You Cannot Grow What You Cannot See

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There are few things easier to see than someone else’s problem. We can recognize the impatience in a spouse, the arrogance in a coworker, the lack of discipline in an employee, the controlling tendencies of a leader, or the foolish decision our adult child is about to make with remarkable clarity. Sometimes we can identify the problem before they have finished explaining it.

Seeing ourselves with that same clarity is considerably more difficult. And that creates an interesting problem for anyone who wants to grow. Growth requires change. Change requires some understanding of what needs to change. And that requires awareness.

You cannot intentionally grow what you cannot accurately see.

Intentionality answers one of the first questions of growth: Am I going to grow on purpose? Awareness answers the next one: Do I know where growth is actually needed? Without intentionality, growth is left to chance. Without awareness, intentionality can simply make us more determined in the wrong direction.

Growth Begins With Reality

Reality has an annoying habit of remaining real whether we acknowledge it or not. A leader may believe he communicates wonderfully while everyone who works for him is confused. A husband may believe he is attentive while his wife feels consistently unheard. A manager may think she welcomes disagreement while everyone in the room has learned not to disagree with her. A pastor may believe he is approachable while his staff carefully calculates whether raising a concern is worth the trouble.

In each case, there is a gap between perception and reality, and growth happens in that gap. Reality does not become less real because we refuse to name it. A weakness does not disappear because I cannot see it. A pattern does not cease to affect people because I don’t recognize it. And my sincere belief that I am doing something well does not necessarily mean I am doing it well.

More importantly, what I cannot see can still do damage. The blind spot I do not recognize can still wound my marriage. The habit I do not notice can still frustrate my team. The leadership weakness I cannot see can still drive good people away. The character issue I have successfully explained to myself can still affect my children. The fact that something is invisible to me does not make it inconsequential to everyone else.

That is why awareness matters. Awareness is the willingness and growing ability to see reality accurately—including the parts of reality that involve me.

I Know What I Meant. You Know What I Did.

One of the greatest difficulties in seeing ourselves accurately is that we possess information about ourselves that nobody else has: we know our intentions. I know I wasn’t trying to hurt you; I was trying to help. I know I wasn’t trying to control the meeting; I was trying to get us to a decision. I know I wasn’t ignoring you; I had twelve things running through my mind. I know I didn’t mean the comment the way you heard it.

All of that information is available to me. It isn’t necessarily available to you. You experienced my words, facial expression, tone, timing, decisions, actions, and behavior.

I experience my intentions. Other people experience my impact.

Intentions matter. They can tell us something important about the heart behind an action. But intentions alone cannot tell us how effectively we are loving, leading, communicating, serving, or relating to other people. If I want to grow, eventually I have to become interested in both: What did I intend? and What did you experience? The distance between those two answers can teach us an enormous amount about ourselves.

Awareness Looks in Three Directions

When we talk about awareness, it is tempting to reduce the whole subject to self-awareness. But meaningful growth requires something larger. We need awareness of reality—what is actually happening, rather than what I hoped would happen, intended to happen, or think should have happened. We need awareness of ourselves—what I am contributing to this reality, the patterns that keep appearing in my life, what I do under pressure, where I am strong or weak, what I avoid, and what effect I am having on others. And we need awareness of other people—what they are seeing, feeling, experiencing, or understanding that I am not.

That third direction becomes particularly important in leadership because position changes perspective. The CEO experiences the organization from the CEO’s chair. The employee does not. The pastor experiences the church differently from the administrative assistant. Parents experience the family differently from their children. A husband and wife can live through precisely the same conversation and come away with remarkably different experiences of what occurred.

One perspective does not automatically invalidate another. It means we are standing in different places. One of the most valuable questions a growing person can learn to ask is, “What can you see from where you are standing that I cannot see from where I am standing?” That question requires humility, but it also produces awareness.

Simon Sinek makes a related point about leadership awareness: leaders have to learn to notice what is happening in the room—not only what they themselves are saying or doing. Who is trying to speak? Who has stopped speaking? Who is being overlooked? He also reminds leaders that position magnifies impact; words that seem small to the person in authority may land much larger on the person receiving them. That is another reason awareness must extend beyond ourselves. Leadership requires learning to notice the reality other people are experiencing, not merely the reality we intended to create.

Why We Don’t See Ourselves Clearly

If awareness is so important, why are intelligent, sincere, capable people so frequently unaware of themselves? There are several reasons.

