Self-Awareness in Leadership: A Key to Authenticity and Growth

What is the importance of self-awareness in leadership? How aware of yourself and your impact are you? How might your default ways of working be enhancing or derailing your leadership? How is self-awareness influenced by our conscious and unconscious biases? All good questions and ones that can help us to embrace a growth mindset focused on continually strengthening ourselves and our leadership.

Why Self-Awareness Matters

Self-awareness is at the core of everything. It describes your ability to not only understand your strengths and weaknesses, but to recognize your emotions and their effect on you and your team’s performance. Self-awareness is not a one-off event but an ongoing process. If you want to be effective as a leader, you need to be self-aware. Awareness of self has always been an important part of leadership however it has taken on more relevance with the increasing focus on leadership that encompasses emotional intelligence, psychological safety, greater inclusion practices and leading across diversity. Self-awareness in leadership is understood as an understanding of how your personality traits, habits and abilities affect your interactions with the people around you. Furthermore, the Institute of Leadership points out that if you are self-aware, it means you have made (and are constantly updating) an accurate appraisal of your personality, of what motivates you, and what your strengths and weaknesses are.

Default Operating Styles

Elevate has worked with leaders from over 80 countries across multiple organisations and self-awareness is a core quality we focus on in our leadership development training and coaching. Understanding your default leadership strength is part of understanding your authentic self. One exercise we use in our trainings and retreats encourages participants to decide on which is their preferred way of working. Are you a person who acts, trying things and plunging straight in? Alternatively, are you more comfortable with looking at the big picture and the possibilities before acting? Are you someone who prefers to know that everyone’s ideas have been taken into consideration and their voices heard before acting? On the other hand, you may be someone who pays attention to the detail, understanding the who, what, when, where and why before acting? Each is legitimate and has its strengths and potential limitations for leading.

Of course, you are probably thinking as you read, I do all those things! Effectively I stand in the middle of the compass points. This is a common reaction and one that to a greater or lesser degree is true for everyone, however when encouraged to decide it is always interesting to see people eventually take a preferred position or one, they most identify with. A step along the path to greater self-awareness.

When things get tough, we tend to go to our comfort zone.

As leaders we often like to think that we can be all the above. However, when situations become ambiguous, volatile or stressful, it is then that we are more likely to default to our preferred way of operating or way of being as a leader. Increased knowledge of our preferences, linked with greater understanding of what contexts may trigger them is a core part of how we enhance our self-awareness. Reflect on a time when you went to your comfort zone. What triggers can you identify? What would you look to do differently to achieve an even better outcome?

The Impact on Team Dynamics

Self-awareness helps us understand our leadership tendencies and highlights areas where we may need to adapt to navigate complex challenges more effectively. This knowledge can assist us to look for ways of bringing in other perspectives, including those we are less likely to embrace. We may need to add people who bring a different perspective to our team.  Alternatively, we can strengthen psychological safety and be more deliberate in our processes, inviting alternative points of view whilst still maintaining focus on timeliness and resources.

Self-awareness takes many forms and understanding our preferred ways of working is just one of them - albeit very important one. How might your preferred way of working influence your leadership approach and the team’s dynamic?

Elevate specialises in enhancing leaders' and managers' self-awareness. Contact us if you want to explore this topic further and how it might impact your leadership.

We would love to hear your thoughts on how you work to build your self-awareness and how this has enhanced your leadership.