Self-awareness is knowing how you actually operate — what you are good at, what you avoid, what gets the best out of you and what reliably knocks you off. Not how you would describe yourself in an interview. How you behave on a Tuesday when the plan changes.
It comes in two halves, and most people are strong in one and weak in the other:
- Inside-out — what you notice about yourself. Your reactions, your patterns, why you did that.
- Outside-in — how you actually land on other people. This half you cannot get on your own. You have to ask.
People who only work on the inside half end up very reflective and still surprised by their feedback.
What actually makes your work effective
If you want to improve your performance you have to know what your performance is made of. These are the levers that move it — some are about you, some are about the conditions you work in, and telling the two apart is most of the job.
| Factor | Working well looks like | Slipping looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Knowing what is expected | You can state the output, the standard and the deadline | You are working hard on the wrong version |
| Skill and knowledge | The work is within what you can do, and stretches you a bit | Quiet guessing, or avoidance |
| Planning and sequencing | You know what is next and what depends on what | Everything feels equally urgent |
| Attention and focus | You get blocks of uninterrupted time for work that needs it | Constant switching; nothing finished |
| Accuracy and checking | Errors caught before the work leaves you | Rework, and someone else finding it |
| Motivation | You start without a run-up | Starting late, then rushing |
| Energy, sleep, health | You have something left at 3pm | Mistakes clustering late in the day |
| Feedback loops | You find out quickly whether it was right | Months of doing it the same wrong way |
| Relationships | You can ask for help without it being a whole thing | Struggling silently to look competent |
| Tools and access | Systems and access are ready when you need them | Waiting, working around, redoing |
| Physical setup | Desk, screen and chair suit you — see Workstation Ergonomics | Discomfort, fatigue, distraction |
| Workload fit | Demanding but achievable | Volume you cannot meet however hard you work |
Two honest questions to ask of any dip: was that a me factor or a conditions factor? and which one did I do something about? Blaming conditions for everything gets you nowhere; so does taking personal responsibility for a workload nobody could carry. Where it is genuinely a conditions factor you cannot change, that is a conversation with your manager — see Talking to your supervisor about wellbeing.
Adaptability and flexibility
Adaptability is how well you adjust when the situation changes. Flexibility is your willingness to do it in the first place. You can be capable of adjusting and still hate it.
Work changes constantly and rarely with notice: a priority lands on Tuesday morning, a colleague goes on leave, a system is down, a customer escalates. Nexus’s goals do not pause while you catch up, so your capacity to adjust is not a personality footnote — it directly decides whether the team hits what it committed to.
| Situation | Adaptable response | Rigid response | What it costs the team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority changes | Re-plan, say early what will slip | Carry on with the original plan | Deadline missed by surprise |
| Process changes | Try it, then feed back with specifics | Keep using the old way quietly | Two versions in circulation |
| Extra work lands | Take it and renegotiate the rest | Absorb silently and fall behind | Nobody knows until it is late |
| Feedback arrives | Ask what better looks like | Defend the original | Same issue next month |
| Someone is away | Cover, and flag what will wait | Cover everything, drop nothing, break | Errors, then a bigger gap |
Flexibility has a limit and it should. Adjusting is not the same as absorbing everything — the Business Services Assistant profile lists conflicting instructions or competing deadlines you cannot meet as something to escalate, not something to quietly swallow. Real adaptability includes saying what will not fit.
Personal motivation
Motivation is not one thing you either have or lack. It has features worth knowing about, because each one points to a different fix.
| Feature | What it means | Why it matters for your development |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Intrinsic (the work itself — interest, mastery, meaning) or extrinsic (pay, recognition, avoiding trouble) | Intrinsic motivation lasts; extrinsic runs out when the reward does. Know which is carrying you |
| Direction | What you move towards versus what you move away from | Away-from motivation gets you started and then stops. Towards-goals survive the boring middle |
| Drivers | Achievement, mastery, autonomy, belonging, security, recognition, purpose | Development that hits your driver sticks. The same course bores one person and lights up another |
| Intensity | How strongly it pulls | Strong motivation on a narrow interest can leave the rest of the role neglected |
| Consistency | Steady, or all-or-nothing bursts | Burst motivation looks like productivity and feels like exhaustion |
| Triggers and drains | What reliably switches you on or flattens you | The cheapest performance gain available: arrange work around your own pattern where you can |
The link to self-awareness is direct. Knowing your drivers tells you which goals you will actually finish, which development is worth asking for, and where you will need structure rather than enthusiasm. Someone driven by mastery should ask for depth; someone driven by belonging should ask for work with other people in it. Both are legitimate — but only if you know which one you are, so you can put the plan and the deadlines where your motivation is weakest rather than where it is already strong.
Organisational goals need the same treatment. Where your driver and the team’s goal line up, you will be reliable without trying. Where they do not, you need a plan — not more willpower.
Commitment and resilience
Commitment is what keeps you going when the work stops being interesting. Resilience is what gets you back after something goes wrong. They are different, and both are built rather than issued.
Commitment at work shows up as: finishing what you started, meeting the standard when nobody is checking, telling someone early when you cannot deliver, and following through on the boring part of a job you volunteered for. Its absence rarely looks dramatic — it looks like a deadline that quietly moves.
Resilience shows up in the recovery, not the absence of trouble. An error, a piece of hard feedback, a plan that falls apart — resilient people take it seriously, fix what is fixable, and are functional again the same week.
| Holding up | Wearing thin | |
|---|---|---|
| After an error | Owns it, fixes it, changes the check | Hides it, or spirals about it for days |
| After criticism | Asks what better looks like | Withdraws, or argues |
| Through a busy period | Paces it, takes breaks, asks for help | Skips lunch, stays back, tells nobody |
| When something fails | Separates the setback from a verdict on themselves | Treats it as proof they are not up to it |
| Over months | Recovers between peaks | Never quite recovers; small things start landing hard |
Neither is infinite, and neither is a substitute for reasonable conditions. If you are relying on resilience every week to get through, the thing to examine is the workload, not your character — see the Wellbeing Support Policy.
Strengths, weaknesses and the blind spot
A strength is something you do well and reliably. A weakness is a gap that shows up in your actual work, not something you are simply not interested in. Be specific: communication is not a strength and detail is not a weakness — “explains a process clearly in writing” and “misses the second attachment when rushing” are.
Four ways to find them, in increasing order of usefulness:
- Your own read. Fast, and skewed. Start here, do not stop here.
- The evidence. Rework, errors, things that come back, things people always come to you for.
- Your role profile. Position profiles list the duties and behaviours expected — compare yourself against a written standard rather than a feeling.
- Other people. The only source for the blind spot: things everyone can see except you.
That fourth one is the whole game. Ask two people who see different sides of your work, ask specifically — “what is one thing I could do differently in the weekly catch-up?” — and do not argue with the answer in the moment. The Performance & Conduct Management policy expects feedback in both directions, and a formal review at least twice a year. You do not have to wait for one.
There is a fifth category worth naming: a strength overused. Thoroughness becomes slowness. Helpfulness becomes an unmanageable workload. Directness becomes abruptness. These are the hardest to spot from the inside, because the behaviour has been rewarded for years.
What to do with all this
Noticing is not improving. Once you have a picture, turn it into something with dates on it — see Writing a self-awareness action plan, and use the work-style self-assessment to get your own read down on paper first. Where the picture starts with what you value rather than how you perform, begin at Attitudes and values at work.