Why Self-Awareness in Leadership Is Essential for Success
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20/07/2022
Self-awareness is one’s ability to identify and monitor feelings, thoughts, and actions. This self-check-in falls under emotional intelligence. Human emotions are complex and deeply wired into our behaviours, often without us realizing it. Our biological makeup makes it incredibly difficult to be self-aware.
Self-awareness in leadership means having a conscious understanding of your character, behaviours, motives, and how these things impact your leadership abilities.
Why is self-awareness important in leadership?
Self-awareness in leadership can help you, as a leader, understand what you bring to your role. Having self-awareness means having an understanding of where you thrive and where you should improve and when your leadership, your company’s productivity tends to follow.
Understand Yourself
First, being a self-aware leader means that you can objectively understand yourself. This includes recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, as well as managing emotions in a productive manner.
Recognize How You Impact Others
The second aspect of self-awareness in leadership is understanding how your actions affect others. This means you can recognize – to the best of your ability – the impact you have on those around you. In this regard, being self-aware can help you communicate more effectively.
Model Vulnerability
Finally, self-awareness in leadership allows you to foster an environment that encourages self-awareness and vulnerability.
Consider two distinct organizations. Nobody has control over their emotions in one. People’s judgment is clouded by their emotions, resulting in conflicts and ineffectiveness on all sides. When they try to talk about problems, they can’t even get to the real issue because too much is obstructing their view.