1. We see our intentions while everyone else sees our behavior. Because we know the explanation behind our actions, we naturally interpret those actions more generously. We know the circumstances. We know the pressure we were under. We know what we were trying to accomplish. Other people may know none of that. This doesn’t mean their interpretation is always correct. It means ours isn’t automatically correct either. Growth begins when we become curious about the difference.

2. We protect the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Most of us carry an internal description of who we are: I’m reasonable. I’m a good listener. I’m not controlling. I’m patient. I’m easy to work with. Then someone gives us information that doesn’t fit the story. Our first instinct may be to examine the information, but it may also be to protect the story. We explain, qualify, minimize, defend, compare, or rationalize.

We may even agree with the criticism in a way that prevents us from actually receiving it: Yes, I know I can be a little impatient, but that’s because nobody around here seems to have any sense of urgency. Technically, we admitted the weakness. Functionally, we explained it away. Sometimes the greatest obstacle to seeing ourselves clearly is how badly we need our existing picture of ourselves to remain true.

3. Personality directs our attention toward some things and away from others. Every personality naturally notices some things more readily than others. A strongly Dominant person tends to look forward: Where are we going? What is the problem? What needs to happen? Who is going to do it? When will it be finished? That orientation can produce extraordinary movement and accomplishment.

But much of self-awareness requires occasionally looking in the other direction. What just happened? How did I come across? Why did he become quiet? What effect did that decision have on her? Why does this particular problem keep appearing around me? What part of this belongs to me?

Some personalities naturally spend more time looking through the windshield. Growth occasionally requires looking in the rearview mirror. You cannot drive very well staring into the rearview mirror, but you probably shouldn’t drive without one either. The same principle applies differently across every personality. We naturally notice what our wiring predisposes us to notice—and can remain surprisingly unaware of what it does not.

Personality influences not only what we do. It influences what we notice—and therefore what we miss.

DISC Gives Us Another Mirror

This is one of the reasons the DISC Model of Human Behavior can be so valuable for personal growth. The DISC Model of Human Behavior is a practical framework for understanding predictable patterns in how people tend to approach problems, interact with and influence others, respond to pace and change, and relate to rules, details, and structure.

One of DISC’s greatest values is awareness. DISC does not tell us who we are in the deepest sense. It does not measure character, spiritual maturity, intelligence, competence, or worth. What it can do remarkably well is give us a vocabulary for recognizing behavioral tendencies that have become so natural to us that we may no longer notice them.

Before understanding personality, I may simply think, That’s just the way things are done. Afterward, I begin to realize, No. That’s the way I naturally do things.

That is an enormous awareness breakthrough because it changes the questions we ask. Why do I become impatient when a conversation takes too long? Why do I tend to make decisions before everyone else is ready? Why do I talk while I am thinking? Why do I avoid conflict even when something clearly needs to be addressed? Why do I need considerably more information before I feel comfortable making a decision? Why does sudden change energize one person and unsettle another?

DISC gives us language for patterns we may have experienced our entire lives without recognizing them as patterns. A naturally Dominant person may need help seeing the relational wake left behind by a relentless focus on results. An Inspiring person may need to recognize that enthusiasm and verbal processing can overwhelm someone who needs quiet and precision. A Supportive person may need to see that keeping the peace can become avoidance when courage requires a difficult conversation. A Cautious person may need to recognize that the pursuit of accuracy can become criticism, delay, or emotional distance.

None of those tendencies necessarily represents a character defect. They are starting points. Personality doesn’t change. Character does. That is precisely why awareness matters. DISC helps us identify the tendencies we are likely to carry into a situation before character, wisdom, experience, discipline, and the work of the Holy Spirit shape what we actually do with them.

But awareness must include our strengths as well as our weaknesses. A healthy understanding of ourselves is not an endless search for everything that is wrong with us. The Dominant person’s decisiveness, the Inspiring person’s enthusiasm, the Supportive person’s steadiness, and the Cautious person’s attention to accuracy can all be tremendous gifts. Awareness helps us recognize what we naturally bring to others and when those same strengths, left ungoverned, begin working against us. Growth is not the elimination of personality. It is increasingly mature stewardship of it.

DISC also increases our awareness of other people. What once looked like stubbornness may be a need for adequate information. What looked like indifference may be reserved processing. What looked like unnecessary delay may be a desire for stability. What looked like recklessness may simply be a much higher tolerance for risk than our own.

Awareness begins replacing judgment with understanding.

That does not mean every behavior becomes acceptable simply because personality helps explain it. Personality may explain a starting tendency; it does not excuse poor character. DISC is not a box we put people into. It is one of the mirrors we use to help people see themselves more clearly. And perhaps that is one of its greatest gifts: DISC helps us see what has always been there—but was so natural to us that we never thought to look at it.

