Self-Awareness – Key to Effective Leadership

Abstract

Many theories and thinkers have attempted to explore what truly makes a person emerge as a leader. Successful leadership often surfaces when people become aware of critical personal experiences in their life, understand the driving forces, respond by rethinking about self, redirect their moves and reshape their actions. Stanford rates soft skill like selfawareness as one of the pillars of managerial capabilities that predicts managerial effectiveness and leadership success. It suggests that IQ and technical skills are far less important to leadership success than selfawareness. In a world of unprecedented business complexities, leaders, besides explicit knowledge, need an inner compass of self-awareness to walk the tight rope of leadership. The paper explores the concept selfawareness and traces the two essential components of self-awareness. The paper dwells on the reasons for self-ignorance arising out of individual’s inability to exploit two components. It also underlines how self-awareness contributes to self-actualization and managerial effectiveness.