.
Flash forward to the twenty-first century. Though we may not face the same day-to-day threats to our existence as our ancestors did, self-awareness is no less necessary to our survival and success—at work, in our relationships, and in life. There is strong scientific evidence that people who know themselves and how others see them are happier. They make smarter decisions. They have better personal and professional relationships. They raise more mature children. They’re smarter, superior students who choose better careers. They’re more creative, more confident, and better communicators. They’re less aggressive and less likely to lie, cheat, and steal. They’re better performers at work who get more promotions. They’re more effective leaders with more enthusiastic employees. They even lead more profitable companies.
On the flip side, a lack of self-awareness can be risky at best and disastrous at worst. In business, regardless of what we do or what stage we’re at in our careers, our success depends on understanding who we are and how we come across to our bosses, clients, customers, employees, and peers. This becomes even more important the higher you ascend on the corporate ladder: senior executives who lack self-awareness are 600 percent more likely to derail (which can cost companies a staggering $50 million per executive). And more generally, un-self-aware professionals don’t just feel less fulfilled in their careers—when they get stuck, they tend to have trouble figuring out what their next phase should even be.
The list goes on and on. After so many years of researching the subject, I would go so far as to say that self-awareness is the meta-skill of the twenty-first century. As you’ll read in the pages ahead, the qualities most critical for business and leadership success today—things like emotional intelligence, empathy, influence, persuasion, communication, and collaboration—all stem from self-awareness. To put it another way, if we’re not self-aware, it’s almost impossible to master the skills that make us stronger team players, superior leaders, and better relationship builders—at work and beyond.
Now, you’d certainly be hard pressed to find many people who don’t instinctively know that self-awareness is important. After all, it’s a term we tend to toss around freely—about our boss, our colleagues, our in-laws, our politicians—although have you noticed that when we do, it’s usually in the negative, as in “so-and-so just isn’t self-aware?” But in today’s world, despite the critical role it plays in our success and happiness, self-awareness is a remarkably rare quality.
For most people, it’s easier to choose self-delusion—the antithesis of self-awareness—over the cold, hard truth. This is particularly true when our delusion masquerades, as it often does, as insight. The colonel is one example. Let’s look at a more modern manifestation. I recently picked up Travis Bradberry’s best-selling book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and I was astonished to learn that over the last decade, our collective emotional intelligence (EQ) has improved. (EQ is defined as the ability to detect, understand, and manage emotions in ourselves and others, and countless studies have shown that people who have it are more successful, more resilient in the face of obstacles, more tolerant of stress, better at building relationships, and more.) But in my work as an organizational psychologist, Bradberry’s findings didn’t match what I had observed: at least anecdotally, I’ve seen low EQ becoming more, not less, of a problem in recent years.
It wasn’t until I took the online assessment that came with the book that I identified the stunning source of the discrepancy. While, yes, Bradberry’s research involved a staggering 500,000 people, his conclusions were based on their own self-assessments. Think about that for a minute. Picture a few of the least emotionally intelligent people you know. If you asked them to evaluate their own EQ, how much would you bet that they’d see themselves as at least above average? So an alternative, and far more likely, explanation for Bradbury’s findings is a growing gap between how we see ourselves and what we really are. In other words, what looked like an increase in EQ was more likely a decrease in self-awareness.
Our increasingly “me”-focused society makes it even easier to fall into this trap. Recent generations have grown up in a world obsessed with self-esteem, constantly being reminded of their wonderful and special qualities. It’s far more tempting to see ourselves through rose-colored glasses than to objectively examine who we are and how we’re seen. And this isn’t just a generational problem, or even just an American one—it afflicts people of all ages, genders, backgrounds, cultures, and creeds.
Right now, you might be mentally conjuring all the delusional people you know and chuckling—the co-worker who thinks he’s a brilliant presenter but puts everyone to sleep in meetings; the boss who brags about being approachable but terrifies her team; the friend who thinks she’s a “people person” but is always the most awkward guest at the party. Yet there’s something else we all need to consider. As the Bible asks, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:4). Whether it’s at work, at home, at school, or at play, we’re quick to accuse others of being unaware, but we rarely (if ever) ask ourselves whether we have the same problem. Case in point: in a survey that I conducted among potential readers of this very book, a full 95 percent reported that they were either somewhat or very self-aware!
The truth is that while most of us think we know ourselves pretty well, this confidence is often unfounded. Researchers have established that our self-assessments “are often flawed in substantive and systematic ways.” As you’ll read more about soon, studies show that we tend to be terrible judges of our own performance and abilities—from our leadership skills to our car-driving prowess to our performance at school and at work. The scariest part? The least competent people are usually the most confident in their abilities.
And in most cases, the planks in our eyes are pretty obvious to everyone but us. A tone-deaf college student who drops out of school to become a singer. A braggadocios boss who reads scores of business books but remains a terrible leader. A parent who spends very little time with his kids but thinks he’s “Dad of the Year.” A thrice-divorced woman who’s convinced that the end of each marriage was her ex’s fault. Or a colonel who thinks he’s a military genius but is really about to get in way over his head.
But being overconfident about our abilities isn’t the only way that low self-awareness can play out. Sometimes we lack clarity about our values and goals, causing us to perpetually make choices that aren’t in our best interests. Other times, we fail to grasp the impact we’re having on the people around us, alienating our colleagues, friends, and families without even knowing it.
