Know Thyself according to Wikipedia was inscribed on temple entrances in ancient Egypt.  The truth of that statement has been subsequently reiterated by philosophers down through the ages.

Here’s what continues to remain true today:

If you know me better than I know myself, I might be in a lot of trouble.

And if the other person chooses to take advantage of their knowledge of you (and the lack of knowledge you have about yourself), you indeed might be in trouble.

That having been said it remains indispensable that an effective leader knows himself/herself better than their followers know him/her.  However, it remains equally true that the leader knows his/her followers at least as well if not better than the followers know themselves.

And to complicate things much of that knowledge about the followers needs to happen without requiring a lot of self revelation on the part of the followers.  Many just won’t be that vulnerable to their leader.  Fortunately, we’re all quite similar in our basic core of insecurities, fears, and how we react to any given situation.  We can catalog those similarities as Bertram Forer did in his experiments of 1948 (on which magicians still build their cold reading skills).

Therein lies the overarching purpose of this blog (i.e. to give the leader greater emotional intelligence around his/her self knowledge and also to build up his/her emotional IQ about his/her followers too).  Then s/he can go on to help their followers grow in their self knowledge too.

Categories: Empathy, Learning, Listening, Presentation Style, Sociability, Teaching