Self-Awareness: #1 Leadership Trait

Character, not skill, is the primary determinant of whether a leader will be successful, not at winning, but at leading. I exclude winning because good leadership means you sometimes need to fail, or allow your people to fail. My first post in this series, titled The Leaders’ Journey, tackles this concept. Start there as a primer to the rest of this series if you like.

This post focuses on the first and most essential character trait that any leader needs to cultivate: Self-Awareness. Self-awareness is at the top of the list because it is widely regarded as one of the most important traits of a leader across private and public spheres. 

The first leadership principle in the US Marine Corps is to "know yourself and seek self-improvement." Some studies suggest self-awareness is more important to leadership success than an MBA. But this begs the question, why is it so important?

Why Self-Awareness?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Self-Awareness as the "conscious knowledge of one's character, feelings, motives, and desires." This definition is certainly helpful, but we might add self-awareness around professional capabilities when talking in a vocational sphere. Yet, no matter how you define self-awareness, practicing it is a lot harder than defining it.

I think most of us would admit we aren't entirely aware of our feelings, motives, and desires. They lurk under the surface, driving us, even exerting control over us sometimes. Our subconscious self is working in the background, sometimes for us, sometimes against us. 

Self-Awareness is the first step in gaining conscious control over our feelings, motives, and desires. So self-awareness begins by understanding that we have feelings, motives, and desires. Like a child learning to name an emotion, we, too, need to identify the same. However, self-awareness must go further. We then must inquire why that motive or feeling is there at all. We can't control the subconscious, but we can better understand if it is helpful, trustworthy, or should be actioned. Over time, as we practice self-awareness, we can even train the subconscious—but more on that later.

In my case, one of my biggest struggles throughout life was anger. It would come out in all sorts of ways: condescension, arrogance, or even abusive language towards myself when I made a mistake. One day, a co-worker I had a lot of respect for had the courage to point this out to me. As I was listening to him raise areas where I had opportunities to grow, I felt like my mind was spiraling out of control. I had a suspicion people might experience me the way he was describing, but I had let myself believe it wasn't true. The reality was different. It was true.

What was most scary was that while it was hard to hear that people sometimes experienced me negatively, the most unsettling part was that I wasn't fully aware of it. I lacked self-awareness. I now faced a choice. Retreat and run from this fact, or lean into the pain and address the problem. I leaned in.

After about six months of weekly therapy, things started to come together for me. I was finally able to admit I was angry, and that anger controlled me. No justifying. No explanation. Just accepting. I was aware of the anger, and that was a good start. 

Going deeper, my self-awareness of this problem developed when I discovered that my anger was actually rooted in hurt. I came to realize that when someone would dismiss me, belittle me, or when I would make a mistake, it confirmed an unacknowledged yet deep-seated belief that I carried inside myself for a long time. I thought of myself as having very little worth—and that hurt. From time to time, people or circumstances would reopen that wound, reminding me of that pain, and I would deal with that pain through anger. 

As I became more aware of where that anger came from, I was able to lean into another of our character traits I'll explore in a later post, identity. Identity + Self-Awareness helped me address what I came to understand as a deep-rooted lie.

When those feelings of insecurity or hurt would rear their ugly head, or when the critic inside my mind would attack me, if I ever felt anger coming on, I could address it and inquire why I was feeling that way before I reacted. I could meet lies with the truth before being hijacked. In some cases, perhaps anger was warranted, but I didn't want it to control me; it was just information my body was giving me. My conscious mind needed to decide what to do with it. 

Growth is a journey for sure, but it begins with self-awareness because self-awareness resides at the heart of growing at all. This then begs another question, how do we then grow in Self-Awareness, or for that matter, any character trait. 

Growing in Character (Including Self-Awareness)

Because this stuff really matters, the leadership development approach of our company Pangea is character-driven. Meaning we focus on cultivating seven leadership traits that when combined forge the best leaders. 

We do this through four disciplines: 

1 - Worldview Education

2 - Story Work

3 - Guided Reflection

4 - Evaluation

#1: Worldview Education

We define worldview as, "A fundamental commitment and orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story and set of presuppositions (assumptions that may be true, partially true, or entirely false). This story or presuppositions are held consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently. These make up our basic constitution of reality, and that provide the foundation on which we live and move, and have our being."

