Going Beyond Self-Other Rating Comparison to Measure Leader Self-Awareness

Abstract

Data were collected from leaders who rated their interpersonal competencies, were rated by their direct reports on the same competencies, and then were asked to predict as accurately as possible how their direct reports rated them. Leader self-awareness was examined by analyzing self-other ratings and prediction-other ratings with a supervisor-rated measure of leader effectiveness. Results showed that prediction-other ratings explained a greater percentage of the variance in leader effectiveness than did self-other ratings. These results suggest that prediction-other rating comparison may be a viable additional way to measure self-awareness in organizational settings and may avoid some of the disadvantages when only using self-ratings or self-other ratings.