“Insight”: A People Formula Book Study
The People Formula Book Study # Two
“Insight: Why We’re Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life”
By: Tasha Eurich
Background:
Tasha Eurich and her amazing book, “Insight” came to my attention while listening to my friend Jordan Harbinger’s Podcast, “The Jordan Harbinger Show.” During the show Dr. Eurich discussed how most of us believe that we are self-aware. Her research clearly threw that assumption on its head. The research behind what many regard as the greatest skill a human can possess for success and happiness in life, self-awareness, was both riveting and compelling. Diving into the book forces you to confront a great challenge, “Making the brave decision to confront the truth about yourself?” Dr. Eurich does a stunning job of sharing both entertaining anecdotes as well as her research to better understand yourself and others. “Insight” forces you to take a major “lurch” forward in your awareness and she shares how it is sometimes perilous to be a speaker of truth. For the brave who decide to take the plunge, fear not, Dr, Eurich includes many tools and resources for every aspect of self-discovery throughout. Stand by for a wild ride of opening your eyes.
About the Author:
Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times bestselling author. She’s built a reputation as a fresh, modern voice in the business world by pairing her scientific grounding in human behavior with a practical approach to improvement. Over her 15-plus-year career, she’s helped thousands of professionals—from Fortune 500 executives to early stage entrepreneurs—improve their self-awareness and success.
With a PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and BAs in Theater and Psychology, Eurich has contributed to The Guardian, Entrepreneur, The Huffington Post, TED.com and CNBC.com, and has been featured in outlets like Business Insider, Fortune, Forbes, The New York Times, Fast Company, and New York Magazine. She has been named a “Top 100 Thought Leader” by Trust Across America, a “Leader to Watch” by the American Management Association, and one of Denver Business Journal's "40 Under 40.” Her TEDxMileHigh talk has been viewed more than one million times.
Eurich’s first book, Bankable Leadership, debuted on the New York Times best-seller list. Her latest book, INSIGHT, delves into the connection between our self-awareness—what she calls the meta-skill of the twenty-first century—and performance and success, both in and out of the workplace. Hailed as a “bold, exhilarating take on self-improvement” by Success Magazine and a “fascinating read” by The Guardian, INSIGHT was recently named an Editor’s Choice by 800-CEO-READ.
She lives in her hometown of Denver with her husband and their rambunctious dogs, and in her spare time, enjoys cycling, traveling, historical biographies, and is an unapologetic theater nerd.
Chapter One: The meta skill of the 21st century
The book starts out by defining the challenge Dr. Eurich sets for us all, “The ability to see ourselves clearly.” The ability to understand ourselves is at the core of human survival and advancement. According to her research, people who know themselves and how people see them are happier, make better decisions, have better personal and professional relationships, raise more mature children who are smarter superior students who are more creative, confident and better communicators and more effective leaders. Dr. Eurich shares the qualities most critical for success in today’s world that are based self-awareness:
- Emotional intelligence
- Empathy
- Influence
- Persuasion
- Communication
- Collaboration
What it means to be self-aware is the combining of our internal (seeing ourselves clearly and our impact on others) and external (understanding how other people see you.) Dr. Eurich uses poignant anecdotes about individuals she researched that she termed, “self-awareness unicorns.” These unicorns are people who made transformational improvements in their self-awareness.
Chapter Two: The anatomy of self-awareness
Dr. Eurich defines self-awareness as the will and skill to understand yourself and how others see you. The chapter focuses on the seven pillars of insight that she describes:
- Values: The principles that guide us.
- Passions: What we love to do.
- Aspirations: What we want to experience and achieve.
- Fit: The environment we require to be happy and engaged.
- Patters: Our consistent ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
- Reactions: The thoughts, feelings and behaviors that reveal our capabilities.
- Impact: The effect we have on others.
Dr. Eurich provides strategies to assist in our self-awareness. For instance, instead of asking yourself what you want to achieve, she suggests asking yourself what you want out of life. Also, examining your energy to determine your “Fit.” In other words, is your environment taking energy from you or giving it?
