How Asking Yourself This Question Will Make You A Better Leader

Leaders who invest in self-awareness lay the groundwork for a supportive and thriving workplace environment. Without this important work, leaders at every level risk miscommunicating, lacking empathy and making decisions inconsistently—all of which directly undermine employee trust and well-being. Bottom line: None of us can successfully lead other people until we know ourselves.

Our ability to connect with and relate to all of the people we manage depends upon how accurately we know our own strengths, limitations, formative life experiences, motivations, fears, emotional triggers and biases—not to mention how other people perceive us.

Leaders who know themselves in this way are far more likely to empathize with others. When we know our own struggles, we can better relate to the challenges faced by our people. And by comprehending all of the forces that influence our own thinking, we are able to make more informed, consistent and therefore successful decisions and choices.

It’s a rare workplace manager who has gained this high degree of self-discernment—and not just because it demands intentional focus and a lifelong commitment to self-discovery. The higher hurdle is that most leaders don’t believe they need to do this work at all. Research shows that 95 percent of people believe they are self-aware, while just 10–15 percent (at best) truly are.

When leaders don’t put in the work to know themselves, they miss out on massive growth opportunities that can elevate our future effectiveness. We remain stagnant, repeating the same ineffective patterns and practices over and over. The upside to gaining true self-awareness is huge—the return on investment is just too high to pass up!

I was once in the camp of leaders who believed they already fully understood themselves and had little more to learn. Then, a team exercise set me straight.

After I thought I’d been excelling in a senior management role for over a year at one of America’s largest financial institutions, I attended a meeting with my boss and a dozen of my peers. Our human resources business partner was there to facilitate the discussion, and after briefly explaining what we were about to do, she handed each of us a stack of blank index cards and asked us to write down two things we admired greatly about every person in the room. This meant that each of us would go on to hear twenty-six pieces of meaningful praise.

When the facilitator got to me and read all of the glowing things everyone had anonymously written about me, I felt triumphant. So much of what my colleagues said confirmed that I was doing a great job as a leader and that my impact was being widely seen and felt. Once the facilitator had finished reading and discussing everyone’s positive leadership traits, she asked us to write down one piece of constructive feedback for each person: What’s one thing you wish this person knew was hindering their leadership effectiveness?

This time, when she got to me and read out what everyone had written, I visibly winced. To a person, my peers wanted me to know that I could be sarcastic at times, and that my sarcasm was hurtful and weakened others’ respect for me.

Hearing that I was perceived this way completely blindsided me—and the revelation was made even more painful by the fact that my overriding motivation had always been to leave people feeling good whenever they interacted with me.

Even before our team meeting was over, I started asking myself what could have influenced me to be so sarcastic at work. And I soon had a powerful epiphany. Throughout my childhood, my father was routinely critical and demeaning, and he used sarcasm widely to disparage me and others. Unconsciously, I had clearly adopted his toxic behavior, and it was only because of the candor of the people closest to me that it got called out. Had I not received this critique, I never would have taken steps to eliminate the behavior. And by never having made the improvement, I likely would have derailed my leadership career.

If you make the commitment to fully “know thyself” (and I urge you to), the best place to start is to write down a list of your leadership strengths and weaknesses as you see them, and then solicit feedback from trusted friends, family members and colleagues for comparison.

Do other people see you as you see you?

One reason many people don’t take this initial step is because hearing constructive criticism (learning we are limited) can be painful—so, we’d just as soon avoid it.

But when we realize that there is no such thing as a self-actualized leader, and that every workplace manager is a work in progress, it becomes much easier to accept that we too might have some areas of improvement requiring our attention.

As I learned in the exercise with my peers, asking people to identify two of your greatest strengths opens the door to them feeling comfortable pointing out just one weakness. The key is to solicit responses from several of the people who know you best.

As you might expect, some people find it really uncomfortable to deliver truly critical feedback—especially to someone they like and whose feelings they don’t want to hurt. So, it’s important to give anyone you ask for input full permission to be candid, and you must persist until you get at least one answer to this question: What’s one thing you believe significantly limits me as a leader?

Once you have clearly identified your strengths and weaknesses, it’s time for the even more important work of reflecting upon what Harvard Business School professor Bill George calls the “crucible moments” of your life.

What are the are the most significant trials or painful events that you’ve endured in your life? Parents getting divorced, deaths in the family, financial setbacks, dealing with addiction—destabilizing experiences like these can take a lasting toll. The goal is to bring them into your awareness and to ask yourself how they may be continuing to influence you in your interactions with people today.

Many people are stunned to discover the extent to which they actually do. It’s also important for you to retrace how you navigated those challenges. Consider how you maneuvered through your past fears, disappointments and failures. Reflecting on your most difficult setbacks and how you dealt with them will ensure you not only learn from them but can go on to apply all of your hard-earned wisdom to the future stressful events you’ll inevitably face. Life’s toughest and most painful experiences can carry great lessons once we bring those insights into the light.

It’s undeniable that human behavior is often unconsciously influenced by childhood experiences (this is true for you, and also for everyone you manage). If someone grew up with a perfectionistic or harshly critical parent, for example, they might be triggered by a boss who rarely appreciates them, not realizing that their negative emotional response is more directly tied to their past experiences than to their present one.

Simply being aware that emotionally charged events in our upbringing can resurface in our adult lives can help us avoid unnecessary conflicts with people. When we ask ourselves, “Why is this person getting under my skin?” we may quickly realize the problem is more about us than it is about them.

When we devote intentional time and effort to excavating our past, we not only come to truly understand our motivations and triggers, we also become more self-confident. And we don’t just become more secure in our own skin; we gain invaluable insight into the motivations and behavior of others. The payoff for knowing thyself is leadership mastery.

Excerpted and adapted from The Power of Employee Well-Being: Move Beyond Engagement to Build Flourishing Teams by Mark C. Crowley. Reprinted by permission of Berrett-Koehler.