4. We tell ourselves stories—and then forget that they are stories. Psychologists use terms such as automatic appraisal and attribution to describe part of what is happening here. Those terms sound considerably more complicated than the reality they describe. Appraisal is simply the mind rapidly deciding what an event means. Attribution is the explanation we assign to why someone did what they did. Something happens, and almost instantly our minds begin filling in the missing information.

Your boss walks past without speaking. Your spouse gets quiet. Someone fails to return your call. A coworker questions one of your decisions. Your adult child gives you a very short answer. Those are the observable events. But our minds rarely leave them alone.

He’s angry with me.

She doesn’t respect me.

They don’t trust me.

He’s trying to undermine me.

She doesn’t care.

Now we have moved from what happened to the story we are telling ourselves about what happened.

Joseph Grenny and his coauthors in Crucial Conversations describe this movement as the Path to Action. We see or hear something, we tell ourselves a story about what it means, that story helps produce an emotional response, and those feelings influence what we do next. It can happen with astonishing speed—which means we may be well into anger, defensiveness, withdrawal, resentment, or retaliation before we have ever stopped to ask whether the story that produced those feelings is actually true.

The event and the story we tell ourselves about the event are not the same thing.

The difficulty is that they can begin to feel exactly the same. Grenny points out that our minds are efficient; we do not necessarily retain every piece of original information from which we formed a conclusion. We may remember the conclusion much more readily than the evidence that produced it. Eventually, He didn’t return my call disappears and He doesn’t respect me becomes the fact stored in my head.

Brené Brown describes essentially the same human tendency with wonderfully accessible language: the story I’m telling myself. Her work emphasizes that human beings are meaning-makers. When information is missing—particularly when fear, uncertainty, hurt, or insecurity is involved—we naturally construct a story that makes the experience make sense.

The story may be correct.

It may also be completely wrong.

That little distinction can save a relationship.

Instead of walking into a conversation declaring, “You don’t respect me,” I can first recognize, The story I am telling myself is that you don’t respect me. Now I have identified my interpretation as an interpretation rather than declaring it to be reality. I can become curious. I can ask a question. I can discover information I did not have.

Simon Sinek makes a similar case for curiosity in leadership. Our brains can reach remarkably quick verdicts about another person—difficult, lazy, disengaged, stubborn. Curiosity delays the verdict long enough to ask a better question: What might actually be going on here? That does not require us to abandon discernment. It requires us to acknowledge that our first explanation is not necessarily the only possible explanation.

Grenny also identifies several especially convenient stories we tend to tell. We can tell a victim story, in which none of this is my fault; a villain story, in which the other person is essentially the problem; or a helpless story, in which there is nothing meaningful I can do about it. Notice what all three accomplish: they protect me from something growth requires. The victim story removes responsibility. The villain story removes curiosity and compassion. The helpless story removes agency.

So how do we combat this?

We learn to separate facts from stories.

What do I actually know? What did I actually see or hear? What part of this is observable fact? What part is my interpretation? What other explanation could reasonably fit the same facts? What information am I missing? And what question could I ask before deciding that my story is true?

Awareness requires becoming aware not only of what we think, but of how we arrived there.

5. Prior success can convince us that our weaknesses aren’t weaknesses. The greatest obstacle to success is prior success. Success is a wonderful teacher, but it can also be a remarkably persuasive liar.

Years ago, I watched a very capable leader wrestle with exactly this problem. He was bright, decisive, productive, and successful. He could point to a long record of results, and those results were real. But people who worked closely with him were experiencing another reality. His decisiveness could become control. His confidence could make disagreement difficult. His determination to move things forward sometimes left people behind.

The difficulty was not that he lacked evidence. He had too much evidence—the wrong kind. Every success became another witness for the defense. The organization had grown. Important things had been accomplished. Problems had been solved. So when someone raised concerns about how he was leading, there was an obvious response available: Look at the results.

And the results were good.

So were the concerns.

If I have built a successful organization, developed a thriving ministry, made money, received promotions, attracted followers, raised capable children, or become highly respected in my field, there is an understandable temptation to conclude, Whatever I’m doing must be working. Some of it undoubtedly is. But competence can compensate for weaknesses for an astonishingly long time.

A highly capable leader can produce excellent results while damaging relationships. A gifted communicator can build an audience while remaining poor at listening. A brilliant entrepreneur can build a company while creating unnecessary chaos for everyone working inside it. A pastor can preach faithfully and lead a growing church while remaining largely unaware of how his leadership affects the people closest to him.

