Self-Awareness & Leadership

Self-awareness is important for leaders.

A good book I’ve used to improve my self-awareness over the last several years is Standing at the Crossroads: Next Steps for High-Achieving Women, by Marian N. Ruderman and Patricia J. Ohlott.  Although this book focuses on a survey of high-performing women and what made them successful, I think its themes apply to everyone. 

Ruderman and Ohlott advocate five steps that high-achieving women undertake to be successful:

1.       They act authentically

2.       They make connections

3.       They control their own destiny

4.       They achieve wholeness

5.       They gain self-clarity

These steps are all intertwined, and all require awareness of what is critically important to each of us as an individual. Only when I know what is important to me can I decide how much of my energy to devote to the workplace and where I want our careers to go.Only then can I go about achieving what I want to achieve.

Self-awareness isn't only important for leaders -- it's important for all of us who work in or with organizations. That's all of us.

Find Standing at the Crossroads at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.