What is Self-Awareness?

You may have heard leadership gurus say something along the lines of, “EQ is more important than IQ.” However, you may not know what EQ is or how to increase it.

Emotional Intelligence (often abbreviated “EQ”), is a leadership skill that focuses on one’s personal and social competencies. There are four components to emotional intelligence:

1. Self-Awareness
2. Self-Management
3. Social Awareness
4. Relationship Management

This post will focus on Self-Awareness. In their book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves define self-awareness as “To know yourself as you really are” (p. 61).

Self-awareness is one of the leadership principles I discuss in my book, A Leader Worth Imitating (Principle 20).

When we look at the leadership of Jesus, we see He taught His disciples to be self-aware. Matthew 7:3-5 reads, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (New International Version). 

I can’t think of a better passage that illustrates the importance of self-awareness. It might be funny to imagine someone with a wooden beam in his eye. Talk about a blind spot! However, it’s less funny when you imagine it being  you. This passage is not about pointing out the blind spots in others, it it is about having our blind spots pointed out. 

The tricky thing with a blind spot is if we could see them we wouldn’t have them. This is where growing in self-awareness can be challenging. We might think we have a particular strength until someone points out that we don’t.  For example, you may think that you empower your team. However, your team might feel like you micro-manage them. 

Because of this, feedback is an important part of self-awareness. In A Leader Worth Imitating, I explain that feedback is empowering your team to ask questions, make suggestions, raise concerns, and/or challenge ideas (Principle 19). By empowering your teams to give you feedback, you can strengthen both your self-awareness and leadership.

Think about it: Do you want to grow in self-awareness? Who is someone you can get feedback from?

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If your interested in learning more about EQ, check out the accompanying posts:

• What is Emotional Intelligence?
• What is Self-Management?
• What is Social Awareness?
• What is Relational Management?