Every now and then, leadership gurus, researchers and advisors make reference to a leadership quality they suggest ought to be in your mix — at least if you’re hope is to be an effective, impactful leader: self-awareness. Two things about this pattern are distressing. The first is that the observation comes up only so often, as if to say being self-aware needs only to be occasional, too. The second related distressing pattern is the implication that self-awareness is simply another tool in your toolkit, rather than recognizing how every tool in that toolkit becomes relevant. If you take nothing else away from this article, make it this: Self-awareness is the inarguable foundation on which your leadership success rises or falls, bar none. It is no less than the soul that makes leadership work.
The foundational importance of self-awareness
The patterns noted above bear witness to the impression of self-awareness as simply additive rather than foundational. In both importance and impact, self-awareness goes much deeper, a point repeatedly revealed in my own research on leadership, as well as that of others, including research on emotional intelligence. In his fittingly titled book Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ, the de facto father of emotional intelligence, Daniel Goldman, put it bluntly. “If you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.” Goldman was speaking about anyone, but the relevance to leaders is particularly acute. So too should be the resonance to any leader hoping to have a lasting impact.
The deeper importance to leaders seeking lasting impact
When I asked leaders, who, unlike many of their peers, are actually thriving in these deeply uncertain times, what made the difference for them, five themes emerged. The core one was that, above all else, “Soul matters most.” The word choice isn’t mine, it’s theirs. They were not, however, talking about soul the way you might think. Pertaining to impactful leadership, soul is “knowing who you are, in the context of what you do, and how what you do ripples out to and impacts others.” Read that once more. (I’ll wait.)
What you should recognize is the simple truth that the definition of soul offers you — not to mention the simple task it suggests leaders ought to give themselves every day. If you lack a clear sense of who you are — as a person, as someone with goals and dreams, as one conscious of their strengths and weaknesses — it is impossible to be your best at anything. If, in addition to that, you lack a conscious awareness of who you are in the context of what you do, you’ll only amplify that ineffectiveness. Consider the ripple effect of how all of this impacts others, and you are setting yourself up for failure as a leader. This is why, especially in the deeply uncertain times we all live in, impactful leaders say soul matters most.
The greater power in the thing you already know
The evidence supporting the importance of soul (as defined above) is, to say the least, abundant. But the truth is, you don’t need outside evidence. Especially if you are an effective senior leader, you know the feeling, perhaps even the sense of flow, that comes when “who you are” is aligned with “what you do” and with “those you lead.”
You may be more curious about the other patterns that consistently emerge as leaders and leading organizations thrive in uncertain times. They are as follows and stated exactly as those impactful leaders put them: Leadership moves — that is to say, leadership isn’t bound in any one person. It flows across the organization to identify the leadership strength required at any given time. And it’s far more about leadership culture than any leadership title. It’s the culture, stupid — a blunt way effective leaders remind the rest of us that a leader’s true job is to cultivate the environment in which leadership can flourish.
It isn’t about knowing it all or doing it all alone. Your power source is your superpower — it is the effective leader’s way of telling you that something deeper than strategy or mission defines what business you’re in and why, especially in uncertain times. The final pattern is that the long-term matters most right now. It’s a message from the best-of-the-best among your leader peers telling you that what you dream of materializing someday is built from what you do from this moment forward.
Look across those patterns, and what you’ll see is that not a single one can be executed well absent self-awareness. Moreover, each element feeds and is fed by the others, all of them driven by clarity around knowing who you are, in the context of what you do, and how that impacts and ripples to all other team members’ own sense of soul.
There’s a lot to think about here, but one final thought is worthy of your time to ponder. Would you really need all that leadership advice and supporting evidence from others if you truly knew your soul and allowed it to matter most?
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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