A Look At Leadership Psychology Essay

In a changing corporate world, strong leadership is becoming necessity for their survival Bennis nanus,1985.Complexity and chaos are creating emerging concerns in solving problem in business world, which leads more attention to leadership. This in turn has increased arguments how leadership is different from management. Management focus on responsibities and reaching goals effectively and efficiently which means it is the activities that keeps organization running(Huey,1994).However leadership is a role to influence others and guiding them to go in right direction to effectiveness(Bennis & Nanus,1985).

Three skills required for managers to create success organization includes establishing direction, motivating and inspiring people and aligning people (Cohn,1998).This new leadership role, it puts more pressure on leaders to deal effectively in an environment in which knowledge is an economic resource. Knowledge includes “explicit” data and statistics as in history and “tactic” or inner sense. These are considered as key skills of leaders (White, Hodgson, & Crainer, 1996).Self awareness is a foundation for tactic knowledge. In the White, et al(1996) self awareness involves the leaders being aware of their strengths and weakness and ability to accept them. Self analysis is a process of raising self awareness. So the key thing here is to collect sufficient and efficient information to make effective decision on one’s future for a self managed development. By examining your strengths, weaknesses, skills and competences, a person can get a clear picture of ‘what you are’ and ‘what you have got’.

Now a day’s self awareness has become an important management trait in leadership training. Managerial self awareness is linked to effectivess of leaderships. Managers needs to aware of the areas that needs improvement to do their job well.

Asking feedback is an important element in this process. Feedback is known to improve performances of the mangers by motivating to improve and directing to the strategies to improve performance(Ashford &Tsui,1991).The credible technique or the developmental assessments used these days are multi-rater feedback or360 feedback or multisource appraisal, peer review and full circle feedback (Church & Bracken,1997).This involves a range of raters like peers, co-workers, team leaders, self, supervisors, customers etc to provide feedback by filling a standard questionnaire. The underlying reason to this technique is the improved accuracy that is obtained by asking a wide range of people. This helps to improve future behaviour.

However this was opposed by most traditional approach with only one rater that gives global and accurate results than having different rater groups having different way to rate a manager that leads to halo effect (Borman,1974;Zalesny & Lirch,1989). Multi rater may not be 100% accurate. People judge one’s personality based on the role that they do and over the period they develop skills to suit the job. Top of that behaviours are interpreted differently by different people

        Another limitation on feedback is that sometimes the feedback will be difficult for a person to accept that might bridge a gap in relationship. But these flattering feedbacks might help you increase management skills. It helps to remain cognizant of how one’s performance is perceived. If the level of trust is high then people will give you flattering feedback. It is seen that managers who seek negative feedbacks are in more favourable light than managers who are interested in obtaining negative feedbacks. Impression management associated with active feedback seeking increases the perceives manager’s effectiveness (Ashford & Tui,1991).

Multi rater system takes over the self rating system as the way manager rates himself or herself is always biased and not reliable. This is human tendency to take credit for success and blame circumstances for failures. So the managers who are likely to access their competencies accurately are more aware of the jobs that they do. They are able to visualise how others see them and change their behaviour accordingly in future which in turn enhances leadership techniques.

According to Flavell et. Al(1968), the ability to assess another person’s capabilities and tendencies in a given situation and the ability to use this information to communicate more effectively is a skill that is developed with age. The characteristics of social judgement are a function of developmental phase of a human being. Mead (1934) argues that to be aware of one’s selfhood, the person must first detach awareness from the inside of oneself and use the exterior vantage point of another person. Taking the role of the other is necessary in this framework, as the context of the self consists of the perception of the social other. Duval and Wicklund’s (1972) theory of objective self-awareness takes exception to Mead’s theory by postulating that “self-consciousness occurs because consciousness can focus its attention on the self in the same way that attention is focused on any object.”In no way is it assumed that the individual is dependent upon the point of view of the other in the sense that Mead intends. “If the object-like nature of the self has been discovered, and stimuli in the environment are such that consciousness turns in the direction of the self, the person will become objectively self-aware” (Duval & Wicklund,p. 31, 1972).

