Self-Awareness: The Cornerstone of Leadership Development

There is something satisfying about action that moves us towards tangible goals. It is energizing to dive right in, identifying the tactical steps that will move us to achieve desired outcomes. We constantly receive feedback from the world applauding our hard work and visible progress, which encourages us to do more. When we fail, we may try harder and do more to succeed in the future.

In coaching, we take a step back from thinking about what we need to do to achieve our goals and think about who we need to be. We begin with a period of self-discovery, evaluating where we are right now and building self-awareness. We may develop self-awareness in a variety of ways such as through assessments, self-observations and inviting feedback from others. We can learn not only our strengths and weaknesses, but our habits, what holds us back and how we are perceived by others. Increasing our self-awareness early on allows us to make informed choices about how we need to be in order to be most effective.

Self-awareness is the cornerstone of leadership development. Once we build a strong foundation, we can then choose who we need to be to more effectively do, and thus achieve desired outcomes.