Assessing Leadership Capability, Essay Example

Introduction

Within the context of management and leadership studies, there are five core examples of self-awareness in personal skill development. This paper explores these values and how individuals can tap into these qualities in the betterment of personal leadership training.  Most individuals have a relatively low level of self-awareness as most of us hate negative feedback and personal reflection that might damage our self-esteem.  This is essentially unfortunate because by recognising these self-identified attributes we are on the first rung of a ladder to improve our professional development and personal growth.

Five Core Aspects of Self-Awareness

Good Managers and Leaders realise that it is important first to understand themselves before attempting to offer leadership coaching and advice to others.  In this regard there are five key attributes of self-evaluation: Personality, Values, Habits, Needs and Emotions.  (Williams)

Personality – This involves looking at our personality attributes and how we react to different situations. Are we calm under pressure or do we become aggressive; thoughtful and analytical to problem solving and decision making or reactionary. The concept of being an extrovert personality or an introvert personality.  By analysing your individual personality traits you can modify your behaviour to fit different circumstances.

Values – This relates to understanding your personal values.  This may be religious values and relationship with God or family values.  These are often motivational drivers and may determine your specific course of action. Focusing on values often leads top mission accomplishment.

Habits – This is behavioral patterns in terms of what you do routinely. These may be good or bad, productive or unproductive and help determine individual effectiveness.  Forcefield Analysis is a good way to examine habits and their magnitudes. Equally those which are polarised i.e. a change in one force produces an equal and opposite effect in another force.

Needs – Specifically Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.  Another useful model concept being that of The Johari Window

A very useful matrix diagram. Shows human interaction and personal awareness divided into four distinct types.  Open, Hidden, Blind and Unknown.

“The open  quadrant represents things that both I know about myself, and that you know about me” (Yen, 1999).  Whereas the blind quadrant is things that you know about me that I am unaware of. The hidden quadrant is items I know about myself that you do not know and finally the Unknown is things that I do not know about you or me.

Conclusion

Leadership development is both an important matter for individuals and for the Executive of an organization for those aspiring to develop business management careers.  Training forms a vital part of developing leadership skills and developing your individual leadership style. It is important that your leadership style is reflective of the organizational mission statement, philosophy and way of conducting business. Although organizations may tolerate a broad range of leadership styles, nevertheless it is important that your style is not too far removed from the central ethos of management. An important part of developing your own leadership style is in clarifying your own values and beliefs. (Eriksen)

Works Cited

Eriksen, M. “). Authentic Leadership: Practical Reflexivity, Self-Awareness, and Self-Authorship.” Journal of Management Vol 35 (2011).

Williams, Scott. Self Awareness and Personal Development. 2012. http://www.wright.edu/~scott.williams/leaderletter/selfawareness.htm. 27 11 2012.

Yen, Duen Hsi. Johari Window. 26 4 1999. 11 9 2010. <http://www.noogenesis.com/game_theory/johari/johari_window.html>.