Self-awareness helps managers identify gaps in their management skills, which promotes skill development. But self-awareness also helps managers find situations in which they will be most effective, assists with intuitive decision making, and aids stress management and motivation of oneself and others. Self-awareness can help the managers exploit their strengths and cope with their weaknesses. For instance, if one who is good at "seeing the big picture" that surrounds decisions, but not as good at focusing on the details, he/she might want to consult colleagues and subordinates that are more detail-oriented when making major decisions. Cooperation between big-picture-oriented decision makers and detail-oriented decision makers can produce high quality decisions.
Leaders with well-developed self-awareness are more effective intuitive decision makers. In complex situations, intuitive decision makers process large amounts of sometimes unstructured and ambiguous data and they choose a course of action based on a "gut feeling" or a "sense" of what's best.
English: Stress Management for IT professionals
English: A diagram of the (strategic) planning cyc...
Performance Reference Model of the Federal Enterpr...This type of decision making is becoming more important for managers as the rate of change and the levels of uncertainty and complexity in their competitive environments increase. Managers who are highly self-aware are better able to read their "gut feelings" and use them to guide decisions. Self-awareness is empowering because it can reveal where the performance problems are and indicate what can be done to improve performance.
Improvement projects should normally begin with an assessment of the gap between the current situation and the desired future situation. Having an accurate sense of who you are helps the manager decide what they should do to improve. The strategic planning process is the formulation of the organization's high-level goals and executive plans and it is an especially compelling area of focus for executive development and education. Job skills are the process of choosing...