Discovering the Leader Within You
Self-awareness has often been cited as one of the most important capabilities for leaders to develop. Self-awareness impacts our personal sense of wellbeing and the organization’s effectiveness in delivering its purpose. Surprisingly, less than 20 percent of organizational leaders are supported to understand and increase their levels self-awareness.
H S A’s approach to leadership development is intentional about Serving Others by Starting with Self.  We invite you to focus on yourself, to understand your gifts and capacities, as well as blind spots and growing edges for development. After that initial discovery, we support you, whether you are an experienced or an aspiring leader, to create a personalized leadership development plan.
Here are four ways you can increase your self-awareness:
Emotional Intelligence
Self-awareness is one of the core components of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to choose how you interact with others and attend to relationships.
You can complete an Emotional Intelligence (EQ-I 2.0) assessment either as a self-rater or a 360 tool. An H S A Associate will help you explore the results during a coaching and interpretation session.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) is one of the world’s most popular personality tools, and is a robust tool for self-awareness and improvement. It provides positive language for understanding and valuing individual differences. With practical insight that’s easy to understand and implement, the MBTI assessment has helped thousands of organizations and millions of people around the world improve how they communicate, learn, and work.
To be most impactful, complete a full inventory, coupled with a coaching session to explain your results and explore development goals and opportunities.
Minessence Values Framework
Unlike competencies which can be classified as skills, knowledge and attitudes needed to
perform effectively in a role, values are our lifestyle priorities. They express our wants, desires, and preferences. For most people, they are their unconscious motivators.
When we consider the role values have in our day-to-day work only objectives directly related to living your values, can be Meaningful Objectives. And therefore, for our personal wellbeing, to prevent burnout, and to promote thriving in the workplace it’s critically important to understand your values and how they influence your priorities. Research has shown that it is more important that a person understands their personal values than the corporate values. And that the most engaged and satisfied employees are those who find alignment of their personal values and the values of the organization.
H S A uses the Minessence Values Framework to help people reflect on their individual and team values. There are many ways of incorporating values throughout the workplace, starting with self.
Leadership Practices Inventory
Based on the book, “The Leadership Challenge” by James Kouzes and Barry Posner, the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) instrument is a valuable tool to help you gain perspective into how you see yourself as a leader, how others view you, and what actions you can take to improve your use of The Five Practices, which research has demonstrated, make for more effective leaders. The LPI instrument is available as a self-rating tool and a 360 degree tool that invites feedback from people you invite to complete the rating tool to provide feedback on how they perceive you as a leader.
Mary Beth Lepkowsky is certified to administer and interpret results for all of these assessments and more. H S A would be honored to support you on your journey to discover the Leader Within You. We welcome you to schedule a courtesy 30-minute call with Mary Beth to learn more about these self-awareness tools for you or your team.
