Understanding The Importance Of Self-Awareness In Leadership And Management: An Essay.

What is Self-Awareness?

The word Self-awareness refers to being aware of different kinds of aspects or personal behavior, feelings or traits which define an individual. In other terms it is known as one of the psychological states that make a person become aware and attentive. For most of the employees or the business person it is important to become self-aware about the actions or the thoughts which can be helpful in the formation of career development. In this part of the paper, self-awareness will be discussed along with the importance of it with better explanation which will be helpful for the readers to understand the same. The discussion will also be helpful in developing the leadership and the management capabilities. At the end of this paper, one of the module learning will be discussed which will help in understanding the context of the topic with the help of self-awareness in order to understand the importance of the topic in self-awareness.    

In common and general terms, the word self-awareness mainly talks about the ability to put focus on oneself in order to understand how the actions and thoughts cannot be aligned with the internal standards. This awareness is about the consciousness which can be a combination of physical, mental and contextual factors of one individual (Eurich, 2018). If the one person is highly conscious about themselves, it is to be believed that the individual can also evaluate themselves and manage their emotions at the same time while aligning their values.  This entire concept of self-awareness is one of the most important practices which helps in enhancing leadership and management skills as well as abilities (Nida-Rümelin, 2017). Through the help of this self-awareness, the leaders or managers can be able to have a control on their emotions and manage the same in order to improve the other people as well.

According to the author, Rubens et al., (2018), the process of self-awareness and the ability of self-assessment through the help of self-awareness is one of the most basic tenets that help in possessing high emotional intelligence. In the theory of Duval and wicklund, the objective clearly states that the individuals are more focused on the inward behavior and also maintain the assessment of them in order to develop themselves a better person to fit for the job role and responsibilities (Fricke & Frederick, 2017).   

The entire practice of self-awareness causes various kinds of benefits which can help in undertaking better self-development (Lawrence, Dunn & Weisfeld-Spolter, 2018). In the following, the benefits of self-awareness are mentioned which will be helpful in understanding the importance of the same.

1. The self-awareness helps in giving more power to the individuals in order to have the effective outcome that can influence many of the others.
2. This practice of self-awareness is always helpful in the decision-making process as it influences a human being to control their emotions and feel confident. Thus, the individuals can add more clarity to the decision making process.
3. Self-awareness also allows one individual to understand one thing through the help of multiple perspectives.
4. It is helpful for an individual to free the head from all kinds of biases and assumptions as well.
5. Lastly, self awareness is beneficial for an individual to reduce the level of stress or bad mental health to maintain the positive mindset for the better outcome from the job roles and responsibilities.

In leadership and management, the self awareness factor plays a vital role in leading the individual for the better emotional intelligence by maintaining all the personal needs. From feedback to emotional intelligence, self awareness is useful in every single aspect which can help in enhancing the leadership and management abilities in an organization.   

In the leadership and management abilities and practices of feedback plays a vital role for both the leaders and the employees. The proper flow of feedback can be very much effective for maintaining the correct flow of communication while opening up about certain things or raising voices about the opinions. The entire concept of feedback helps in converting what can be good for the organization and what not in order which brings benefit in the leadership (Ramani  et al., 2017).

Benefits of Self-Awareness

Through the process of the feedback, people can be involved in evaluating themselves and their work to understand how the others can perceive the same. It is important for the leaders to provide feedback to the employees as well as ask for the same which can be used as their self assessment (Smeresky, Rizzo & Sands, 2020). In this way they can be able to reinforce the positive behavior in the organization, mitigating all the negative practices and lastly ensuring a strong culture in the workplace.    

Emotional intelligence is one of the most important parts of self awareness. Through the help of emotional intelligence, an individual can take control of their emotions as well as its effects on their performances. Self-awareness enables the ability of recognizing this emotion and understanding the way to handle it to be aware of the mood or the actions that can be influenced by the moods or emotions (Serrat, 2017).

This concept of self awareness is one of the key elements of emotional intelligence. For the leaders and the managers of any kind of organization, emotional intelligence plays a vital role to understand the emotion of oneself as well as the people who are present around them. According to Daniel Goleman, self awareness helps in feeling how good or bad the mood and emotion and how it can leave an impact on the actions of an individual (Goleman & Boyatzis, 2017). The leaders always ensure that they are practicing the entire process of emotional intelligence through the self awareness process. In most of the cases, leaders make good use of the emotions and traits to use them for the decision making or problem solving skills.

