Moraa works in a Kilimani fintech operation and blitzes through weekly targets as if she has blinders on. She bulldozes past colleagues who hint that her follow-up emails are perceived as brusque and her demonstration handoffs from client to client leave the organisation’s support teams scrambling.
She laughs off all the firm’s whispers and chalks up the growing tension to jealousy, and doubles down on her lone wolf tactics. Meetings grow more tense, junior staff murmur about exit strategies, and a prized trophy client decides to renew with a rival company after one too many rough interactions that Moraa never catches or realises.
Across town in Eastleigh, Hassan leads a small pharmaceuticals unit and is under stress after a chaotic product recall. He requests that his direct reports inform him where his own actions made coordination harder, scribbles down every observation on a flip chart, and thanks each speaker personally.
He arranges a one on one with a trusted colleague for candid feedback, views his own town hall video, and adjusts how he begins conversations. Staff turnover slows, team morale bounces back, and headquarters chooses the unit for a national pilot because the department now addresses problems together with great cohesion.
Organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich tracked self-perception for nearly five years and uncovered a shocking gap. Nearly everyone thinks self-awareness is innate to every person, yet sadly only a small fraction of people actually possesses it.
Their surveys of hundreds of working adults uncovered nearly universal experience with everyone feeling as if they have to work with unaware colleagues and correlated that experience with decreased team success, stress, depleted motivation, and turnover that damages organisational budgets.
The research plotted typical signs of unawareness. First, rejection of feedback where someone just disregards what they are told when receiving constructive criticism.
Second, poor perspective taking, also known as mindblindness and theory of mind deficit, essentially means the difficulty in understanding or considering the thoughts, feelings, and perspectives of others.
Third, people who have the inability to read the room to understand the general gist and vibe of what is going on more broadly.
Fourth, similar to US President Donald Trump, excessive self-credit by exaggerating your role or contribution in a positive outcome or achievement. Fifth, and also similar to the current American president, blame shifting that sabotages collaboration.
The research then recommends a diagnostic timeout before taking action on unaware colleagues. Conflicts are sometimes the result of competing priorities rather than self-awareness blindness.
Research recommends testing for wider consensus, sorting unaware from those who are indeed aware but tragically do not care, and also balancing the messenger’s credibility.
Trust underlies the ability to give or receive tough feedback, so a person trying to inform an unaware colleague must show past support and be clear of any perceived hidden agenda.
Further, risk analysis also proves crucial. Power imbalances raise stakes, so a direct report deserves coaching while a tyrant boss may require strategic distance or third party intervention.
When the time is appropriate for a workplace intervention on an unaware colleague, the research recommends three habits. Start by choosing a conversation in real time rather than email, initiate the conversation when the colleague is already frustrated, and focus on observable behaviour and actual impact on goals.
Avoid using the word feedback to reduce defensiveness, ask permission to offer an observation, and close by reaffirming support with a question of how to help. Stakeholder feedback expands perception and reduces blame games because numerous voices characterise the pattern, not one accuser.
Sometimes change will not come. The research recommends mindful reframing to protect mental health. Naming your emotion, visualising a laugh track underlying cruel words, or recalling the human being behind the embarrassing behaviour prevents someone from spiraling.
Psychologically, compassion lowers cortisol and frees up attention in the brain for work that matters. Taking the long view also helps. Some people need several bumps before awareness hits, and you only have control over your own growth, not theirs.
Kenyan organisations can embed these lessons into company culture by building leaders who hold regular mirror sessions where teams review projects and each other’s blind spots without reprisal.
HR can build self-awareness milestones into promotion cycles, require 360 narratives not just numbers, and reward managers who build reflective direct reports. Anonymous pulse tools can reveal hot spots where unawareness is undermining trust, triggering coaching rather than secret complaint files that gather dust.
Managers who are ready to turn their own lens inward can start nightly reflection journals, asking themselves what impact they had today, what cues they might have missed, and who can hold up the mirror tomorrow.
Collaborate with a feedback peer across functions, share monthly observations, and practice the art of perspective taking by re-writing an e-mail from the recipient's vantage point. Take planned quiet five minute scans before meetings to note who is in the room, what pressures do they carry, what tone will open them up.
In summary, careers flourish when curiosity and humility guide action. Teams that normalise honest mirrors outperform equally gifted groups that implode under unseen egos.
Research reminds us that awareness almost never happens by accident. People choose it through courage, patience, and deliberate practice.
Kenyan professionals who lean into that choice will preserve well-being, improve collaboration, and turn tough conversations into springboards for growth. Group work can, in fact, speed up self-awareness if it is facilitated carefully.
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