Self-Awareness and Evaluating Your Own Leadership Style

Are you on auto-pilot? Do you react without thinking things through? Feel stressed and overwhelmed by your workload? If so you might be on what I like to call “auto-pilot”. Navigating through your busy days in reactive mode, trying to survive vs. thrive. Stop the insanity and jump off the corporate hamster wheel!

When I think of great leaders, they do not operate on auto-pilot. They are very mindful, self-aware, emotionally astute leaders and they “show up” in a purposeful way, striving to move the business and people forward.

Several traits come to mind when I think about effective and inspiring leadership. Integrity, charisma, passion, and a powerful ability to engage others are all critical aspects of leadership, but there’s something that the most successful leaders have in common that sets them apart: self-awareness. Self-awareness serves as an essential aspect of leadership and it is critical to possess inside and outside the boardroom.

When you’re in a position of leadership, maintaining a strong sense of self-awareness can be challenging, especially when you have multiple balls in the air that you are juggling at the same time. With so much going on and so much riding on your ability to motivate your people — taking the time to check in honestly with your own performance can be challenging. So, how can you improve your self-awareness as a leader?

Let’s look at some tips that may be useful to you as you strive to increase your self-awareness and effectiveness.

Know the Score

What are the values that are most important to you and your organization? And how well are you exemplifying those values on a day-to-day basis?

Take a moment to write down the core values that drive you and your organization. The list might look something like this:

• Honesty and open communication
• Teamwork
• Dependability
• Flexibility
• Continuous learning and growth
• Efficiency

Once you’ve identified your core values, check in with them on a regular basis (at least once per week) and ask yourself how well you’ve been adhering to them. Give yourself a score on a 1-10 scale. If you’re honest, you’ll probably be surprised at one or more of the results, but doing this exercise allows you to gain a real perspective on your ability to lead, which gives you the opportunity to improve. Over time, you should see steady forward progress that will translate into more effective leadership — and more highly engaged employees!

Level Set Your Own Expectations

Peter Drucker came up with one of the best methods for leadership self-evaluation: in a process he called feedback analysis, he suggested that leaders should write down what they expect will happen as a result of making an important decision.

Taking note of your expectations helps you self-discover a few things:

1. It forces you to think through your decision-making process
2. It creates a scenario in which you are held more accountable so that the desired outcome is achieved
3. It creates an opportunity for you to improve your leadership through self-reflection

When you revisit your expectations on a regular basis, you can compare them to what you wrote with what actually happened, giving you an opportunity to evaluate your leadership effectiveness, become more self-aware, and adjust accordingly.

Use Feedback to Your Advantage

Sometimes the best way to become more self-aware is to step outside of your own perspective and see yourself as others see you.

The people you lead are invaluable resources when it comes to improving your self-awareness because they see you and work with you every day. Ask your employees, peers, and respective manager for feedback. Pay attention to how they interact with you — are they eager to meet with you and share their thoughts? Or do they seem standoffish around you? Watch and learn as your people interact with you; in every interaction, there is a story that explains what you are like as a leader, so take notice and take the steps necessary to become an even more effective leader.

Self-Awareness and Opportunities for Improvement

As you become more self- aware, you may not like some of the aspects you discover about yourself. This may discourage you from continuing your journey of expanding your self-awareness because it’s difficult to face the fact that you may not be performing up to the expectations you have set for yourself.

Although it’s challenging, I recommend thinking about it this way: when you realize that you are making mistakes or failing to live up to your leadership values, you are actually being presented with amazing opportunities to improve. Becoming a more effective leader is a continuous process, so take the lessons you learn through these self-awareness exercises and apply them with the confidence in knowing that you’re improving every day.

What are your thoughts on being on “auto-pilot”, self-awareness, and evaluating your own leadership style? Please share your insights, we would love to hear from you.