There are several ways which can be applicable to make an improvement in self awareness in emotional intelligence. These methods are such as keeping a tracker and slowing down for the determination of the moods or emotions (Kanesan & Fauzan, 2019). On the other hand, the emotional intelligence through self awareness not only helps in managing the emotions but also helps in accepting the surroundings and making a commitment for all the kinds of leadership roles and responsibilities.

The feedback holds a huge contribution in the process of making improvement of any kind of operation. Even in the automobile industry, every single operation requires feedback from the managers as well as from the customer's end which not only helps in understanding the demand but also helps in managing the workforce by showing them the right place to make the improvement.

The major drawback of the supply chain of the automobile or any other industry is the communication which sometimes leaves a negative effect on the operation and production of the company (Kanesan & Fauzan, 2019). Insufficiency in the communication process creates problems in the decision making process as well. This effective feedback enables the effectiveness of the messages and helps the receptor to understand the messages.

As an organizational operation, the leaders can also use the method of feedback theory in order to make the employee aware of their performances which are one of the basic necessities of self awareness.  

Importance of Feedback

As it has been previously discussed, the emotional intelligence is about the perseverance of one’s ability to manage their own as well as others emotions. In other words, emotional intelligence is the new need for the hour as well as the new need for the entire era. The world is facing new changes every day. From the learning style to the technology, every single individual is facing this certain change in their daily practices. Similarly in the automobile industry, the rapid change of technology is affecting the employees and coping up abilities for the betterment in their job roles (Rai, 2017). Every single operation in the automobile industry is obtained by a  group of people, especially in the purchase and supply chain. The organizations should always take care of the practice in order to make proper team building, flexibility or adaptability. If the managers show lower levels of emotional intelligence, it might create a greater impact on the employees and the quality of the operation. So for both the leaders and employees it is important to manage their emotions and use the same for their performances of the decision making or problem solving for the organization’s operation.           

Conclusion 

At the end of this section, it can be said that for any kind of small or large size of organization, it is necessary for the leaders and the employees to practice the self-awareness methods for the betterment of their operation. During the module learning, several topics have been taught among which two have been selected for the paper: emotional intelligence and effective feedback process to gather deeper knowledge about the organization. This self observation is not only helpful in the improvement of the employee performances but also useful for the tema development and collaborative approaches in the organization.     

The above table is about the psychometric tests that I have taken while learning the module about self awareness and several other factors which can be helpful to learn and develop the abilities of leadership and management skills. These psychometric tests are a kind of assessment tool which are generally used in finding out the objective and the measurement of an individual for their personality tests, intelligence, abilities and the behavioral style. The outcome of the same helps as the guidance for decision making and the self development as well to build up the suitable personalities and abilities that might match the career.

During the module, I got the opportunity to learn about self awareness which basically talked about how I can be aware of my behavior and traits during the time of my contribution in the workplace for the leadership and management roles or responsibilities. While learning about the same, we were assigned into teams for the team activities. Being a part of the team, I took the Belbin psychometric test which helped me to realize how much potential I have as a team player and what kind. Through the Belbin test I was able to find out the strengths and weaknesses for self development (Bednár & Ljudvigová, 2020). Out of the 9 roles, the most prominent ones were the coordinator, Plant, Shaper, Implementer and monitor-evaluator where I scored the most. Based on the feedback, what I have observed is that my biggest strength is my creative thinking skills and innovating new things while carrying people with me. On the other hand, I also found out that I can organize the others without even dominating them. Not all leadership demands the domination in their leadership process as a leader can always lead a team without showing the power and respecting everyone while practicing equality. The other strengths suggest that I can manage the people while taking out the best of them.  However, the Belbin report also showed some of the weaknesses which are the main area of self awareness such as generalist approach and restricting involvement in some of the subjects. On the other hand, the result also showed the tendency of dominating others' ideas with my own creative ones. Thus it leads to the dilemma of fostering others and dominating with the ideas. So, through the self awareness process, I have to ensure that sometimes, I just have to restrain my own ideas in order to foster the others as a team player. As per the feedback of the test reports, I do not have that tendency to make through research about something so a perfect job role which can be suitable for me is necessary in order to obtain the right kind of result from the leadership and the management abilities.

Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness

The second test that I took was the Honey and Mumford learning styles which is based upon Kolb's work (Stander, Grimmer & Brink, 2019). This psychometric theory helps in proposing four kinds of learning styles which are: Activist, reflector, theorists and pragmatist. For self awareness it is important to find out the exact learning style through the help of self assessment. There are 80 questions present in the questionnaire based on the variables which helps in the self assessment for the betterment of the self assessment.     

