Self-awareness in leadership is not a one-person show. It is achieved by seeking collective success and prioritizing the team first. Self-aware leaders don't just focus on individual victories, but they want their team members to succeed. To do this, they continuously evaluate themselves to find ways to improve.
Self-awareness is an essential trait of a great leader. By knowing your values, personality, needs, habits and emotions, and how they affect your actions and the actions of others, you'll be better able to manage your stress, make better decisions and, ultimately, get others to do the same. In essence, self-awareness offers leaders much more than any other tool for success. It helps them remember why they wanted to become leaders in the first place.
It helps them discover and live the impact they want to have, not only on the members of their team or even on their organizations, but also on the world. And that's a leader worth following. Self-awareness has been cited as the most important skill that leaders should develop, according to the authors of “How to Become a Better Leader”, which was published in the MIT Sloan Management Review. Successful leaders know what their natural inclinations are and use this knowledge to boost or compensate for those inclinations.
Self-awareness is a key factor in the leadership of a company. It means understanding our strengths and weaknesses and our capacities and limitations. Self-awareness guides the way we process information, interact with the people around us, and handle situations in the work environment. Self-awareness in leadership means having a conscious understanding of your character, behaviors, motives, and how these things affect your leadership skills.
Ultimately, the immense amount of understanding, reliability, and wisdom that self-aware leaders possess equips them with critical skills for success. While women in executive-level management positions tend to show more self-awareness than men in the same positions, the overall percentages suggest that there are many opportunities for growth in this area. In a study of 17,000 people around the world, Hay Group Research found that 19 percent of female executives interviewed were self-aware, compared to 4 percent of their male counterparts. Gustavo Razzetti, author of “Stretch for Change” and “Stretch Your Mind” and executive director of Liberationist, a company that promotes change, also points to the importance of developing humility as a leader.
