10 Ways to be a More Self-Aware Leader

Great leaders are self-aware.

Without self-awareness s/he won’t learn, won’t grow, will divide teams and be a challenge to manage.

If you love a good podcast, I recently recorded an episode exploring this fundamental leadership skill – you can listen to the full episode here (15 mins)

So, self-awareness is critical to effective leadership… but how can you be more self-aware?

In essence, self-awareness is about taking an interest in yourself and how you do things. It is also about being genuinely curious to understand your impact on others.

Here are 10 behaviours a leader might adopt to build their self-awareness:

1.      Wanting to be better every day

2.      Being curious to identify both your strengths and weaknesses

3.      Being open (and not defensive) about owning your own weaknesses

4.      Wanting to know how your weaknesses may negatively impact others

5.      Asking for feedback, assuming too that there could be a learning to gain from that feedback

6.      Assuming nothing and constantly reviewing what you just did, for example, ‘How well did I communicate in that meeting?’; ‘Was I understood?’

7.      Challenging your own bias daily, ‘How are my preconceived ideas distorting my judgment?’

8.      Being consistent with what you say and what you do – this is critical to build trust

9.      Owning mistakes and working to fix them

10.    Identifying your deepest values, for example ‘control’ or ‘superiority’, their resultant behaviours in you and the impact of those behaviours on others

Where to from here?

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle

How true 🙂

The key with building greater self-awareness is to start small. Choose 1 of the behaviours above and adopt it religiously over the next 7 days – see what happens!

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