This Honey and Mumford learning style has been helpful in finding out the strengths and weaknesses which can be helpful for self development through the right kind of learning style. These strengths and weaknesses are helpful in obtaining the proper learning style for me. Through the test I found out that my strengths are having strong beliefs about right and wrong. I also seek out opportunities to gather new kinds of experiences. I also have the tendency to pay attention to the details of things before coming to a conclusion. Lastly, I listen to the others while decision makes or problem solving before putting my opinion forward. Based on the four learning styles, the questionnaire resulted in high scores in activists and theorists which clearly match with the strengths of mine. Through this self assessment I understood that I am fond of being involved in having new experiences but as being a theorist I do not jump into the conclusion rather I try to make proper analysis of the entire scenarios and make proper decisions through the conclusion. For a good leader it is important to make analysis of everything so that it can lead to a good problem solving or decision making process. As for the weaknesses, being a theorist learner I find it difficult to work on ideas without thinking it through. As per the learning cycle the theorist style is very necessary after coming up with a new idea in order to apply them for better results.

The third test that I took was about emotional intelligence which is highly influenced by self-awareness. The emotional intelligence psychometric test consists of five sections which are such as self-awareness, self-reflection, empathy, motivation and lastly, social skill (Livesey, 2017). For a leader it is important to have these five factors present in them which can be helpful in playing the role of leadership while managing the people in the team. As per the data from the emotional intelligence test result, I have the abilities to understand my own feelings and also the causes behind it. I tend to be honest about the feelings that I am having and I try to make proper improvement as a result of self assessment. For success it is very much important to make good use of the emotions and manage them for the team activities such as decision making and problem solving processes. In The Modern Leadership Practices, Emotional Intelligence Plays a Vital Role In Understanding Others Feelings As Well In Order To Maintain a Healthy Team collaboration while fostering everyone with positivity. Even after being capable of knowing my own emotions, I lack understanding of people's emotions, which is one of the most important things for team building. The other weakness is the inability to give feedback. It is to be believed effective feedback is the key to building up the teams and motivating the employees for the betterment in their performances.  

Methods to Improve Self-Awareness

As per the fourth test of the psychometric tests, the Rokeach values survey has been helpful for me to understand the value that I follow (Hanel, Litzellachner & Maio, 2018). There are several terminal values present in the test which need to be ranked based on my own values and beliefs. In this way, the strengths and weaknesses related to the values can be found out. As the survey clearly states that my biggest strengths are that I am a very creative thinker which I ranked first in the values test. The second rank was to become responsible and gain social recognition. Thirdly, I tend to take good care of the close ones, and lastly the rank number is about my disciplinary practices and my restraining power about doing meaningless things which might consume the time. However, the factors where they got the lowest ranks, I considered those factors as my weaknesses in terms of values which are such as: my lack of ability in having broad mind to accept everything in one go, lack of being rational about creative thinking or other things, I lack in forgiving people and lastly, I show lack of politeness towards the others. My ability to determine the emotions has been helpful in the test in order to determine the weaknesses about the values. As an employee it is always necessary to show respect towards the others and create a mindset to accept every single change in the operation so that it can lead to good teamwork and practices.

The last text I took for the psychometric test is the big five factor which talks about the traits that are present in an individual. These traits are: extraversion, agreeableness, openness, consciousness and lastly, neuroticism (Abood, 2019). Based on the results from the big five factors I had high scores in consciousness, extraversion and agreeableness. As for the openness I scored moderator and for the neuroticism, I scored less marks in the negative emotionality which clearly shows my optimistic nature as an individual working in a team. Having a higher score in the consciousness traits signifies my nature of paying detailed attention about things and spending time for the preparation which was also obtained in the previous tests. Similarly, a better score in openness signifies my creative nature and tackling new challenges with proper analysis. The extraversion nature can be counted as one of the most useful strengths of mine which helps in establishing communication in the workplace and creating a positive environment among the other employees. Strength can be the lower score in negative emotionality. It clearly explains my emotional stability and my ability to deal with the stress. As a team player, while organizing other employees, the control over emotions can be vital for the entire process of collaborative approaches.                                            

Based on the self analysis by using Belbin test, honey and Mumford’s learning style, emotional intelligence test, Rokeach values survey test and lastly the big five factors, I was able to find out the strengths and weaknesses of myself which can be counted as the positive and negative traits. This analysis has been useful for me to understand what the areas where I have to make improvement are. In this way, I will be able to follow an action plan for the betterment of my traits which might help me while being in the automotive industry, purchase and supply chain department. In the following, I will be presenting the action plan which will include the weaknesses that were found during the psychometric tests.

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