Self-Awareness: Key to Leadership & Management Capability Development

This essay defines self-awareness and explores its importance in developing leadership and management capabilities, focusing on key topics such as emotional intelligence, giving and receiving feedback, and cultural intelligence. It discusses how these topics are essential for career success, particularly in a General Manager role, emphasizing the need for emotional intelligence, effective feedback mechanisms, and strong leadership and management skills. The essay concludes with a critical evaluation of the author's attitude towards self-awareness, highlighting personal strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizing the importance of cultural intelligence for career development and success. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering a range of study tools and resources for students.

Self-Awareness

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
References:.......................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Self-awareness is the psychological state in which the person is well versed and aware of
their traits, emotions, actions, feelings, and behavior (Smeresky, Rizzo, and Sands, 2020). Self-
inspection is considered the essential muscle to be developed to gain happiness, have more
influence, and have better decision-making. The development of self-consciousness is crucial for
an individual because it allows the person to assess its strengths and weaknesses in the path of
growth and helps by suggesting ideas for the change of course when necessary. For an
individual, self-introspection is also the key to career success. The present academic essay
discusses self-percipient and its importance in developing leadership and management capability.
In addition to this, the article also highlights some subjects' importance in developing self-
awareness. Moreover, the essay also provides an overview of a particular job role with a focus on
the above topics. The article concludes the person's attitude for self-awareness and its role in
career development and success.
MAIN BODY
It is proposed by famous psychologists Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund that Self
awareness is the person's ability to analyze and interpret oneself and how one's actions, thoughts,
emotions, feelings, or behavior do or don't align with their desired internal standards (Self
Awareness Theory, 2019). If a person is highly self-aware, they can evaluate themselves, manage
the emotions, align the attitude and behavior with the values, and understand the surroundings
accurately with compelling perceiving nature. Self- introspection is parted into two distinct
brackets, i.e., public self-awareness and private self-awareness. Public self-awareness is
awareness about one appearance in front of others. On the other hand, personal self-awareness
means introspecting one's internal state. Self-personality recognition is thinking about describing
myself to others without reference to external factors or family (Kirkpatrick, Cantrell, and
Smeltzer, 2019). Self-awareness is an exercise of finding how self-aware I am about myself to
set my career goals. I am just concentrating solely on highlighting my behaviour, how I feel as
an individual, my strengths and weaknesses, what makes me happy and angry, and much more.
Self-awareness is crucial for me and my leadership and management capabilities. Self-
awareness is best understood with the four pillars of behaviour i.e. awareness of strengths and
weaknesses, self- discipline, seeking feedbacks and open minded. These four pillars of self-
1

awareness help me build leadership and management capabilities because my behavior will
highly influence my leadership and management styles and skills. Self-awareness is crucial for
developing my leadership and management capabilities as through self-awareness, I will directly
link with emotional intelligence, which is highly important for developing the leadership and
management capabilities to understand the emotions of myself and others. Self-percipient will
help me cultivate the reflection on the unique characteristics of me as the leader and manager,
thereby understanding my weaknesses, which will guide me in setting targets to develop my
leadership and management capabilities (Ashkanasy and Daus, 2020). Self-acknowledgement
will also help me improve my decision-making, which is essential for improving my leadership
and management capabilities.
Emotional intelligence is the subject that means an ability to identify, understand and
manage the own emotions in a positive direction. To develop self-awareness, I must be relived
from stress, empathize for others, communicate effectively, and defuse conflicts with myself and
others. This all is quickly done with the ability of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence
is the subject that will assist me in building a relationship with my emotions to have the proper
balance of emotions that will be useful for developing self-acknowledgment. Moreover, I will be
more connected with my feelings, thoughts, weaknesses, and strengths, making me self-
confident and self-aware.
For becoming self-informed, help is required, which can be in the form of feedbacks.
Giving and receiving feedback is the topic that emphasizes on the ability of the person to analyse
and critically evaluate the self and others performance, actions, behavior, emotions, and values to
derive the response in the form of constructive feedback. When the person receives the input for
its working or activities, the person realizes its self-worth, weaknesses, and most importantly,
helps in taking off the blinders, making them self-aware about themselves. By giving and
receiving feedback, I will face my reality and potential. Through this, I see myself from others'
perspectives, which is valuable in developing self-acknowledgment (Lumby, 2019).
Leadership and management are two different subjects; one is related to the role of
leader, and the other is related to a manager position, respectively. Leadership is an attribute that
defines the leader's ability to lead, guide and mentor the other person. Management is an attribute
that allows a person to manage their emotions, actions, and behavior effectively. Both the
features are beneficial to me in developing my self-awareness skills. The leadership will help me
2

