Premise:
I saw this short video about how to master your emotions and was reminded about one of the foundational qualities that leaders worth following need to master – their level of self awareness. I believe that self awareness can be thought as consisting of at least three layers.
Intellectual Self Awareness:
The outer most layer is the intellectual self awareness. What this means is that they are aware about what they want, why they want it, what are they prepared to do for it and what is a line they will not cross in pursuit of this goal.
Psychological Self Awareness:
The next layer of self awareness is psychological awareness. They are keenly aware of their own strengths and weaknesses and understand that they have blind spots and biases that they need to continuously identify and develop strategies to overcome them.
Emotional Self Awareness:
The last layer of self awareness is emotional awareness. This is probably the most difficult to achieve. This requires leaders to be aware of their emotions, experience them and process them. They also learn to regulate their emotions. This gives them the dexterity to pick and choose how they respond to any situation that they might encounter.
In conclusion:
A leader who is aware at all the three levels is someone who understands their own motivations and has the best possible chance at becoming a leader worth following, as long as their goals are in service of someone or something bigger than themselves.
