If you’re a Learning & Development professional, you’ve probably seen the study by organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich that found 95% of people believe they’re self-aware while only 10% to 15% actually are [1].
Imagine how this statistic comes to life in your leadership trainings. In a cohort of 20, everyone except one person will feel they really understand how they show up, what their blind spots are and how these tendencies affect others. In reality, only two or three do. This discrepancy is not intended to be a slight to your leaders; what it really is is a design challenge that you can address in your programming.
Why Self-awareness Is So Valuable
Research from Cornell and Green Peak Partners [2] identified self-understanding as the single strongest predictor of leadership success, and it’s a costly challenge [3]. Self awareness is a core component for nearly every other capability that we often expect from our managers and executives, including emotional intelligence, coaching, communication and change resilience. resilience.
The need for this capacity is only growing as we live in more volatile, complex environments [4]. When there’s so much instability and uncertainty, leaders who know themselves are more likely to recognize how their innate strengths and potential biases may serve them or hinder them as they respond.
Why Assessments Are Only the Beginning
Often, I find that self-awareness in training programs looks something like this: leaders complete a psychometric assessment [5], attend a facilitated debrief, have meaningful aha moments and then move on to the next module.
That’s an awesome start!
It’s so important to have these individual insights delivered in an engaging way so that leaders open up to learning about themselves and their impact on others. The challenge is that insight ≠ change.
For example, when a leader learns they innately tend toward a first-third Flexible style (where they like to stay the course) versus a third-third Flexible approach (where they prefer to adjust tactics along the way up until the end), that information is genuinely useful.
However, in that initial debrief, it’s challenging to dive into how those preferences are landing with their team, in a reorg or with a direct report who operates completely differently than they do. The results alone also may not give them the tools they need to notice when their defaults are helping or hindering in real time and under real pressure.
While an assessment typically gives leaders a new vocabulary for their strengths and blind spots, it often doesn’t get embedded into daily work. In which case, we may be falling short.
“I don’t love big-picture thinking” becomes a label rather than a growth opportunity. “That’s how I’m wired” can become an excuse rather than a starting point.
That’s why we often like to say “No whining” in our Meeting of Minds [6] experiences because we know that just because we may not love doing something, we can still flex [7] and stretch ourselves when it’s important for our objectives, our roles, our people or our potential.
Why the Self-awareness Gap Is So Stubborn
For leaders specifically, overconfidence in self-awareness tends to be reinforced by a few dynamics. Positional authority may reduce authentic feedback. Success can entrench certain behaviors that may become liabilities if they are overused. And in cultures that reward confidence, uncertainty about your own impact may feel like a weakness.
Closing the gap requires more than better assessments [8] or more honest 360s, although those definitely help! It means building self-awareness into the ongoing structure of how leaders learn.
4 Ways to Amplify Self-Awareness
The good news is that self-awareness is trainable. Here’s what that looks like in practice for leadership development design:
Weave reflection into the rhythm of work.
Integrate short reflections into day-to-day touchpoints like team meetings, performance check-ins and eLearnings. It can make a difference to take even three minutes responding to questions like: What did I intend in that interaction? What actually happened? What might I be missing? What might have gone better if I had flexed into a different style? Practiced consistently, leaders start to become self-observers.
Make the Profile a living reference.
An assessment like the Emergenetics Profile [8] is most powerful when leaders return to it repeatedly in different contexts, connecting it to an actual decision they made last week, a feedback conversation they found difficult or a moment when they felt out of their depth. The Profile becomes a lens rather than a label when it’s actively used and applied to real-world scenarios. In coaching conversations, project reviews or post-mortem meetings, ask leaders how their Profile impacted their approach.
Build in structured peer feedback loops.
Often, the leaders who struggle the most with self-awareness are the ones with the least access to honest input. Create opportunities for peer observation, where colleagues regularly give and receive feedback from one another. Provide informal gatherings or virtual forums where managers and executives can openly discuss their actions and get advice from their counterparts in other departments at a similar level.
Close and open with prompts to support learning transfer.
At the end of every training session, ask leaders: How will you put these insights into practice with your leadership approach? Then, start your next learning session with a conversation about what they discovered. Designing the bridge will turn aha moments into practical next steps for ongoing growth.
Create the Foundation
When leaders truly develop and embrace self-awareness, it acts as a multiplier across every other leadership capability you want to advance. Executives and managers who can accurately understand their own tendencies are more coachable, more empathetic, more adaptable under pressure and more trusted by their teams. Your programs can be the spark that drives up self-awareness in your organization from a mere 10%-15% to greater volumes!
FAQs
Q: Why do so many leadership development programs fail to build self-awareness?
A: Most programs deliver a one-time assessment debrief and move on. Without ongoing reflection and real-world application, insight rarely translates into behavior change. The Emergenetics Profile is designed to be a living reference leaders return to repeatedly with practical tools like the Emergenetics+ app [9] that help make it easy to apply in the flow of work.
Q: What is the best psychometric assessment for leadership self-awareness?
A: There are so many great tools available! What sets the Emergenetics Profile [10] apart is that it measures both Thinking and Behavioral preferences, which makes it simple enough to understand and apply while nuanced enough to give leaders a clear picture of who they are and who they are leading. Unlike many personality tools, it’s also built for ongoing workplace application with our mobile app, workshops and eLearnings.
Q: Why do leaders overestimate their own self-awareness?
A: There are a few reasons that the gap persists. Often, positional authority reduces honest upward feedback, past success entrenches behaviors that may become liabilities in overuse and cultures that reward confidence make self-doubt feel like a weakness.
Q: What is the business case for investing in leadership self-awareness training?
A: Research from Cornell and Green Peak Partners identified self-understanding as the single strongest predictor of leadership success. A lack of self-awareness can be expensive, too! We built an ROI calculator [3] to illustrate how much money your company may be losing on this common workplace challenge.
Q: Can self-awareness actually be taught, or is it a fixed trait?
A: Self-awareness is trainable. The leaders who develop it most effectively aren’t defined by one personality type. They’re typically the ones who embrace a growth mindset, have access to honest input and are supported by solutions and tools like the Emergenetics that weave reflections into regular workplace touchpoints.
Want to build self-awareness — and eight other in-demand leadership capabilities — in your training programs? Download Leading Forward [11] for ready-to-use activities and integration tips.
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