Once we recognize our own patterns it enables us to take better control of ourselves by simply, “Pausing, Thinking, Adjusting.” This begins the process of perspective taking which she defines as the ability to imagine what others are thinking and feeling. Ultimately, the goal is to become non-judgmentally objective.
Chinese proverb, “When the winds of change rage, some build shelters and others build windmills.”
Chapter Three: Blindspots – Inner self-awareness roadblocks
The chapter highlights the challenges we have along the way to self-awareness, our blindspots. When regarding ourselves Dr. Eurich encourages us to look at ourselves honestly but gently. She further explains that human beings are not born with self-awareness and possess an unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.
The three blindspots described by Dr. Eurich are:
- Knowledge blindness
- Emotion blindness
- Behavior blindness
The most effective way to combat your own blindspots is to keep learning and utilize the adage, “The more I think I know, the more I have to learn.” Dr. Eurich offers these strategies to overcome your blindspots:
- Identify your assumptions
- Keep learning
- Seek feedback
Chapter Four: The cult of self: External self-awareness roadblocks
This cult of self hinders us and Dr. Eurich provides both the awareness and the tools to break free. She highlights that past generations modeled modesty and humility as the hallmarks of a life well lived and that life was founded in hard work, grit and resilience. Dr. Eurich gives enlightening as well as entertaining examples of what she terms, “selfie syndrome.” Luckily, she also provides three strategies to manage yourself a bit better and begin to break down your own roadblocks:
- Become an “informer” rather than an “me-former”
- Cultivate humility
- Have self-acceptance and compassion
The virtue of humility is often the exception rather than the rule in our “cult of self” society. Focusing on these strategies will begin to break its pervasiveness.
Chapter Five: Thinking isn’t knowing: The four follies of introspection
The chapter is dedicated to introspection and the biggest misconceptions surrounding it.
Dr. Eurich discusses the four follies of introspection:
1. We can’t excavate our unconscious, no matter how hard we try.
2. Trying to find the “why” behind our behavior can mislead and depress us.
3. Journaling isn’t universally effective – we must use the right approach.
4. Though rumination (endless self-scrutiny) can feel helpful, it prevents self-insight.
Here are the “gold nugget” takeaways to assist in countering the follies:
- Ask “what” questions instead of “why.” (This is my BIGGEST takeaway of the book )
- Explore the negative in ourselves but don’t overthink the positive.
- Explore other people’s perspective.
- Rumination is the greatest challenge to our happiness. Here are some strategies to counter rumination.
o Ask yourself – Does anyone care as much as I do?
o Adopt a “learn well” vs. “do well” mentality.
o Walk away and hitting pause for yourself.
o Internal thought stoppage.
o Reality checks
Chapter Six: Internal self-awareness tools that really work
Mindfulness is about noticing what we are thinking and feeling without judgement. Many of us have an addiction to distraction and distraction decreases our happiness.
According to her research, Dr. Eurich offers that people who are mindful are:
- Happier
- Healthier
- More creative
- More authentic
- More in control of their behavior
- More satisfied in their marriages
- More relaxed
- Less aggressive
- Less burnt out
- Thinner
Mindfulness allows us to make smarter decisions in real-time and it begins with quieting the ego. Dr. Eurich offers non-meditative alternatives to achieve mindfulness such as hiking, running, biking and walking. Here are just a few of the strategies she offers to assist in your pursuit of mindfulness:
- Reframing
- Comparing and contrasting past from present
- Reflect on discoveries
- Short focused check ins
- Take a step back and look at the bigger picture
- Shift from “problems” to “growth goals”
Chapter Seven: The truth we rarely hear
“The words of a drunk person are the thoughts of a sober one.” If internal self-awareness gains insight by looking inward and external self-awareness turns our gaze outward to understand how we are seen, then no matter how hard we try we simply cannot do this on our own.
