I wanted to know if people who were identified as effective leaders had more self-awareness than people who were identified as ineffective leaders. I also wanted to know if the answer would be the same across the five job levels of the Welsh public service.
I looked at my data on self-awareness and leader effectiveness, and stacked it all up against the job levels people chose for themselves and their manager.
People identified as being effective leaders, working at the operational, business, management and senior management job levels had greater self-awareness than those who were identified as ineffective. Not enough people at the strategic level replied to know one way or another.
Line managers identified as being effective leaders at the business, management and senior management job levels had greater self-awareness than those who were identified as ineffective. There weren’t enough line manager at the operational level to know one way or another. There were an equal number of managers at the strategic level who were self-aware and effective leaders and self-aware and ineffective leaders, meaning it wasn’t possible to come down on one side fo the fence or another.
This backed up the data from the literature that generally, effective leaders are self-aware or, if you think about it another way, self-aware people make effective leaders.