Insights on Self Awareness from Hearts, Smarts, Guts and Luck

One of the most overlooked yet impactful traits of highly effective leaders is self-awareness. One definition of self-awareness is simply to know yourself, including your traits, feelings and behaviors.

Being self-aware has many benefits. When you are a self-aware leader you are better able to leverage your strengths by adjusting your presence and behavior to the situation. You are able to assess how your skills and experience can be applied and have the awareness to tap others for the skills and traits you lack.

The following are 3-ways to develop self- awareness and are adapted from Anthony Tjan’s book, Heart, Smarts, Guts and Luck.

1. Know thyself: Sign-up up for personality tests like Myers Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI) and Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness (DiSC) and 360 assessments such as the Leadership Circle Profile to facilitate self-reflection, which leads to better self-awareness.
2. Improve thyself: Work with an executive coach as your trusted partner to work on your development goals.
3. Complement thyself: Assessing your strengths and weaknesses and tapping others’ abilities to fill in any gaps can increase your social capital, win you the trust of others and increase your credibility – all of which will increase your leadership effectiveness.

When you are self-aware and take responsibility for noticing and managing your emotions, how you behave, what you know, and what you don’t know, you benefit both yourself and your organization.

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