Leadership and self awarness

"Do the best you can up to you know better. Then, when you know better, do better. "- Maya Angelou

Effective leadership requires high-quality emotional abilities allowing leaders to draw in the depths of their soul, their values, and their abilities. Leaders must have - to reach this level of "personality" - some key behaviors: 

They must be able to demonstrate personal qualities like self-awareness or integrity. They should be able to work with others and be "success-oriented". And finally the last element of the square is related to the continuous improvement of the quality of results delivered. These behaviors can be assessed externally by the organization based on what we can see or based on based on various feedbacks. The best way to know about these behaviors is to ask the concerned person to talk about them.       

We are all different by our backgrounds, our cultures, our professional or academic courses, our history, and our fears. This high diversity is often not used or is wrongly used by the organizations. Our companies are a sum of our different capacities and behaviors; it becomes helpful to know ourselves, to know the others and to know the different interactions that we can have with each other.

The History has shown that leaders are always people who have some relevant (known or unknown) behaviors or have wisely used their abilities but also those of other members of their various organizations.

Who am I?

Leadership is first of all about "self,” Am I a good leader?

We often wonder who we are as leader. This question refers to our values and our beliefs, our knowledge, skills and emotional abilities but also to our leadership and management styles.

What do I know?

 As said above, our recent history is building our way of performing.  Who, we meet in our life, what we found or learned years ago, will automatically define of present and our way of thinking and doing.

What can I do?

In light of who am I and what I know. What is possible, where stops the likelihood determining the border line between myth and reality. This concept is what I would call the notion of reality-dream. Answering to this question that will help us to understand better how we should use our knowledge and skills more efficiently.  Even if we are not simplifying things, we can simplify the way of doing.

 Asking this fundamental question allows us as a leader to improve our understanding of our self and help we to organize ourselves to behave better perform. Through different types of evaluation or assessments, exercises organizations learn to know better those who are part of them and by the same way people will now better how organizations are performing.

  The self-assessment is a mirror that allows us to see ourselves as we think we are, but like all complex pictures the perception can change our view. In many times, we can look at the same picture but have a different point of opinions or interpretations.  As observers, the pictures will still the same but at different times we can have different interpretations. Our assessments or self-assessment can be biased by what is called cognitive bias. It can be defined as a "pattern of deviation in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion "[1].  E.g. we may mention the confirmation bias is the tendency to confirm our assumptions, or that to overestimate.

The aim of the organizations is to be more efficient and to stay performing. The more, members have a real knowledge of their "self" the more the organization as a group is playing. Based on the questions mentioned above, we can see how the organizations can use the strengths and weaknesses of its leaders to achieve its objectives. If,  as a leader my self-assessment showed that my relational qualities are not very good, how should I go about strengthening this capacity and if not how to have with me the person having these qualities.

.As a leader, the more we know about ourselves and the more we can build on these strengths and manage the weaknesses. We are the one who knows the most about ourselves, and we must objectively be self-assessed. As said the quote at the beginning of this text, know better, do better and this apply to self. Self-assessment is important to determine its strengths and weaknesses in the process especially if we get feedback from our peers, supervisors and colleagues. It defines the way we should perform and the way of performing for the organization.

Some organizations have developed and implemented self-assessment tools for their leaders by identifying key elements of their activities. Also to the qualities individually contributing to the vision and overall strategies, organizations are increasingly interested in other aspects of, managing services, Improving and delivering results, working with teams or setting direction.

Specific self-assessment tools had developed for each of the principal components, and the results used as management or strategic guidance tools. The organizations are treating the leadership self-assessment as an important part of their improvement process, by putting the individual at the center of the group, and their self-awareness as a roadmap.

[1] Haselton, M. G., Nettle, D., & Andrews, P. W. (2005). The evolution of cognitive bias. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Hoboken, NJ, US: John Wiley & Sons Inc. pp. 724–746.