Leadership and self-awareness

Self-awareness is the first step in effective leadership. It involves exploring your

strengths and weaknesses; your values and beliefs; your experiences and preferences; and how these all interrelate and inform your decision making.

Understanding yourself better includes understanding your impact on others and how your style may be perceived by others.

Armed with this understanding, leaders can then consciously adapt their style to lead their teams more effectively.

How to use self-awareness for better leadership?

• Understanding yourself better, allows you to address your weaknesses and tap into the strengths of others
• You can adapt your style to create the right impact and connection with others
• It helps you recognise the personality strengths of others and their thinking styles, moving from judgement to curiosity
• You will value diversity of thinking and different perspectives in decision making

Much of what influences your actions and behaviours lies beneath the surface, often unnoticed by others. While your actions and behaviours are what you outwardly display, they are shaped by deeper, internal factors such as values, beliefs, thoughts, and emotions. These underlying drivers, often formed by your past experiences, play a significant role in how you respond to situations. By gaining a clearer understanding of these internal influences, you can make more conscious decisions, break unhelpful patterns, and navigate present and future challenges with greater effectiveness.

How to become more self-aware

1. Unique personality profile

Nothing compares to the value of a bespoke, unique personality profile created specifically for you. While you may feel you know yourself well, having your personality thoroughly analysed and presented in black and white provides a new layer of insight. This in-depth analysis uncovers aspects of your character and behaviour that might otherwise go unnoticed, offering a fresh perspective on how you approach situations and interact with others.

The benefits of a customised personality profile include:

• Deeper self-understanding: A personalised profile reveals preference and habitual style together with key traits, strengths, and areas for growth, helping you gain a clearer understanding of your natural tendencies and preferences.
• Objective analysis: Seeing your personality laid out with clarity helps you to recognise these patterns and habits that may impact your performance or relationships.

• 360-degree feedback

Another highly effective tool is 360-degree feedback, which involves gathering insights from those within and outside your organisation. This method provides a comprehensive view of your impact, as you receive feedback from multiple sources including peers, managers, subordinates, and even clients.

The benefits of 360-degree feedback include:

• Holistic understanding: this feedback offers a broader perspective on how others perceive you, identifying strengths and areas that need improvement.
• Enhanced self-awareness: feedback from diverse sources helps you see the effects of your behaviour across different contexts.

• Coaching

Additionally, reflection time with a coach is critical for learning from both successes and failures. By analysing patterns of behaviour, you can consciously modify your actions for better outcomes, improving performance and fostering personal growth.

The benefits of working with a Coach:

Working with a coach can enhance self-awareness, which is essential for personal and professional growth. Coaches use a range of tools and techniques to guide individuals toward a deeper understanding of themselves, their actions, and their goals. A coach helps develop self-awareness through:

• Deep listening: attentively listening beyond words, to body language and what’s not said, picking up on underlying emotions, beliefs, and assumptions. This allows individuals to reflect on what truly drives their behaviour.
• Asking powerful questions: posing insightful, thought-provoking questions, coaches encourage individuals to explore their thoughts, values, and motivations, fostering greater self-understanding.
• Providing objective insights: offering unbiased feedback, helping individuals see themselves from a different perspective and identify blind spots they may have overlooked.
• Noticing inconsistencies: spotting contradictions between what individuals say and do, prompting them to align their actions with their intentions or goals.
• Identifying patterns: through ongoing discussions, coaches help identify recurring behaviours and thought patterns that may be hindering progress, allowing individuals to make more conscious choices moving forward.
• Encouraging responsibility and accountability: holding individuals accountable for their actions, empowering them to take responsibility for their growth and make lasting changes.

Ultimately, heightened self-awareness and accountability contribute to improved decision-making and performance, which drives individual and organisational success. Through coaching, individuals develop a clearer understanding of themselves, enabling them to lead more effectively and achieve their objectives.

Are you ready to accelerate your journey of self-awareness with coaching?

Contact Liz to see if Growth Plans^® are right for you and you are right for them: [email protected]