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Self-Awareness: An Essential Tool for Effective Leadership

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Aditi Sengupta at California Lutheran University
Aditi Sengupta
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I
started writing this article, 37,000 ft above sea level,
midflight. While trying to contextualize self-awareness
as a leadership skill, I realized that it pretty much fol-
lows the same principle of the air-travel safety instructions
to “place your mask on before helping others.” Before you
can really help others, you should help yourself first. Self-
awareness is developing into an informed individual aware
of one’s strengths, weaknesses, personality, and preferences.
A leader has to constructively engage with others, draw out
the expertise within the team, and balance the team to func-
tion at an optimum level. Developing and maintaining this
balance is perhaps one of the most crucial challenges for a
leader. Being self-aware allows the leader to first identify
one’s own strengths and weaknesses, and therefore, be per-
ceptive to one’s response towards challenging situations. A
self-aware leader can appreciate the work and effort of team
members, value and respect diversity, and encourage the
different perspectives offered by the different personality
types, all of which ultimately enrich a project.
Thoughtful awareness of leaders allows them to be
tuned to the team dynamics and therefore have the vision to
maximize their team’s potential. For example, leaders who
are self-aware of their time management may recognize a
conflict situation that may arise between two team mem-
bers who have opposite work habits. One might be highly
productive when working last minute while the other may
have a more methodical and planned approach to meet-
ing goals. In such a scenario, the leader’s alertness and
timely responsiveness may motivate both team members to
negotiate agreeable work deliverables. Here, I outline a few
approaches one may start with to inculcate self-awareness.
Assess your own value: What can you contribute to the
workplace and how can you cultivate your own values?
Reward yourself for your achievements: Learn to re-
ward yourself for what you are able to achieve while being
cognizant of your own shortcomings. Be at peace with the
thought that it is okay to not have all the answers.
Nurture emotional intelligence: Allow yourself to delve
into your emotions and develop habits of articulating your
emotions.
Understand your method of conflict resolution: Do you
resolve conflicts by dealing with them actively or with a
passive perspective?
Fit the jigsaw: Exercise mind mapping to see how each
piece in your team fits, i.e., how you can utilize the skill set
of the team members to maximize the productivity of your
team.
Respond instead of react: Assess whether you react or
respond to situations. Reactions often carry a negative con-
notation while responses tend to be more balanced.
Seek support if you have too much awareness: Self-
awareness can lead to self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and
perfectionism, which may hinder work progress. In such
difficult situations, seek the support of peers and mentors
to help you refocus on your strengths.
Identify personality types: Many resources are avail-
able online like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Clifton
StrengthsFinder tool, which may help identify your own
personality and other personality types that you may work
well with or not.
While not exhaustive or authoritative in any way, my
goal is to initiate these conversations at our workplaces.
Irrespective of the career phases we may find ourselves in,
cultivating self-awareness empowers us to be better leaders,
team members, and collaborators.
A. Sengupta, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of
Arizona. This article is part of a series written for all Society
members by members of the Women in Science Committee.
To view the full-length articles, visit www.soils.org/member-
ship/women-in-science, www.agronomy.org/membership/
women-in-science, and www.crops.org/membership/women-
in-science.
doi:10.2134/csa2018.63.0425
1
Views reected are mine and do not represent those of the University of Arizona.
Women in Science
doi:10.2134/csa2018.63.0424
April 2018 CSA News 29
by Aditi Sengupta1
Self-Awareness
An Essential Tool for
Effective Leadership
Published online April 19, 2018
... In addition, individuals have a tendency to disagree with the perspectives of others when it comes to self-evaluation (Duval & Wicklund, 1972), and, therefore, individuals can potentially end up 'story-telling' (Hansen, 2009). The possibility that individuals may see themselves better and/or different to how they come across to others (Showry & Manasa, 2014), is likely to be a barrier to self-awareness, as individuals are 'unintentionally guilty of selfdeception' (Caldwell, 2009, p. 393). Therefore, it is important that coaches are aware of these limitations to avoid self-delusion. ...
... Having identified and initiated the development of self-awareness the coach moves towards developing self-connection (stage 3). In terms of how to develop the self-connection of stage three, the literature indicates a requirement for an element of self-evaluation (Duval & Wicklund, 1972;Showry & Manasa, 2014) to develop self-awareness. This was not evident from our findings, although there was some suggestion that being observed and evaluated against a coach competence framework was helpful in 'shining a light' on areas requiring development. ...
... What stood out as having the most impact on the development of self-connection for coaches was the importance of reflection, either through journaling, mindfulness, being coached, receiving coaching supervision or a combination of these methods. This is supported in part by the literature which highlights the requirement to look inwards and outwards to develop self-awareness (Bachkirova, 2016;Diller et al., 2020;Showry & Manasa, 2014), and the findings suggest that self-reflection is a route that will provide the coach with the insight required to be effective. How coaches translate self-reflection into becoming more self-aware and then into their coaching practice was not evident from the literature; however, our findings suggest that this translation relies on the experiential element of coaching, supported by further coaching supervision. ...
Exploring the role of self‐awareness in coach development: A grounded theory study
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2022
Workplace coaching is a rapidly growing industry, and while there has been some research carried out to explore the effectiveness of coaching and to evaluate coaching outcomes, there has been very little research to underpin coach development and how coaches best develop coaching competence for workplace coaching. Self‐awareness is perceived by many, including the professional coaching bodies, to be a core‐competency for practising coaches. However, there is a lack of research evidence to underpin this perception and therefore this study, using an inductive grounded theory approach, explores the linkages between self‐awareness and coach development. It finishes by presenting a conceptual framework to identify the linkages between self‐awareness and coach development. The paper aims to make a theoretical contribution to the literature supporting workplace coaching and in particular coach development, by developing theoretical principles to underpin those providing coach development. The findings indicate that self‐awareness is an important competency for coaches to develop as it provides the backbone to developing deep and meaningful connections both for the coach in terms of self‐acceptance and confidence, and for the client in terms of the depth of the relationship, thereby creating an environment in which challenging work can be carried out.
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