Nutshell: What is self-awareness – and why does it matter?

Understanding our own personality and individuality – and how they impact on others – is at the core of effective leadership.

Sometimes, when we’re looking to understand a concept or idea, it can help to think about its absence, what it’s not.

Organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich has made a career of research into self-awareness, what it means and how it manifests itself. So, we might take note when she handily offers up her guide to the least self-aware characters in fiction.

The “comically delusional” Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice, anyone?  The original desperate (and phenomenally unaware) housewife, Emma Bovary? Or perhaps we might think of the “colossal vitality” of Jay Gatsby’s illusion in The Great Gatsby.

 Sadly, it’s not just fictional characters who fail to make the grade when it comes to knowing ourselves and how we’re perceived by others.

It may be relatively harmless as a character device in the pages of a book, but a lack of self-awareness in the real world can be a significant barrier to making the most of ourselves and forging relationships with others.

At work, developing that self-awareness is important for all of us; for leaders, it’s crucial.

In search of self-awareness

Eurich defines self-awareness as “the ability to see ourselves clearly; to understand who we are, how others see us and how we fit into the world”.

The difficulty is that self-awareness can seem like the most elusive of personal qualities. Ukrainian poet and activist Vironika Tugaleva is but one of a long line of thinkers, writers and psychologists to ponder and share with the world their views on what knowing ourselves really means.

But Tugaleva’s wisdom that “To know yourself, you must sacrifice the illusion that you already do” is not a bad starting point as we embark on the journey towards self-knowledge that is so essential – and never-ending.

 One of the reasons that self-awareness has fascinated so many thinkers for so long is that it is a notoriously difficult thing to understand. The ability to know ourselves, to understand our emotions, how they affect us - and others – can mean engaging with our inner beings at quite a fundamental and uncomfortable level.

At work, when it’s hard to find the time to interrogate even the simplest of actions or events, knowing why and how we feel and act the way we do can be incredibly hard.

We might feel that irritation when Dave from Accounts fiddles with his pen incessantly in meetings or be wounded to the core by what our boss thought was just a lighted-hearted joke about that presentation we just gave. But we don’t always understand why we feel annoyed, distressed or triggered much of the time.

We’re not alone. Arguably, the fundamental starting point of philosophy itself is the ancient aphorism inscribed on the opening to the Delphic Oracle in Greece: ‘know thyself’. But when that same Oracle declared, generations later, that the philosopher Socrates was the wisest man of all, his reaction to this particularly nice piece of feedback was confusion rather than self-congratulation.

When he reflected on why the Oracle had bestowed this honour on him, he humbly concluded that it could only be that his true wisdom was in being aware of how little he actually knew. And, Tugaleva-like, he considered that to be especially true when it comes to our ability to really know ourselves.

“A Copernican revolution of the soul”

By the 19th century, the burgeoning science of psychology was joining in with our perennial fascination with our ability (or otherwise) to know ourselves. According to founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, we are definitively “not masters in our own houses”. We might feel in control but, in reality, we’re largely driven by unconscious motives that often elude us.

Freud considered this central facet of psychoanalysis to be so significant that he likened it to the discovery by the mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus that it was the Sun, and not the Earth, at the centre of the universe.

Just like the Earth, our egos would have to adjust to the new realities of a “Copernican revolution of the soul”, one in which we were far less consciously in charge of ourselves than we might think.

While some have argued that these unconscious drivers have their origins in evolutionary theory, Freud considered the task of self-awareness – and of psychoanalysis generally –  to be based in painstakingly identifying and moving those hidden unconscious motives into the light of consciousness so that we can gradually gain more insight into what’s driving us. And with that insight comes, to some degree, the ability to gain control of what we’re actually doing.

So, for Freud, understanding what motivates and drives us gives us the power to potentially change and develop, as well as understanding how we might affect those around us.

It’s this idea that underpins much contemporary thinking about self-awareness, especially when it comes to forging those positive relationships with others that is the hallmark of effective leadership. It’s not surprising, then, that self-awareness has come to be seen as a key leadership virtue.

The power of seeing ourselves clearly

Psychologist and emotional intelligence (EQ) guru, Daniel Goleman, agrees. For Goleman, self-awareness is “the first component of emotional intelligence”, given prominence as the first of his four EQ domains and defined by him as how we understand:

• our own emotions

• their impact on others

Self-awareness is about decoding how we’re feeling and why, consciously examining our motives, desires and character:

• It makes us aware of our strengths and weaknesses.

