The Self-Aware Leader Delusion: Are You the 95% or the Rare 10%?
Quick question: On a scale of 1-10, how self-aware would you rate yourself as a leader? Take a moment and choose a number…
If you scored yourself a 7 or higher, you may well have just fallen into the same trap as 95% of leaders. Research reveals a startling truth: while nearly all leaders believe they possess strong self-awareness, only 10% actually do. Eurich, T. (2017).
This isn’t just an interesting disconnect—it’s a delusion that’s silently undermining your effectiveness, team engagement, and ultimately, your organisation’s bottom line. The most dangerous leadership blind spot? Not knowing you have one.
In this series, we’ll dive into emotional intelligence (EI), a key skill for today’s leaders, starting with the first and arguably most crucial facet: self-awareness. According to Daniel Goleman, EI is made up of five essential components:
- Self-awareness – the ability to recognise and understand your own emotions, strengths and limitations.
- Self-regulation – managing your emotions healthily and constructively.
- Motivation – the drive to pursue goals with energy and persistence. .
- Empathy – understanding the emotions of others, and responding appropriately.
- Social skills –building, managing and maintaining relationships with others.
Self-awareness sits at the heart of emotional intelligence, as it enables leaders to understand how their emotions and actions affect others, and is a prerequisite for mastering the remaining components. . Without this foundation, leadership effectiveness is often compromised, and the best intentions can fall short.
The Two Facets of Self-Awareness
Self-awareness has two equally important facets: how we see ourselves and how others see us.
We’ve all experienced that moment in a meeting when we think we’re being helpful by offering solutions, only to later discover our team felt we were taking over and dismissing their ideas. That gap between intention and perception is where leadership effectiveness lives or dies.
The research (as described in Dr. Tasha Eurich’s book ‘Insight’) is clear: leaders who understand both their internal landscape and their external impact make better decisions, build stronger teams, and deliver superior results.
The Real Cost of Leadership Blind Spots
We’ve all worked with the technical expert who was promoted for their brilliant individual contributions but couldn’t understand why their team was disengaged. Or the charismatic visionary who couldn’t figure out why their grand ideas never gained traction.
The common thread? A lack of awareness about how their leadership style affected others. This isn’t just uncomfortable—it’s expensive. Teams led by low self-awareness leaders experience:
- Dramatically more conflict
- Lower productivity
- Higher turnover
How many talented people have you seen leave organisations not because of the work, but because of the leadership?
Breaking Through the Self-Awareness Barrier
Step 1: Challenge Your Certainty
Remember that time you were absolutely convinced you were right about something, only to discover later you had missed crucial information?
We all naturally seek evidence that confirms what we already believe about ourselves. Break this pattern by regularly asking, “What might I be missing here?” or “What would someone who sees this differently notice?”
Step 2: Create Feedback Loops That Actually Work
We’ve all received that vague annual review feedback that offers little useful insight. Effective self-awareness requires specific, timely feedback from multiple sources. Try these approaches:
- Simple after-meeting check-ins: “What worked in that discussion and what could I have done differently?”
- Regular conversations with trusted colleagues who see you in action
- Anonymous team pulse surveys focused on specific behaviours, not general impressions
Step 3: Pause and Notice
We’ve all had that moment of saying something in frustration, immediately regretting it, and wondering, “Where did that come from?”
Regular pauses throughout your day build the self-observation muscle. Before important interactions, take 30 seconds to check: What’s my mood right now? How do I want to be showing up? What am I bringing into this conversation? What does success look like here?
Step 4: Track Patterns, Not Just Incidents
We’ve all dismissed feedback with “that was just a bad day” or “that person just doesn’t like me.”
Look instead for patterns across different situations and relationships. If three different people have mentioned your meeting style over six months, there’s likely to be something worth exploring.
Common Self-Awareness Traps
1. The Endless Why Loop
Ever found yourself obsessing over why you reacted a certain way, only to end up more confused?
Instead of asking “why” questions that lead to rationalisation, try asking “what” questions: “What triggered me in that situation?” and “What impact did my reaction have?”
2. The Feedback Filter
We’ve all enthusiastically requested feedback and then immediately explained why the feedback was wrong.
Remember: the goal isn’t to prove or disprove the feedback but to understand the perception.
Be open to alternative views about yourself.
3. The Success Paradox
Notice how the more experienced you become in your field, the less often people challenge your thinking? Success creates a feedback vacuum that requires active counter-measures.
Encourage others to challenge you. Ask for different perspectives.
Practical Tools for Growing Self-Awareness
1. Perspective-Mapping
After important meetings, consider the different perspectives in the room. What did each person care about? How might they have experienced your approach?
2. Awareness Partners
Identify 2-3 trusted colleagues with whom you establish a mutual feedback agreement. These are your go-to people for the “how did that really go?” conversations.
3. Decision Journals
For key decisions, write down your reasoning, expected outcomes, and areas of uncertainty. Review these entries regularly to identify patterns in your thinking.
4. Expert Support
Sometimes an outside perspective from a mentor or coach can illuminate patterns invisible to you and your immediate circle. Find a trusted mentor or engage a coach to help you.
What to Expect on the Journey
Growing self-awareness isn’t about overnight transformation. Think of it like building any other skill:
- You’ll have immediate insights but integrating them takes consistent practice
- You’ll notice changes in your thinking within weeks, but behavioural shifts can take months
- The most significant improvements in your leadership effectiveness will emerge over 6-12 months as new habits become automatic
From Blind Spots to Breakthroughs
The path from unconscious leadership to deliberate self-awareness begins with a simple recognition: the most self-aware leaders aren’t those who naturally possessed this skill—they’re those who deliberately developed it.
This week, try one specific practice: At the end of each day, identify one interaction that didn’t go as planned. Ask yourself: “What was I thinking and feeling during this exchange?” Then consider: “How might the other person have experienced this situation differently?” Don’t judge—just notice the gap.
The greatest leaders aren’t those who never have blind spots—they’re those with the courage to shine a light on them. Which kind of leader will you choose to be?
