An effective leader is empathetic, understands multiple leadership skills as well as flexible. Leadership skills involve an ability to understand emotional intelligence and skills needed to become a nursing leader. Self-awareness involves the ability to understand one’s emotions and feelings and how these affects and influences others. Self-awareness is significant to leadership effectiveness, and many leaders exercise it. It is a way of exploring tendencies, beliefs, individual personalities, natural inclinations as well as value system (Huber, 2018). People react to things, synthesize and learn differently. Self-awareness help to spend time occasionally in self-reflection to achieve a better insight in ourselves. It assists the managers to determine the gaps in management skills that promote skill development. It assists managers in stress management and motivation, with intuitive decision-making and finds most effective situations. Self-awareness helps people to strengths as well as cope with the weaknesses.
An example, a person good in seeing the big picture surrounding the decision but not good in concentrating at the details may need to consult the subordinates or the colleagues who are more detail-oriented in making main decisions. Combining detail-oriented and big picture oriented decision makers may produce high quality decisions. In a team, a good leader is important (Huber, 2018). For instance, in the hospital nurses may be busy and the patient may require multiple things, some have a change in condition, and some may be in great pain. Nurses who are well-organized, manage time and help other colleagues make differences, enables him or her to run smoothly and less stressful. Nurses using the self-awareness are able to use their feelings and emotions as a guide in decision-making. As nursing, one needs to understand how his/her emotions and attitude affects and influences other employees.
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Self-awareness means knowing your values, personality, needs, habits, emotions, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Human beings are complex and diverse. To become more self-aware, we should develop an understanding of ourselves in many areas. Key areas for self-awareness include our personality traits, personal values, habits, emotions, and the psychological needs that drive our behaviors. Individual leaders who are able to regulate their own emotions are better equipped to provide a “holding environment” for the people who work for and with them, creating a culture where people feel at ease.
In our highly competitive culture, this can seem counterintuitive. In fact, many of us operate on the belief that we must appear as though we know everything all the time or else people will question our abilities, diminishing our effectiveness as leaders. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that really the opposite is true. Because whether you acknowledge your weaknesses or not, everyone still sees them. So rather than conceal them, the person who tries to hide weaknesses actually highlights them, creating the perception of a lack of integrity and self-awareness.
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