cultivate my leading quality to control and direct my behavior and actions in the right path for
career development, making me self-aware about my actions. On the other hand, the
management will help manage my feelings, emotions, anger, and behavior, thereby enhancing
my self-awareness.
For my target job as the "General Manager," in which the person has the responsibility to
manage the company's various operations such as revenues, human resources, daily operations,
and much more. To succeed in the particular job role of the General manager, I must focus on
developing the emotional intelligence, skills of receiving and giving feedback, and leadership
and management. Leadership and management style and skills are essential to succeed as an
effective general manager. Management skills are the key to becoming a successful manager as
this helps in effective management within the company and its daily operations. Leadership skills
assist a manager in leading its employees towards the attainment of the organizational goals and
simultaneously allocating goals effectively (Leroy, 2020). Emotional intelligence will help me as
a general manager understand the viewpoint and feelings of other team members or
organizations, which is very important for the manager to develop some practical tactics.
Emotional intelligence will also keep me self-aware about my behavior, attitude, and actions
towards others, thereby keeping me cooperative and patient as a manager. Thus, it is essential to
develop emotional intelligence to succeed as a general manager. The focus on receiving and
giving feedback is also important for becoming a successful general manager. A manager has to
regularly take the survey to give and receive feedback from the other employees regarding the
management, improvement in management activities, new ideas, and much more. Therefore, as a
general manager, I need to work on my feedback receiving and giving skills. This will help
improve my styles and practice of management with the changing working environment, and
changes are considered the key to success and are results of constructive feedback.
From the above information on self-Awareness, I have critically evaluated my attitude on
self-awareness. I have concluded that self-awareness is all about my understanding of identifying
my strengths and weaknesses and what makes me angry and happy. I have critically evaluated
that my behavior of motivating myself and others is a critical strength that helps in my career
development and success. To become a successful general manager, inspiring others to meet
organizational goals and me to manage effectively help in gaining career development. I have
analyzed that lack of cultural intelligence is an issue for my career development and growth. As
3

a general manager, it is very important to have deep intelligence and understanding of different
cultures to maintain respect and dignity. This weakness in my self-acknowledgment has the
potential to hinder my career growth and success (Blakemore and Agllias, 2019). Thus, it is
critically evaluated that I have a favorable attitude for gaining and understanding the importance
of self-awareness to effectively analyse myself in terms of emotional ability and professional
ability, which will help me acquire career development and success.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above report that being self-aware defines an individual's
behavior to have a keen understanding of own personality. It is analyzed that self-awareness is a
crucial skill to develop for effective leadership and management capabilities. Also, emotional
intelligence is an essential aspect of developing self-awareness. Also, it is concluded that the job
role of a General manager focuses on subjects like leadership and management, emotional
intelligence, and giving and receiving feedback to provide success as a manager.
References:
Books and Journals
Ashkanasy, N.M. and Daus, C.S., 2020. Emotional intelligence in the workplace. The Wiley
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences: Clinical, Applied, and Cross‐
Cultural Research, 485-490.
Blakemore, T. and Agllias, K., 2019. Student reflections on vulnerability and self-awareness in a
social work skills course. Australian Social Work, 72(1), pp.21-33.
4

Kirkpatrick, A.J., Cantrell, M.A. and Smeltzer, S.C., 2019. Relationships among nursing student
palliative care knowledge, experience, self-awareness, and performance: An end-of-life
simulation study. Nurse education today, 73, pp.23-30.
Leroy, C., 2020. The Importance of Personal Effectiveness Training in University Master
Courses: The Role of High School in Students' Assertiveness and Self-Awareness
Development. In Handbook of Research on Operational Quality Assurance in Higher
Education for Life-Long Learning (pp. 133-165). IGI Global.
Lumby, J., 2019. Leadership and power in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 44(9),
pp.1619-1629.
Smeresky, B., Rizzo, A. and Sands, T., 2020. Optimal Learning and Self-Awareness Versus
PDI. Algorithms, 13(1), p.23.
Self Awareness Theory, 2019, [online], Available through<
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/self-
awareness-theory>
5