Awareness

THE TENSION

Awareness. The most technically capable people in any organisation often have the hardest time seeing how they land. Data tells you what is happening in the world. Awareness tells you what is happening right in front of you - including what your presence is doing to the people in the room.

“You can run a perfect presentation into a room that stopped following you ten minutes ago.”

THE SCENARIO

Priya Sharma has been GIS and Asset Mapping Team Lead at Brimbank City Council for eight months. She is methodical, precise, and exhaustingly thorough - all qualities that made her the obvious choice for the role.

This morning’s cross-directorate briefing was prepared with characteristic rigour. Priya walks the room through the spatial data underpinning the council’s infrastructure priorities - methodology first, caveats second, findings third. The presentation runs nineteen minutes over time. At the end, she invites questions. Two people look at their phones. The parks coordinator gives a polite nod. The room clears quickly.

On the way back to her desk, Priya tells her manager it went well.

It didn’t. What Priya missed - and has been missing in meetings for months - is that the room stopped following her about six slides in. She is presenting data. They need decisions. She is explaining methodology. They need confidence. She is answering questions no one is asking and missing the ones they are.

Her team has started over-preparing for any meeting Priya attends. Not to impress her. To survive the aftermath of conversations she doesn’t realise she’s having.

WHAT’S DRIVING IT

Awareness, in the Being Framework, is the state of being intentionally conscious of your consciousness - of what you know and don’t know, of the impact you are having on the world and the impact it is having on you. For technical professionals, this is often the most difficult developmental step.

The skills that made Priya excellent as a GIS analyst - precision, rigour, completeness - actively suppress the kind of peripheral attention that leadership requires. She is directing all of her awareness at the content and almost none of it at the room. As a result, she cannot see the gap between what she is delivering and what the people in front of her actually need.

Awareness is not a soft skill. It is the instrument through which everything else in leadership becomes navigable.

A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH AWARENESS

A healthy relationship with awareness means you read the room while you are still in it - adjusting your approach based on what you observe rather than running the presentation you prepared regardless of the response it is generating. You have a clear understanding of your impact on others, and you are genuinely curious about it, not just the content you are delivering.

You are attentive and rarely surprised by how things land, because you have been paying attention throughout. You welcome feedback and can find your way forward despite uncertainty, because your awareness gives you access to the full picture - not just the data layer of it. Others experience you as someone who is genuinely present to the situation, not just technically performing within it.

REFLECTION PROMPTS

• In your last team meeting, what were people communicating that wasn’t in their words?

• Who in your organisation has given you unsolicited feedback about how you come across - and did you actually take it in?

• What’s the difference between how you think your briefings land and how you know they land?

• If someone observed you across your last five team interactions, what pattern would they notice that you haven’t noticed yourself?

Awareness is often the single quality that separates a technically excellent person from a genuinely effective leader. If that distinction resonates, the Being Profile is designed to go exactly here - to surface the specific patterns shaping how you are with others, and what becomes available when you see them clearly.

Get in touch at hello@mappingbeing.com.au

While the organisations referenced exist, the team lead, other people and the team name have been used for demonstration purposes only. Any resemblance to real-life people, teams, organisations or situations is purely coincidental.

Reference: Tashvir, A. (2021). BEING (p. 109). Engenesis Publications.

[Published 13 May 2026]