Developing Self-awareness

Developing self-awareness is one of the most important aspects leaders can do.

In my second edition of Exceptional Leadership: 16 Critical Competencies for Healthcare Executives, Second Edition (2015, Health Administration Press, Chicago, IL), I wrote:

“Self-awareness means understanding yourself as a leader—in particular, your strengths, limitations, hot buttons, and blind spots. Developing self-awareness requires leaders to intellectually and emotionally process on two levels.

First, leaders must develop the ability to collect accurate, high-quality feedback from the work environment.

Second, leaders must contemplate with an open mind what that feedback means to them and to their performance as a leader. While these processes sound deceptively simple, in reality they are far from it. We all receive some feedback from the environment, and we all accept it with some open-mindedness. The magnitude of both this environment and our capacity for being open-minded makes the difference between good leadership and exceptional leadership.

Exceptional leaders make sure their environment is rich in feedback and internalize the feedback they receive. High performance in the area of self-awareness also involves mastery of two competencies: Leading With Conviction and Using Emotional Intelligence.”