• It means sensing how others see us and how our self-image reflects that larger reality.

• It helps us to have clarity when it comes to our values and purpose, allowing us to be more decisive when we need to act.

Leaders who are self-aware can recognise when their emotions have a negative impact on their work, or on the people around them – and are better equipped to change tack, look for opportunities for feedback, experiment with different ways to motivate people and be more open to creative solutions.

Rare and valuable

That’s not to say that Socrates was wrong. For Eurich, true self-awareness is as rare as it is valuable. Her book, Insight, reports on her large-scale scientific study to define what self-awareness really is and how we can increase it.

The headline result? While 95% of people believe they are self-aware, only 10-15% actually are. And with those who met her criteria for self-awareness, there were no patterns by industry, age, gender or any other demographic characteristic.  

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to build our self-knowledge. It’s worth developing, Eurich argues, because it “gives us power”, even if we don’t always like what we see.

“People who are self-aware are more fulfilled, have stronger relationships, are more creative, confident and better communicators,” she asserted in a TED Talk in 2017. “They are less likely to lie, cheat and steal, they perform better at work, are more promotable and they are more effective leaders with more profitable companies.”

A study by consultants Korn Ferry found that among leaders with multiple strengths in emotional self-awareness, 92% had teams with high energy and high performance. Conversely, leaders low in emotional self-awareness created negative climates 78% of the time.

So, if self-awareness is so powerful – and yet so elusive – what can we do to understand it better and begin to develop it ourselves?

Internal and external self-awareness

A good starting point is to delve a little deeper into what it actually means to be a self-aware leader. 

Eurich identifies two types of self-awareness, both of which must be cultivated and balanced for effective leadership:

Internal self-awareness (how well we know ourselves)  

External self-awareness (how well we understand how others see us) 

Since there is almost no link between having internal self-awareness and external self-awareness, she has developed four leadership “types” to provide a framework for improvement. They’re a useful guide that can be used alongside other diagnostics such as the Johari Window.

At the bottom of the awareness hierarchy are the Seekers, unsure of who they are or how others perceive them, and requiring improvement in both their internal and external awareness.

These are followed by the inward-focused Introspectors (who have a good understanding of their strengths and weaknesses but are not clear how others see them), and the outward-looking Pleasers (who understand how they are seen by others, but do not have an accurate sense of self).

Sitting pretty at the top are the Aware, with their delicate balance of internal and external awareness.

It’s important not to value internal over external self-awareness or vice versa. Leaders must actively work on both seeing themselves clearly and developing strategies to understand how others see them: “Self-awareness isn’t one truth. It’s a delicate balance of two distinct, even competing, viewpoints.”

How to develop self-awareness

No matter which Eurich type we match right now, the good news is that there is plenty of scope to improve our own self-awareness, both internal and external. But it takes practice, we need to tackle it the right way, and it is, indeed, a journey; we will never stop learning about ourselves.  

As a starting point, Future Talent Learning has developed a six-point plan to help us get to know ourselves better. We need to to the following:

1. Recognise our emotions. 

2. Know our strengths and (allowable) weaknesses. 

3. Beware our blind spots. 

4. Take the time to reflect. 

5. Learn to love (and solicit) feedback.

6. Make it about others too. 

If we can embed these techniques into our leadership practice, we can start build the self-awareness we need to become truly transformational leaders.  

Which brings us back to Socrates, and his thinking that “an unexamined life is not worth living”.

Self-awareness is a fundamental building block of effective leadership. Understanding what it means, and how we can work towards it are the precursors to being able to reconceive and reinvent ourselves and our practice.

To continue to learn, develop and grow – and to help our people to do the same - we need to discover ourselves first.

And, to do that, we might be mindful of the immortal words of two great poets: from Alexander Pope, we need to heed his call to “Know then thyself”, while at the same time striving for Robert Burns’ “giftie”, “To see oursels as others see us”.

Tasha Eurich would, I’m sure, approve of such literary self-awareness.

Test your understanding

• Outline your own definition of self-awareness

• Describe Tasha Eurich’s two types of self-awareness.

What does it mean for you?

• Take the Tasha Eurich insight quiz.

• What did you find out/ How might that insight help you develop your own self-awareness?