What Does “The Worst Cooks in America” Tell Us About Self-Awareness?

I was hooked on this show. But I am not here to talk about cooking or recipes.

The opening of the show was always something like this “Each year, thousands of people were nominated by family and friends for their atrocious cooking skill…”

Notice one teeny tiny detail here, none of the worst cooks nominated himself/herself.

In fact, most of them didn’t think they sucked at all! The most interesting part is that only after they faced how terrible they were, their cooking skills saw improvements.

Self-awareness is the first step of improvement. As the saying goes “You can’t solve the problems you don’t know about.”

In workplace, self-awareness is one of the most important skills for successful executives.

According a study conducted by Green Peak Partners and Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations showed that  “Leadership searches give short shrift to ‘self-awareness,’ which should actually be a top criterion.  Interestingly, a high self-awareness score was the strongest predictor of overall success.  This is not altogether surprising as executives who are aware of their weaknesses are often better able to hire subordinates who perform well in categories in which the leader lacks acumen.  These leaders are also more able to entertain the idea that someone on their team may have an idea that is even better than their own.”

But how to improve your self-awareness?

The most effective way I found is by comparison.

OK, I know somewhere in your life your parents/teachers/friends told you “Just be yourself, you don’t need to compare yourself with others.”

But in this case, how do you know where you are at if you don’t benchmark?

The purpose of comparison is not to embarrass yourself but to discover where you can do better.

Just like the worst cooks, many thought their food tasted just fine because it’d always been that way. But for the rest of us, there’s no doubt that their food looks like a nightmare. Until they saw and tasted the dishes from two of the top chefs in America, they realized their food tasted absolutely like crap.

So go out, find the best people in your field, compare yourself against them, and improve.