Past success proves that something worked. It does not prove that everything is healthy.

The very behaviors that helped us succeed at one level can also become liabilities at another. Decisiveness can become control. Confidence can become certainty. Persistence can become unwillingness to listen. Attention to detail can become perfectionism. Relational sensitivity can become avoidance of necessary conflict. The strength may still be a strength; it simply needs character and wisdom governing it.

That is why the greatest obstacle to success can be prior success. Yesterday’s results can persuade us that tomorrow requires no further examination. Continuing growth requires enough humility to ask whether the strengths that brought us here are accompanied by weaknesses that may prevent us from going farther.

6. Sometimes we are unaware because people have learned not to tell us. This may be one of the most dangerous forms of unawareness for a leader. “Nobody has ever told me that” does not necessarily mean nobody has seen it.

Maybe someone tried. Maybe every concern was answered with an explanation. Maybe disagreement produced defensiveness. Maybe the leader always had one more piece of information proving why his decision was reasonable. Maybe feedback was technically permitted but relationally punished. Eventually people learn, and they stop saying things.

The less receptive I am to difficult information, the less difficult information people give me. The less difficult information I receive, the more confident I become that there isn’t a problem. The more confident I become that there isn’t a problem, the less receptive I become when someone finally tries to tell me there is one. Eventually the leader looks around at the silence and concludes that everything must be fine.

Silence around a leader is not necessarily evidence of health. Sometimes it is evidence that honesty has become too expensive.

Fortunately, the opposite cycle is equally powerful. When people discover that I can hear difficult truth without punishing the messenger, they become more willing to tell me what they see. Their honesty increases my awareness. Greater awareness gives me opportunities to change. Change increases trust. Increased trust makes greater honesty possible.

Humility creates information. And information makes growth possible.

7. Some things simply cannot be seen from where we are standing. This is what makes a blind spot a blind spot. You cannot eliminate one simply by looking harder. You need another angle.

That is one of the reasons we need spouses, friends, coworkers, mentors, elders, coaches, employees, and other people who know us well enough—and love us enough—to tell us what they see. A mirror allows me to see something about myself that my eyes cannot see directly. People can do the same thing.

The goal is not to surrender our judgment to everyone else’s opinion. Other people have blind spots too. Their perceptions can be incomplete, mistaken, or distorted. But dismissing every outside observation because it might be wrong guarantees that we remain trapped inside the limitations of our own perspective.

Maturity learns to listen without automatically surrendering discernment. And particularly when several trustworthy people independently tell us essentially the same thing, wisdom suggests that we become very interested.

At some point, repeated feedback becomes data.

8. Our own hearts are not perfectly reliable narrators. There is finally a deeper reason awareness is difficult. Scripture never assumes that human beings naturally possess completely accurate perceptions of themselves. “The heart is deceitful above all things,” Jeremiah tells us (Jeremiah 17:9). Jesus speaks almost humorously about our extraordinary ability to identify a speck in someone else’s eye while remaining unaware of the plank protruding from our own (Matthew 7:3–5).

We are capable of self-deception, which makes David’s prayer wonderfully appropriate for anyone serious about growth: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23–24)

Notice the posture. David does not ask God to confirm David’s assessment of David. He asks God to search him. There may be something here I cannot see. Show me.

That is not insecurity. That is humility.

And it places awareness where it ultimately belongs for the Christian. We use reflection. We listen to people. We learn from personality. We receive feedback. We examine patterns and consequences. But we also ask the One who knows us completely to reveal what we cannot see ourselves.

Discovery Did Not Create the Problem

This is where awareness can become uncomfortable. Eventually, if you genuinely pursue it, you are going to discover something about yourself you don’t particularly like. That discovery is not the problem. In fact, it may be the beginning of the solution.

You did not become impatient the moment you realized you were impatient. You did not become controlling when someone finally had the courage to tell you. You did not become a poor listener when your spouse pointed it out. You did not develop the blind spot when somebody helped you see it.

It was already there.

Awareness didn’t create the problem. Awareness created your first real opportunity to do something about it.

This is one of the gracious purposes of conviction. God brings something into the light not so we can sit there feeling badly about ourselves, but so that repentance, obedience, forgiveness, reconciliation, wisdom, and change can become possible.

The mirror in James is useful precisely because it shows us something. The foolishness is not discovering that something needs attention. The foolishness is looking into the mirror, seeing what is there, walking away, and doing nothing about it (James 1:23–25).

