Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) logo - one line version
Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) official logo
Focus
View All Challenges
Industry
View All Industries
Recommended Insights
Programs
View All Programs
Solutions
View All Solutions
Recommended Insights
By Type
View All
By Category
View All
Recommended Insights
Our Story
More About Us
Connect
Recommended Insights

Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness in Leadership Drives a Leader’s Effectiveness

Strengthen all of your leadership skills by building a strong foundation of self-awareness as a leader.

Great leaders are often seen as outward-facing — communicating and influencing others as they drive an organization to success.

While communication and influence are two of the “fundamental 4” core leadership skills identified in our research, the other two — learning agility and self-awareness — are more inward-focused.

Self-awareness as a leader can be the most challenging of the 4 to develop, but it can also serve as a foundation for strengthening all your other leadership skills.

Leader effectiveness is constrained or amplified based on how well leaders understand themselves, their awareness of how others view them, and how they navigate the resulting interactions.

We’ve identified 4 critical facets of self-awareness in leadership: wisdom, identity, reputation, and brand.

 The best leaders cultivate leadership wisdom by taking time to reflect on their experiences to gain insights they can apply to new challenges.

Leaders’ social identities influence how they lead and interact with others, making them critical for them to understand. 

 Understanding their leadership reputation helps leaders comprehend how they may be perceived and judged by others, which makes them better influencers and communicators.

And by understanding their leadership brand, leaders can bring their strengths to the surface and communicate what they’re capable of.

View Options
Contact Us

Upskill Your Team With Self-Awareness Skills

Increase Self-Awareness in Leadership for Greater Success

Your leaders can develop self-awareness in 4 areas:

  • Leadership wisdom, insights from experience they can apply to the challenges they face.
  • Leadership identity, who they are in their current professional and personal context.
  • Leadership reputation, how others perceive them as a leader based on current and previous behavior.
  • Leadership brand, what they aspire to and the actions they take to support that mission.

Start developing more effective leaders at your organization by equipping your team with self-awareness in leadership skills. We can deliver our world-class, research-backed content to them — or you can.

You Can Deliver Our Self-Awareness in Leadership Content, or We Can

You Deliver

We can equip your facilitators to deliver a workshop or internal training to develop self-awareness as a leader either online or in person, whichever you prefer:

Most Turnkey

360 Assessments

Build greater self-awareness in your leaders by pairing 360 feedback with internal coaching or workshops

Learn More
Most scalable

License This Content

Let’s talk about how you can leverage this proven leadership program content in a custom internal development initiative

Learn More

We Deliver

Or, we can incorporate self-awareness in leadership as part of a larger leadership development initiative for your organization:

Most Tailored

Custom Leadership Training Module

Combine with other topic modules and interactive experiences into a customized learning journey for your leaders

Contact Us
Most Integrated

Leadership Programs

Our highly personalized leadership programs prepare leaders to address common challenges with self-awareness

Explore Now
Contact Us

What Our Clients Are Saying

Organizations who have partnered with us to upskill their people’s self-awareness in leadership consistently tell us the same thing: their experience with CCL made a significant impact on their culture — and their bottom line.

But don’t just take our word for it — take theirs.

“I would recommend the Leadership Development Program for the self-awareness factor alone. One of the bonuses of attending the program is that you meet so many people from different industries and you get the chance to take a look at things from different viewpoints.”

Heli Helanummi-Cole
Channel Planning & Implementation Manager
Nokia

“When you’re a leader, it’s not about you. The CCL programs we rolled out helped to create self-awareness for our participants and laid the foundation for leadership learning journeys against a global benchmark.”

Sally Sng
Regional HR Director
Major Oil & Gas Company

Let's Discuss Self-Awareness in Leadership at Your Organization

Our experts are here to help. Let’s have a conversation about self-awareness in leadership at your organization and how our self-awareness content could help support your development initiatives.

Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)® will use this information to ensure the best response to your inquiry. By submitting this form, you acknowledge that CCL may contact you.

At CCL, we care about your privacy. The information you share with us will only be used to better service you and in accordance with your consent. For more information, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

Our Research-Backed Perspective on Self-Awareness as a Leader

Develop Leaders, Not Just Bosses
Leading Effectively Articles

Develop Leaders, Not Just Bosses

New managers must understand the difference in being a boss vs. a leader, because their leadership effectiveness affects the success of their whole team.

More
4 Things You Need to Start Working for Yourself
Leading Effectively Articles

4 Things You Need to Start Working for Yourself

There’s a lot to think about before you start working for yourself. If you’re considering making the leap into consulting or freelancing, here are 4 factors to consider for successful self-employment.

More
How to Build Your Leadership Image
Leading Effectively Articles

How to Build Your Leadership Image

Contrary to popular belief, leadership image is more than just a surface issue — it’s closely tied to your effectiveness as a leader. Here’s how to strengthen it.

More

Other Topics Related to Self-Awareness as a Leader

Package our research-backed self-awareness in leadership content with other proven leadership development topics and solutions for a customized, scalable solution perfect for your organization’s unique needs, context, and culture. Related topics include:

Authenticity

Communication

Influencing

Please update your browser.

CCL.org requires a modern browser for an enhanced and secure user experience. Internet Explorer is no longer supported or recommended by Microsoft. The Center for Creative Leadership recommends that you upgrade to Microsoft Edge or similar.

Chrome

Edge

Firefox