Self Awareness Archives - Leadership & Development

Self Awareness

Leadership in life is all about doing and achieving what is important to you. The simple fact that you direct your own life from day to day makes you a leader. It\’s about getting results that are most meaningful to you.

Leadership in everyday life activities

This could be anything, such as pursuing a hobby or pastime to the best of your ability, managing a local sports team or giving your kids the best life learning opportunities and experiences.

Leadership in life is about meeting your own personal goals and objectives. It\’s about succeeding in the things that matter to you.

Achieving what matters to you is Leadership

The process of getting the results that are important to you is a form of leadership. So if you\’ve never really thought of yourself as a successful leader start reflecting on all the things you have achieved in your life and what you did to get to that point. You may quickly discover that you\’re a much stronger leader than you thought.

Plan of Action

A good plan of action is to record your goals down in a notebook or smart device. Also, note down any steps that you think you need to do to reach each goal. The simple act of writing things down tends to enable us to reach our personal goals and objectives much more quickly.

Go From Leadership In Life To The Home Page

Leaders who are self-aware tend to be the best and most productive leaders.

But how exactly do you build strong self-awareness? Well, one good and a proven way is the 360 appraisal process which is now commonplace in many organizations.

360 Appraisal Process

The 360 appraisal process in its most basic form is simply where you rate yourself against a set of leadership skills and qualities and/or organizational values. Then you get others to rate you on the same. Others include your direct reports, peers and occasionally other key stakeholders too, such as customers or suppliers.

The 360 appraisal process is done anonymously to enable those providing feedback to be brutally honest without fear of any consequences.

Become Self Aware By Asking For Feedback

Another simple way to become more self-aware is to simply ask for feedback. This is much easier than a 360 assessment process and can often provide information that’s equally useful. Of course, asking for feedback directly removes that anonymity and therefore you need to emphasize that you\’re after honest and direct feedback. Feedback with which you are able to act on.

Your goal is to fully understand where you are today and what you need to do to improve to get to some future desired state.

You may also want to take a look at the article on self-assessment.