Dr. Eurich provides ample strategies to accomplish the challenge of obtaining the truth we rarely hear. She goes on to describe this truth as not just one opinion or observation but multiples. Dr. Eurich likens it to a single white light traveling through a prism and creating all the colors of the rainbow. Once you have the feedback, learning how to evaluate it and implement change is key.
The greatest challenge of external self-awareness is the reluctance of others to give it and our reluctance to ask it. Push through the fear. 80% of top performing leaders solicit feedback. Receiving the right feedback requires you to:
- Select the right people
- Designing the right questions
- Creating the right process
The best people to select are “your loving critics.” Avoid asking both your unloving critics and uncritical lovers. All these tools are only the first steps to insight. Next, you must put the feedback to work.
Chapter Eight: Receiving, reflecting and responding to difficult or surprising feedback
One of the most challenging aspects of the self-awareness journey is receiving and growing from the feedback provided. Dr. Eurich recommends the 3R model, a step-by-step process to help you make sense of, and act smartly, on feedback:
- Receive: During the feedback conversation, focus on asking questions for understanding.
- Reflect: Make sense of the feedback. If not, seek data from other individuals.
- Respond: Decide whether you will act on the feedback, and if so, what will you do about it.
Dr. Eurich offers that though we should humbly admit our weaknesses first to ourselves, and then to others, sometimes we can’t change them, no matter how hard we try. Though change is often an option, it’s not the only option. Instead, work on viewing your limitations with compassion, compensating for it whenever possible, and above all, being humble and open about it with others.
Chapter Nine: How self-aware leaders build teams and organizations
This chapter models what self-aware teams and organizations look like. They consistently build situational awareness with open and transparent communication.
Dr. Eurich offers the three building blocks for self-aware teams:
- The leader models the way
- They create psychological safety
- They have a process to keep it going
These high performing teams utilize a leader feedback process that asks these questions:
- What do we know about them?
- What do we want to know?
- What should they know about us?
- What concerns do we have about them?
- What expectations do we have of them?
- What do we want them to start and stop doing?
- What feedback do we have about our strategy, vision and plan?
Phycological safe teams outperform all and because they have higher self-awareness, they have higher morale and brand. In order to achieve this high level, they must have:
- Trust
- See each other as real
- Transparency and vulnerability
Continually ask yourself, “what are you pretending not to know?”
Chapter Ten: Surviving and thriving in a delusional world
The catch 22 of self-awareness: The people who need it the most are usually the least likely to know they need it. Always remember that other people’s self-awareness journeys are not ours to make.
Dr. Eurich describes the three types of delusional people:
- The lost cause
- They are aware but don’t care
- The nudgeable
Dr. Eurich offers these eight tools to deal with delusional people:
- Compassion without judgement
- Float feet first: Go with the flow and remove yourself
- Re-framing: Ask what they can teach you
- Laugh track: Try to see the humor in the sometimes-preposterous behaviors
- State your needs: Re-negotiate the boundaries of your relationship
- Weigh your options of intervening
- Confront with compassion
- Walk away
The true key to our handling of these individuals is accepting what we cannot change and changing what we can. Remember, someone else’s self-awareness is not your problem to fix, it’s theirs. It is best to not battle the current and instead flow into calmer waters. An effective strategy is to give yourself a positive bias regarding them by asking yourself, “What can they teach us?”
The lifelong pursuit of self-awareness can be long, difficult and messy but the fact that we are never truly self-aware makes the journey exciting. Ultimately, self-awareness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a life well lived.
I learn a great deal from each book I read and there is always way too much great information to absorb and implement in one read. I highlight a few key points, lessons, tools or techniques from each first reading. here are my two from “Insight”:
Ask “what” questions and not “why” questions. I have already started doing this with fantastic results.
Be an “informer” not a “me—former.” This was another great critical reminder that I try to use every day and chance I get.
Purchase the book here:
For Tasha’s resources check out her website: https://www.tashaeurich.com/
For People Formula resources including:
