Self-Awareness: The Key To Effective Leadership

Self-Awareness: The Key To Effective Leadership

We’ve all experienced a leader who wasn’t self-aware. When a leader is self-aware, they have the ability to focus on themselves and see how their own actions, thought, and emotions do or do not align with their internal standards.

We see this when a leader has set a corporate mantra of integrity, positivity, and appreciation, but his actions do not align. This leader berates his employees, doesn’t see anything good happening, and cooks the books.

Yeah, he’s not self-aware.

Yet, self-awareness is key to effective leadership. Without self-awareness, your employees will think you’re inept and not worth following.

Developing Self-Awareness

To become an effective leader, you have to develop self-awareness. Thankfully, this is a skill that can be taught and developed.

3 Steps To Self-Awareness For Leaders

In the midst of being put on trial for corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates uttered the famous line, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  He was well aware of the fact that, in order to truly live and lead as we ought, we first have to know who we are. As leaders, this is especially true since, by definition, we are going to influence and impact other people. If we are to do this as well as we can, we must first be aware of ourselves: strengths and weaknesses, gifts and flaws.

Leaders need to be self-aware

Photo by Alex Iby