Becoming A Self-Aware Leader

Embracing self-awareness is a profound act of self-love and a critical step towards becoming a self-aware leader.  If you want to be the best leader you can be, then it would be wise to develop self-awareness.  Self-awareness is foundational to learning about yourself and being able to change your life and your leadership ability. Without raising your self-awareness to observe how you tick, you could find it challenging to lead yourself first and in the way you want. What follows are some perspectives and tools you can use on your journey to become a self-aware leader.

What Is Self Awareness?

Self-awareness is the conscious knowledge and understanding of one’s character, feelings, motives, and desires. It involves a deep and objective introspection into one’s behaviour, thoughts, and emotions. Being self-aware means recognizing how your actions, feelings, and thoughts align with your internal standards and values, and understanding how they impact others around you.

It’s a foundational skill for emotional intelligence, allowing individuals to regulate their emotions more effectively, develop empathy, and improve their social interactions.

Self-awareness is not static but a continual process of growth and learning, where individuals gain insights about themselves through experiences, reflection, and feedback. This self-knowledge is pivotal for personal development, helping individuals to make more mindful decisions, build stronger relationships, and navigate life’s challenges with a clearer sense of purpose and self-confidence.

Becoming A Self-aware Leader needs willingness

Being willing is a crucial factor in becoming a self-aware leader.  Often, people only create the level of willingness needed to search within for answers when life gets too painful or learn to resent something about themselves.  Becoming self-aware can be uncomfortable and so if you’re not willing to open up to new information and endure that discomfort then you will give up at the first hurdle.  However, to develop self-awareness, you don’t have to wait until things get bad. You can start at any time.

Accelerating Self Awareness

Navigating through the diverse and complex scenarios life presents can inherently contribute to the enhancement of our self-awareness. However, this progression is typically slow and steady. To truly accelerate the development of a profound and precise understanding of self-awareness, one must engage in a dedicated and proactive approach. This involves actively seeking experiences and challenges that push us beyond our comfort zones, thereby providing richer opportunities for self-discovery and growth. It also requires a commitment to regular self-reflection, where one thoughtfully examines their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, and critically assesses their alignment with personal values and goals.

Seeking feedback from others and being open to different perspectives is equally vital in this journey, as it offers insights that might be overlooked in solitary reflection. Engaging in mindfulness practices, such as meditation or journaling, can further deepen one’s self-awareness by fostering a heightened sense of presence and connection with one’s inner self. This concerted combination of experiences, reflection, feedback, and mindfulness practices not only speeds up the process of becoming self-aware but also enriches the quality of understanding one achieves about oneself.

Ways To Develop As A Self-Aware Leader

As you traverse your self-development journey, it can open up a vista of new ideas and perceptions about you and how you behave.  You can use self-awareness to develop and learn:

  • You are the observer of who you are rather than the actor in the play (of the world).
  • An ability to accept yourself and others better.
  • To be more empathetic towards self and others.
  • How to understand and change habitual behaviour.
  • How to improve thinking patterns.
  • To be more emotionally intelligent.
  • About your personality and how you operate.
  • How to navigate relationships better.
  • About your beliefs and values and how well they work for you.
  • To have a good understanding of your strengths and weaknesses.

The route to self-awareness is a lifetime journey and not something that can be traversed in a short period.  The best way to approach a self-awareness journey is to focus on what is essential for you now.  It might seem like a lot of work, but the benefits are enormous.  Developing self-awareness can lead to a more effective, happier and better-connected life.

Self Awareness And neuroscience

Neuroscience is fascinating.  We are learning more about the brain all of the time.  The brain is like our operating model; it sorts out all the information it receives in various ways to give us a rich life experience.   Here are some Neuroscience principles and facts.

  • Your DNA isn’t fixed, and you can, with willingness, often change which parts of your DNA are active or not.
  • Limiting beliefs is just that –  limiting – changing your beliefs, and the world of possibilities can open up.
  • Your brain has plasticity, meaning you can forge new neural pathways and old pathways can be closed.
  • We are wired to be lifelong learners, yet we can choose to learn or not.
  • In other words, we live in a world of endless possibilities opened up by our curiosity and intention.

You don’t have to understand Neuroscience to become more self-aware, although some basic understanding of what the study of Neuroscience has meant in terms of how our brains and, therefore, how you develop is very helpful.

Kegan’s model of self-awareness

Robert Kegan developed a helpful model of self-awareness. In his book, “The Evolving Self” (1982), he wrote about “meaning-making”.  The resultant model consists of 6 developmental stages of self-awareness.  The purpose of the model is to give professionals a framework for identifying which stage their clients are at to understand themselves and others.

If you are interested in self-awareness, it might be helpful for you to consider where you may be on the model.

Levels 0 to 2

These first levels are present when we are growing up.  An infant’s life is largely unconscious.  In “What Happened To You?” Oprah Winfrey and Dr Bruce Perry talk about trauma and how trauma can occur in a child’s life.

They contend that children under three may suffer trauma. Still, because they haven’t got the concepts or handle on words to describe the trauma, they literally can’t remember the traumatic event even though they may suffer the impacts of that trauma.

There is little differentiation between the child’s self and other people like caregivers in those early stages of life.

As a child grows in infancy and pre-adolescence, they learn how to respond to reward and punishment, and these factors often drive their behaviours.  The following three levels occur in adolescents and adults.

