What is Emotional Self-Awareness?

In this article, the EQ expert Daniel Goleman explains the relationship between emotions and the capacity to lead. This article is from his book “Emotional Self-Awareness: A Primer.”

Emotional self-awareness is the ability to understand your emotions and their effects on your performance and to know what you are feeling and why and how it helps or hurts what you are trying to do. Therefore, you realize how others see you, so you align your self-image with a larger reality, and you have an accurate sense of your strengths and limitations, which gives you a realistic self-confidence.

Self-awareness also gives you clarity on your values and sense of purpose, so you can be more decisive when you set a course of action. As a leader, you can be frank and authentic, and you speak with conviction about your vision.

Consider this example: the chief tech officer at an innovation incubator is a bully, but he doesn't know it. He is very good at what he does except when it comes to managing people. He doesn't listen to anyone, and he freezes people out that he does not like. If you confront him with a specific incident, he denies it. He pins the blame on someone else and gets angry with them, or he tells you that  you are the problem.That bully tech officer lacks emotional self awareness, so he will be fired.

These are some of the data about emotional self awareness that shows why this competency is so important. For one thing, a boss being bully or arrogant or stubborn is enough to be viewed by subordinates as a sign of incompetence. On the other hand, those traits affect financial returns negatively, and that leads to being bad at managing talent and inspiring people to do their best; therefore, it means being a poor team leader.

Korn Ferry Hay Group research found that among leaders with multiple strengths in emotional self-awareness, 92% had teams with high energy and high performance. Great leaders create a positive emotional climate that encourages motivation and extra effort because they are the ones with good emotional self-awareness. In contrast, leaders low in emotional self-awareness created negative climates 78% of the time. 

What is really surprising is the great role of emotional self awareness despite being the least visible of the emotional intelligence competencies.

People strong in emotional self awareness typically demonstrate 10 or more of the competencies. This, in turn, lets them make frequent use of positive leadership styles, which results in the best working climates for their teams. On the other hand, those low in emotional self awareness tend to show strengths in only one or so of the competencies, and their leadership and team climate suffer accordingly.

You must know that emotional self awareness is not something you achieve once, and then you are done with it. Rather, it is a skill you apply at all times whether you are aware of it or not. It is an endeavor that you will continue to do all the time, and it is a conscious choice to be self-aware. The good news is that the more you practice it, the easier it becomes. Research conducted by the professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin Richard Davidson suggests that one way to become more self-aware is to check in with your sensory experience regularly, and shift your behaviour accordingly.