Very philosophical, yes. Essential? We believe so. At the most basic level, self-awareness begins and ends with understanding why you believe anything at all. 

• What is real? 
• What is true? 
• What is good and bad? 
• What is important to me? 
• What should I do? 

Worldviews are combinations of influences by our childhood, experiences, religious or non-religious convictions, science, education, vocation, culture, biology, etc. 

Tracing all of the sources would take a lifetime. Still, at Pangea, we begin the work because we believe understanding and naming our worldview makes us more aware of why we do anything. Furthermore, it makes us more curious and compassionate about why anyone does anything. Disagreements and dissent are just part of life and work, and understanding why becomes a lot more important than proving our position! 

#2: Deep Story Work

Long story short, it is crucial we all know one another's stories when working on close teams. Our stories shape us. Some would even say we are our story. I don't exist or know who I am apart from my story of how I got to where I am. Engaging with our story puts us in touch with the practical side of worldview. 

Why is it I believe what I do? Well, my story can explain part of that. Why are certain people or circumstances triggering to me? Well, my story can explain part of that. Why do I love what I do? The sum of all those individual experiences and parts makes up my story. 

Stories connect us to one another. We identify with one another through story. Bonds of friendship form when we truly know others, and when we are truly known. We become human—not just teammates or employees—because of our story. We become even more human in our own eyes when we acknowledge and face the darkness and light in our stories. Story is essential to developing compassion for another. Anyone who has served on a team with teammates knows that compassion (another of our core traits) is vital for building a strong relationship.

However, this is only possible when we tell our stories. So at Pangea, we spend a considerable amount of time engaging in our stories with others. 

#3: Guided Reflection

This one is easy to talk about. It's more challenging to do. Engaging in contemplative reflection on your own choices, behaviors, responses, feelings, motives, and desires all provide opportunities for us to engage in honest self-evaluation. 

This process can be painful when we look at our honest reflections in the mirror, so we emphasized the need to embrace the journey mentality in The Leaders’ Journey. This process is arduous, so it's best done with a guide. It can be a coach, a therapist, a mentor, as long as they have done critical self-reflection and evaluation work themselves.

The truth is none of us have made it; we're all going to mess up from time to time, especially when we try to get better and are vulnerable in doing that. That's OK. What's not OK is sitting back and ignoring opportunities for reflection. There is no such thing as sitting still in growth, if you aren’t moving forward, you’re falling backward.

#4: Honest Evaluation

One of our values at Pangea is Zeal, and a component of that is how we communicate. We embrace the idea of radical candor in everything from our day-to-day communication to our routine evaluations. Meaning we try to be honest and kind—emphasis on kind. That said, evaluations are critical to building a culture of accountability and provide an excellent opportunity for routine check-ins that matter. 

At Pangea, we want to create opportunities to get better. We want to highlight those pain points personally that we should pull into our guided reflection time with that trusted person. We want to identify areas where we could be better for teammates. We want to cultivate an awareness of our strengths and weaknesses seriously. One of the great gifts someone can receive is knowing what they are uniquely God-gifted in, and what they need teammates for...

Self: We do self-evaluations routinely. Does how I think I measure up in an area align with how others feel I measure up?

Top-Down: How does my leader think I am doing? Am I ready for a promotion? Most importantly, why or why not. 

Bottom-Up: How do those I lead think I am doing? 

Peer-to-Peer: How do my peers think I am doing? What do I need to work on?

Routine 1-on-1: Nothing in an evaluation should ever be a complete surprise. So, we use bi-weekly 1:1s to work on everything that comes up in all of the above. Good leaders make good leaders, so we try to allow our leaders to cultivate the same that's being cultivated in them from the top-down. 

In the next post, we look at the next trait: Trust. Until then, check out the chart below on how Self-Awareness maps to the other leadership traits and the fruit they produce together!

-Aeron Sullivan

*Special Thanks to Andrew Imamura for the beautiful illustrations!