You know what you’re good at, and what you’re not good at.
I know what I’m good at, and what I’m not good at.
But you know what’s not obvious to either of us?
What it’s like to be on the other side of us.
That is…what it’s like to be on the receiving end of our personality and communication style.
We’re great at building skills, but most of us are oblivious to what those around us experience when we’re in the room and in the conversation.
And that reality is the root of most relationship and communication issues. When we only understand our own perspective, tension and misalignment are the natural outcomes.
Leading ourselves is the starting place of leading others.
There’s a reason assessments like Myers-Briggs, CliftonStrengths, and Enneagram are so popular.
They provide a shared language for something as intangible and undefinable as our own personality. They help us answer some of the most important questions we can ask about ourselves. Questions like…
How do others experience me?
Is that in alignment with how I think they experience me?
I’ve taken all of the assessments above (and then some), and participated in in-depth workshops on several.
In my opinion, they’re all useful on some level if you’re open-minded to the results, and my advice is always the same when it comes to said results…
Keep what’s useful and discard what isn’t.
Our intuition knows which parts are spot on, even the harder parts to absorb. And our intuition also knows which parts aren’t us.
My favorite of the assessments is the 5 Voices. It’s basically a distillation of Myers-Briggs into 5 core voices, of which we all carry or have the ability to tap into.
What makes 5 Voices stand out from the rest is the insights into how differing voices interact with each other - where they’ll align, where they’ll be at odds, and how to best communicate with each voice.
If you want to take the assessment (it’s free) use the button below. It only takes 10-15 minutes, and you’ll want to be in a good head space to get the most accurate results.
You’ll get a basic report after taking the assessment, which is useful.
But if you want the full report, which is incredibly in-depth covering things like our triggers and what a healthy / unhealthy version of us looks like, shoot me an email (adam@adamgriff.in) and I’ll get you taken care of.
Want to become a leader worth following?
Let’s chat.
✌️ and ❤️,
Adam Griffin
E M P A T H Y
I was raised without understanding empathy correctly. You did a really good job describing what it really is.
It’s being able to express your, and receive others’ realities.
For me what really helped understand empathy was by recording myself (made some YouTube videos) and watching myself back during editing.
That gave me the objective experience of me and it was very useful to remap my perception of me to the reality of others experience objective experience of me.
There were a lot (less now) of assumptions about how I thought people received me, and watching a recording of me tore those down. Tore down the subjectivity of my self-perception.
I think we get anxious at the idea of watch out ourselves on video, or *gasp* listening to our own voices played back 🤣 exactly because we know we’ll have to face our true selves. And yeah, it sucks at first. But then you realize you’re just being childish and there’s such great value in it.
Being anxious avoidant made me avoidant of my self-perception and that greatly limited my ability to interact with others; I never realized that until I grew out of it.
Everything you said is true. Getting a better grasp on my reality has let me better share my, and receive other’s realities.
That let me understand we each have a separate, but valid reality. Socializing is sharing realities.
A limited, or undeveloped, empathy unintentionally leads us to narcissism - overdeveloped ego.
Developed empathy empowers us to find, acknowledge, and enforce our boundaries and having our own boundaries helps us to empathize with (respect) others’ boundaries.
It was never obvious to me that I lacked good boundaries or even knew what they looked like. Much less how to defend and confront them. And even less how others had their boundaries.
Boundaries define the limits of how we let our own realities interact with others. That’s very important for socializing. But you can get by faking it (masking) for a lifetime and never know the power of grasping empathy.
Would be interested to know what lead you to realize/learn this
Great post