The Linchpin of Leadership– Self-Awareness

“I’m working on it!” For anyone with teenagers, most likely you have been on the receiving end of this statement a time or two. For me, this is a natural household response anytime I inquire about messy rooms or unfinished homework. As leaders committed to continuous self-improvement, this refrain also rings true. We are all working on it right?

Leaders recognize that individual emotional and social intelligence competencies are more than niceties for teams and talent. This is a core skill underpinning highly effective performance of leaders worth following.

How does Emotional Intelligence Drive Performance?

The latest findings show that the capabilities generally used to define baseline employability are indeed common strengths and include:

  • Achievement Orientation

  • Teamwork

  • Organizational Awareness

The Emotional Intelligence skills lagging in this comparative study included:

  • Emotional Self-Awareness

  • Influence

  • Coaching and Mentoring

  • Conflict Management

  • Inspirational Leadership

So What? Why Does This Matter?

The Sobering News…One of the more profound learning points from this report comes in the distribution of related EI skills. Revealed was the fact that a leader who rarely demonstrated Emotional Self-Awareness is NOT likely to show strength in any of the other complementary Emotional Intelligence skills.

The Better News! A leader who demonstrates Emotional Self-Awareness consistently is likely to strongly display more than nine related Emotional Intelligence competencies.

This information is a bellwether trend lending significance to the notion that Self-Awareness lies at the heart of Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence lies within the core of leaders worth following.

The Jarring Impact…Without healthy Self Awareness, a leader’s chance of demonstrating strength in competencies of self-management, social awareness, and relationship management is low. On the contrary, with a solid understanding of “Knowing Yourself to Lead Yourself,” the leader is likely to shine successfully and progress healthy leadership culture caught across the organization.

A leader who rarely demonstrated Emotional Self-Awareness is not likely to show strength in any of the other complementary Emotional Intelligence skills

Impact Activated

Great leaders encourage, equip, and empower the success in others. These are the leaders who relentlessly focus and accelerate the growth of positive and robust organizational culture.

Five Attitudes — Liberating Self-Awareness

  1. Long Life Learning — Make your personal learning a priority for life.

  2. Contextualize Your Leadership — Life and leadership are not linear in nature. Leadership is rarely a technicality to master, rather a “craft in context” to the specific needs of those being served.

  3. Play Nice — Most of the human race won’t slow down to support those they dislike. Leaders worth following are committed to the well-being of their teams and the relational health across the organization.

  4. Let it Go — Leaders worth following have power and know how to wield it appropriately. Power “for me” creates a culture of overpowering, fear, and manipulation. Likewise self-centered power manifests a culture of disempowerment and passive aggression. Leaders who are committed to “power for others” create liberating cultures of empowerment, respect, and opportunity.

  5. Unlearn — Shedding the layers of poorly observed behavior, emotional dysfunction, and intellectual baggage is a celebrated moment for leaders. Suspending the natural tendencies of holding on to unhealthy and/or questionable beliefs is difficult, yet essential for leadership growth. Bold and courageous are the leaders who are willing to peek from behind their walls of self-preservation in asking others to honestly reveal the goods and the gaps in answering the question, “What is it like to be on the other side of me?”

Becoming Self-Aware is a real time process of syncing gradual release AND human capacity building with humility as the spark igniting the potential of high leadership performance and influence.

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