Awareness is not transformation, but transformation rarely begins without it.

Awareness Must Become a Practice

So how do we become more aware? Not by endlessly thinking about ourselves. Self-awareness can become self-absorption remarkably quickly. The goal is not to become fascinated with ourselves. The goal is to see ourselves truthfully enough to become faithful stewards of the person God has entrusted to us.

A simple rhythm can help. Notice what happens repeatedly, particularly conflict, frustration, misunderstanding, resistance, emotional reactions, or recurring feedback. Patterns are information. Examine your own contribution before determining what everyone else did wrong—not Is everything my fault? but What here is mine? Ask someone who can see you from another vantage point, What are you seeing that I may not be seeing?

Then listen without immediately explaining yourself. An explanation may eventually be appropriate, but explanations offered too quickly can prevent information from getting through the door. Name the reality specifically: I become impatient when people need more processing time than I do. I avoid difficult conversations until the problem becomes worse. I become defensive when someone questions my judgment. Vague awareness rarely produces specific change.

Then act on what you have learned, because awareness that never becomes action eventually becomes another form of avoidance. Finally, review what happened afterward. Go back to the people who helped you see the problem and ask, Am I doing better? What are you seeing now?

Notice → Examine → Ask → Listen → Name → Act → Review

This is not a seven-step program to complete once. It is a rhythm. The more naturally we practice it, the less dependent we become upon a crisis to make us aware of ourselves. We begin noticing patterns earlier, examining our stories more carefully, asking questions sooner, listening more thoughtfully, and correcting direction before a weakness has accumulated years of consequences.

Repeated over time, awareness stops being an occasional painful discovery and becomes a normal part of growth.

Awareness Is Not Enough

There is one final danger here. It is possible to become wonderfully articulate about ourselves and never actually change.

We can learn our DISC patterns. We can identify our weaknesses. We can explain why we react the way we do. We can identify the stories we tell ourselves. We can tell people, “Yes, I know I do that.” We can even become remarkably sophisticated at describing our own dysfunction.

And still do it.

Awareness is not the destination.

James does not commend the person who looks into the mirror and accurately identifies what he sees. The point of seeing is responding to what has been revealed (James 1:23–25).

That is where awareness reconnects with intentionality. Awareness tells me what is actually there. Intentionality asks what I am going to do about it. Action begins change. Accountability brings other people alongside us. Consistency keeps the new behavior from becoming a three-day experiment. Persistence keeps us moving when change takes longer than we hoped.

Then, over time, applied knowledge repeated consistently becomes transformation.

The Person God Has Entrusted to You

There is a danger in all discussion of self-awareness that we become increasingly preoccupied with ourselves. That isn’t the objective. The Christian pursuit of self-awareness is ultimately not self-centered at all.

You need to know your strengths because they are gifts to steward. You need to know your weaknesses because they affect people you are called to love. You need to understand your personality because it influences how you naturally see and respond to the world. You need to recognize your patterns because repeated behavior eventually produces repeated consequences. You need to examine your stories because an assumption can become remarkably powerful once you mistake it for reality. And you need other people because God did not design you to see everything from where you stand.

You also need the Spirit of God because there are realities within your own heart that no personality assessment, leadership inventory, coaching conversation, research study, or afternoon of introspection can fully reveal.

Awareness is therefore not an invitation to spend your life staring at yourself. It is an invitation to live truthfully.

Intentionality says that growth will not happen accidentally. Awareness makes sure we are intentionally working on what is actually there.

And when something uncomfortable finally comes into view, don’t resent the mirror. Thank God that you can finally see it.

You cannot grow what you cannot see. But once you can see it, you can begin.

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5 Coaching Questions

[The purpose of these questions is not merely to evaluate what you know, but to help you examine how these truths are showing up in your life and leadership. Take your time with them. Resist the temptation to answer quickly or to think primarily about someone else who needs to hear this. Ask the Lord to help you see yourself clearly, invite someone you trust to speak honestly into your life, and identify where knowledge needs to become action. Applied knowledge repeated consistently becomes transformation.]

1. What recurring situation in your life or leadership may be telling you something about yourself that you have not yet fully seen?

2. Where is there a gap between what you intend and what other people may actually experience from you?

3. What has the DISC Model of Human Behavior helped you recognize about your natural strengths, tendencies, or blind spots?

4. Who knows you well enough—and is safe enough—to tell you something you may not want to hear? What question do you need to ask that person?

5. What is one thing you already know about yourself that now needs to move from awareness to intentional action?

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