Level 3

This is the first adult level, and this is where you become conscious of your responses to situations and people. It is all about interacting with others and how you may have to adapt your emotional reactions and behaviours, usually to conform and fit in.

One of my first jobs was in a large open-plan office. I was very conscious of my “shyness”.  Also, I was a million miles from recognising I was an introvert with absolutely no understanding of personality type.  I realised, though, that this state of being did not work so well for me.  As a result, I found ways to go against my preference and mix more with people, and I learned to speak up despite the discomfort it afforded me.

What I didn’t realise was, of course, while I was becoming aware of how I behaved,  at that time, it was only helpful to me to adapt my behaviour to satisfy what I perceived as what was needed to conform and be accepted.

Level 4

The next level is about forging your own identity while understanding how this may impact others.  You are expanding your awareness to incorporate yourself and others. While you are developing your autonomy, you are also mindful of developing more interpersonal relationships.

As I grew in self-awareness and realised my personality type was an “introvert”, and that was ok, I didn’t feel the need to conform to the group any longer.  It was a relief to find ways to satisfy my need for solitude and make time for myself.

I was however mindful that my need for solitude could impact my interpersonal relationships especially my partner and my children.   And so I devised strategies to optimise time with them and to balance their needs with my own.

    Level 5

The final level is when you can observe yourself and others and how they interact as a whole.  You understand everyone has different needs, and responses, driven by different beliefs and experiences.  You know everyone is different, and you consider ways to learn about others so you can bring solutions to conflict and create harmony where possible.

As a leader, I used Myers Briggs Personality Type to help my team learn more about each other to become more cohesive.  As an introvert, I knew how important it was to have both introversion and extraversion in the group.

When I became an MBTI Practitioner, I was able to help people come to terms with their different personality types.  Equally, an understanding of how beliefs, emotional responses and patterns of thinking need to be considered at a group level is present at this level.

Applying the model

These self-awareness levels and thinking patterns are similar to constructivism theory, whereby new consciousness or knowledge builds on previous knowledge.  The levels are incremental.  When I was 17 and feeling “shy” working with many others in that large open-plan office, I had absolutely no idea or understanding of other people’s experiences.  However, I needed that level of self-awareness to grow into further self-awareness.

It’s essential to note that no adult level is better than other levels.  It is only because I wanted to become a coach and in my role as a leader,  I was compelled to expand my consciousness to higher levels.   Sometimes even recognising the group through level 5 self-awareness, I do not always respond correctly to get a great result.  I do not always understand every dynamic.

Many people are operating effectively with happy and productive lives at level 3. They might not need to expand consciousness beyond that level.

Exploring your self Concept

Judge, Locke, and Durham (1997) analysed what they termed 4 core self-evaluations.  These are known as your positive self-concept. Initially, these four concepts were proposed as variables for reaching job satisfaction.

However, more generally, they are beneficial evaluations to consider when developing self-awareness. The concepts are:

  • Self Esteem – Self-worth, how well you think of yourself
  • Self-Efficacy – How effective we believe we are in different situations
  • Emotional Stability – How positive or negative we are about self and others
  • Locus of Control – How we can control the world around us and how we perceive our limitations

Understanding how You operate As A Self-Aware Leader

There are several components of how we operate, which are key to developing self-awareness.  Don’t be daunted by them, the key to developing self-awareness is to take it one step at a time, one by one.  It’s critical to achieve some successes and breakthroughs. Without these, it just feels like hard work.   Some of the components are:

  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Neuroscience
  • Thinking Skills
  • Personality Type
  • Belief System

Every single person on the planet is unique. You have unique experiences, interpretations, beliefs and thoughts.  You have a preferred personality type that determines how you operate.  Our emotional intelligence can be vital in some areas and not so strong in others.  Neuroscience is showing us that our brains are like muscles. Some parts of our brain may be more developed than other parts. Your belief system decides what information you see; changing it can change your life.

The Journey To Being A Self-Aware Leader

You might be asking yourself where to start.  Much depends on your reason for wanting to develop your self-awareness.  If you’re reading this then maybe you simply want to become a more self-aware leader.  Maybe you want to improve your relationships with your team and your stakeholders.  It might be more personal, perhaps you want to find ways to be happier or more at peace with yourself.  If you are suffering from emotional pain, your desire to understand yourself more may be more urgent.   You might be curious, and that’s fine too.

My journey started many years ago.  In my early 20’s I picked up a book about how to cure anxiety. I had suffered from anxiety for many years.  The book described transactional analysis techniques. Following the simple exercises in the book cured my anxiety for good.

You may wish to find out more yourself. If you do, then journaling is a great way to begin.  Writing is not only therapeutic, but it can draw out what you really would like to know about yourself.   Finding and learning how to tap into your inner wisdom is powerful, and there are many books out there that can help.   What is important here is your intent.  If you intend to use self-awareness to develop, your intuition kicks in and guides you to the people and resources you need.

If that all sounds daunting then you might want to find a coach or someone who you know has an expanded sense of self-awareness (think Kegan level 5!) and who can help you.  For example, you might want to find a career coach or someone who has expertise in emotional intelligence or personality type.  Whatever you need, you will find someone or something to help.

  • About the Author
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I help leaders develop self- mastery, helping them to become confident in their own inner guidance.

I collaborate with leadership experts, managers and HR professionals to help them get their own message and unique services and products to a wide audience.

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