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More self-awareness leads to more effective leadership

Research from Kempten University of Applied Sciences, Germany

📋 Introduction

Paper Title: The Impact of Self-Awareness on Leadership Behavior
Year of Publication: 2020
Journal: Journal of Applied Leadership and Management
Authors: Peter Hartung, MBA, M.Sc. (University of Applied Sciences Kempten, Germany)

Why this matters

This study provides valuable insights into the significant influence of self-awareness on effective leadership behavior, making it a crucial skill for leaders to cultivate in order to optimize their performance and positively impact employee motivation, satisfaction, and productivity.

Findings

The study aimed to investigate the impact of self-awareness on leadership behavior and effectiveness, particularly in terms of employee motivation, satisfaction, and productivity. Through a comprehensive literature review and empirical analysis using the Leadership Tasks Survey, the following main findings were obtained:

There is a significant correlation between self-awareness and productive leadership behavior.
Self-awareness positively correlates with leadership effectiveness, specifically in terms of employee motivation, satisfaction, and productivity.
The four dimensions of self-awareness examined in the study (moral values, inclusive decisions, self-transparency, and relationship transparency) showed strong correlations with various leadership tasks and effectiveness measures.

Why this happens

Self-awareness is a big part of emotional intelligence. It helps leaders understand their own feelings, strengths, weaknesses, values, and goals. When leaders know themselves well, they can control their emotions better, make decisions that include everyone, and make sure their actions match their values. This helps leaders build trust, understand others, and have good relationships with their employees. Self-awareness also helps leaders change how they act based on what their followers need, which makes them better leaders. The study found that the different parts of self-awareness were strongly linked to how well leaders did various tasks, showing that self-awareness has a big impact on how well leaders can guide, motivate, and support their team members.

💡 Our recommendation

Given the significant impact of self-awareness on leadership effectiveness, we recommend that leaders prioritize the development of self-awareness through practices such as seeking feedback, engaging in self-reflection, and participating in coaching or mentoring programs to enhance their emotional intelligence and leadership skills.

If you're truly serious about developing better self-awareness as a leader, we highly recommend you Voohy leadership tools. These include a world-class reflective work journal, stakeholder management tools, career goals tracking, and tools to reflect on and track your wins at work.

These tools for developing self-awareness are available in Voohy's Gold and Platinum plans.