11/10/2025

Self-awareness Builds a Foundation for Leadership

Your most potent leadership tool makes all the rest effective

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.

Please select this link to read the complete article from SmartBrief.