The four levels of awareness of proactive living
As explained above, the building up of some in-depth awareness is a sine qua non condition to adopting a proactive behaviour (Covey, 2004). That awareness aims at supporting the actor to better plan for change and at making the most of the change process. It can help him/her:
Four levels of awareness that act as enablers of proactive behaviours can be identified: the self-awareness, the goals awareness, the mapping awareness and the environmental awareness. Each level is based on its lower levels, so that the awareness should ideally be built from bottom to top. Once the awareness is built, it can be extended or modified to adapt to new goals or to changes in the environment. This enables the person to be more efficient in dealing with future issues or in learning from failures to implement change.
1. Self-awareness
The lower level of the pyramid aims at understanding the actor of the change. It describes the strengths, weaknesses and aspirations of that person. Those are crucial elements to determine how to build up and maintain the inner motivation during the change process and to identify potential barriers. In a word, it enables to assess the likelihood for a project to fail or succeed.
The self-awareness only corresponds to the conscious self-perception of a person. For that reason, it may be difficult to build an objective self-awareness initially because hidden beliefs and automatic reactions must be made conscious. But once that initial awareness is built, it can be reused infinitely. The self-awareness is then adjusted to match the experience and self-understanding gained in recent projects.
2. Goals awareness
The goals awareness aims at understanding each goal of a person. Building up on the self-awareness, those goals must be linked to the person’s aspirations and must be assessed based on his/her strengths and weaknesses. The goals must be described and assessed based on how important they are for the person.
The source of motivation for the goals must be as clear as possible, so that the motivation can be increased when working towards them. It can also enable to identify what goals are coming from external pressure. Such goals must be transformed to match what the person actually wants, or discarded if there is no inner motivation to achieve them.
If some of the goals have already been worked on, it is important to understanding the current state of the progress. What has stopped the person from achieving those goals so far? Does that person have the feeling to be blocked or powerless when working towards those goals? Where is that feeling coming from?
3. Mapping awareness
Understanding how goals connect enables to draw an ‘action map’ that indicates what should be the priorities of a person. For full benefits, the action map should be built in three steps:
1) The first step is to organise the goals in a useful way for the person. For example, a person may want to buy a car and find a job. Depending on the priorities of that person, it may be that the car is required to find a job, or that the job would bring the money necessary to buy a car.
2) Some goals are too large to be addressed immediately and need to be broken down into smaller ones. The second step is therefore to identify unrealistic objectives and to break them into more manageable ones.
3) Once all the goals have been identified, described, ordered and made manageable, they can be merged in order to save time in the long term. This implies checking if several goals are similar or if several paths lead to the same goals. It is important to prioritise them and stay focused. Goals should also be combined whenever possible to save a maximum amount of time. For example, if a person wants to travel and earn more money, why not try to find a job abroad?
The mapping awareness is built over time. It can start with a simple list of goals and evolve every time the person becomes aware of new objectives. Once the map is built, the first goals to work on should appear clearly. Being familiar with the goals that form the base of the person’s life plan will help identify opportunities when they arise. Knowing the full plan will also help the person focus and understand why some goals are not being worked on immediately.