Article 3
Who Am I? Leadership Development Begins with Self-Awareness
Understand yourself. Adapt how you lead.
When I entered the workforce, the expectation was fairly straightforward:
I adapted to my leader’s style.
That was simply how work operated.
Today, I believe leadership asks something more of us.
If I want the trust, commitment and buy-in of my team, I cannot assume that everyone should adapt to me. I also have to understand when I need to adapt to them.
That begins with a deceptively simple question:
Who am I?
The Person Doing the Leading
We bring our whole selves into leadership , our values, experiences, assumptions, communication preferences, strengths, fears and even our triggers.
And sometimes the leader we believe we are is not quite the leader other people experience.
I may intend to be decisive. Someone else may experience me as controlling.
I may believe I am giving people autonomy. They may experience a lack of direction.
I may pride myself on high standards. My team may become afraid of making mistakes.
A mirror tells you what you look like. A video recording shows you how you actually move. Leaders need both.
Self-awareness gives us the mirror, an understanding of our values, preferences, strengths and natural behaviours. But leadership also requires us to understand how those behaviours show up in practice and how they are experienced by others.
That is the space between intention and impact.
And it moves us beyond simply saying, “This is who I am,” to asking:
“How does who I am affect the way I lead?”
Leadership is experienced through our behaviour, not our intentions alone.
When Our Strengths Become Too Much
One of the more difficult things to recognise is that some of the behaviours that helped us succeed can also get in our way.
The decisive leader can make decisions so quickly that others stop contributing.
The supportive leader can avoid the difficult conversation for too long.
The problem-solver can become so good at providing answers that the team stops thinking for itself.
Our strengths are still strengths. The question is whether we understand them well enough to know when they are serving us and when we may be overusing them.
That is why I don’t see self-awareness as an exercise in changing who we are.
It gives us the choice to adapt how we lead.
My Own Thinking About Coaching Changed
Earlier in my leadership journey, when I coached members of my team, I often coached towards performance.
I wanted to help people improve results, solve problems and meet expectations.
Looking back, I was fortunate to have leaders who coached me differently.
They did not focus only on what I needed to achieve. They helped me pay attention to how I was thinking, how I was responding and what behaviours might be helping or getting in the way.
They encouraged me to introspect rather than simply react.
They helped me become more conscious of my self-talk, to keep an open mind, and to resist the urge to fill every silence.
That last lesson has stayed with me.
Sometimes the most useful thing a leader can do in a conversation is leave space for silence.
Silence gives people room to think. It gives us room to listen. And sometimes it reveals what a quick answer might have hidden.
Those experiences changed the way I think about developing leaders.
Behaviour comes first.
Awareness Gives Us Choice
That understanding now influences how I work with leaders in my own coaching practice.
We may begin with a behavioural assessment, but the assessment is not a label. I see it as a mirror.
We first look at the individual:
Who am I? How do I communicate? What are my natural preferences? What are my strengths? What are my motivators? What derails me?
Then we look at the leader using the same information:
How might others experience me? What happens to my natural style under pressure? Where might I need to adapt?
The objective is not to create a different person.
It is to help the leader become a more adaptable and intentional version of the person they already are.
Leadership Has Changed and Will Keep Changing
This matters even more in today’s workplace.
We are leading people with different personalities, cultures, experiences, communication preferences and ways of processing information. We are also leading across generations whose experiences of work and leadership may be very different.
When I began working, I adapted to my leader.
Today, I have to ask:
What does this person need from me in order to succeed?
Sometimes that means slowing down. Sometimes providing greater clarity. Sometimes giving more autonomy. Sometimes asking rather than telling. Sometimes simply listening.
Adapting does not make us less authentic.
It makes us more intentional.
And we cannot assume we have arrived simply because we have accumulated years of leadership experience.
The workplace has changed enormously during my career. So have I.
And so much more will change.
Leaders must remain learners because the people, the workplace and the world will not stand still.
Sometimes Leaders Need a Safe Space Too
There is another side to self-awareness that we do not always talk about.
Some leaders resist coaching because they worry that needing support might make them appear weak.
I see it differently.
Leadership can be lonely. The more senior the role, the fewer places there may be to speak freely.
Every leader needs somewhere they can be human, to vent, explore, question themselves, test assumptions and be challenged without having to perform.
Vulnerability in that kind of space is not weakness. It can be the beginning of greater self-awareness.
But awareness must eventually lead somewhere.
The question becomes:
What do I want to do differently because of what I now understand?
That is where awareness becomes intentional leadership.
We notice. We reflect. We choose. We practise. We adjust.
And then we keep learning.
Because we cannot leave leading to chance.
Too much depends on it.
Next in The Stewardship Leadership Series: From Having the Answers to Asking Better Questions: The Coaching Leader.