In other words, a person does not need to use the point of view of another person to be self-conscious. Instead, the mature individual has one consciousness ability to focus on different directions. Duval and Wicklund (1972) define objective self-awareness as the state in which the self is the object of consciousness. On the other hand, subjective self-awareness is the state in which the self is not the focus of consciousness.

A manager must not only be thoughts, feelings and limitations on himself rather he should be aware of others point of view and include the information in self appraisal (Duval & Lalwani, 1999). This can be referred to as other-awareness (Figurski, 1987).

Figurski (1987) identified four different kinds of person-awareness to bring clarity to the definition of self-awareness. As seen in Figure 1, the three dimensions of person-awareness are target, perspective, and content. Perspective or tacit awareness (egocentric or allocentric) interacts with the target or focal awareness (self or other) to get content of awareness. Four categories of attention result: self-experience awareness, self-image awareness, other-image awareness, and other-experience awareness. These can occur together in any combination or simultaneously.

Figure 1. Figurski’s Model of Person Awareness

TARGET

Self Other

Self

Experience

Awareness

(Internal)

Other

Image

Awareness

(External)

Self

Image

Awareness

(External)

Other

Experience

Awareness

(Internal)

The figures indicate that people are aware of others’ experiences almost fifty percent of the time. The self proves to be the dominant focus of attention.

Although managers are focusing the majority of their attention to the self, they are not able to accurately judge their own behaviours. As stated above, self-ratings are thought to be unreliable indicators of behaviour for various reasons. However, self-ratings are important as there are some characteristics like intelligence, high achievements status and locus of control are closely related to accurate self evaluation Mabe and West(1982).

The greater the individual’s level of self awareness the more similarity that is expected between the self assessment and the ratings provided by peers. Numerous other studies have linked various managerial characteristics to more accurate self-evaluations. The discrepancy between self- and other-ratings is also empirically unclear. For example, an elevation in self-ratings could be due to lower ratings in others rather than over-estimation by the self.

Individuals who are self-aware are more likely to respond to information from past experiences, thereby becoming more effective and displaying more leadership strengths. There will be a significant relationship between overall managerial leadership effectiveness and congruence in self-other ratings. Individuals who are more self aware are perceived by their managers as good performers. This will be manifested in high performers receiving higher congruence in self-other ratings compared to average performing managers (Hypothesis 1a). In addition, there will be a correlation between the overall leadership measure and higher congruence scores (Hypothesis 1b).

In the event that a manager is not self-aware, information on how others perceive the self is not utilized. According to the Figurski (1987) model, the allocentric perspective must be utilized in order for one to be aware of how the self is considered by others. Failure to consider the similarity or differences between the self and others results in perspectives that vary. Effective communication is in turn hindered, because the understanding between people is not clear. Conversely, those who communicate effectively are using information gathered from interactions with others. It is therefore

expected that managers with higher communication scores will display more

congruent performance data (as reflected in self-rater agreement). (Hypothesis 2.)

Previous studies have found that different rater groups draw from different

experiences when filling out an individual’s performance review, and therefore results can differ by data source (Harris & Schaubroeck, 1988; Borman, 1974; Zalesney & Kirsch, 1989). Furthermore, individuals tend to focus more on feedback they receive from their managers versus peers or others. Data source (self, manager, peer, and other) is expected to explain variance in self-awareness levels. (Hypothesis 3.)

Key Areas for Self-Awareness 

       Being a very complex and diverse creature Human beings need to have an understanding in many areas to become self aware. The areas that has to be focused for self- awareness includes psychological needs, personality traits, values, habits, emotions etc. 

        Understanding our personalities can help us to find the solutions in which we thrive and help us to avoid situation which will give us too much stress and mental pressure. It could be in personal or professional life. For instance an introvert person can find it more stressful in sales job than an extrovert person. So either the person has to learn skills to match the job requirement or should look for other opportunities. So Awareness of personality helps to make a decision that will lead to less stress to lead a happy life.

        Every person has its own personal values. Awareness of own values will not misguide us to pay more attention to less priority things in a day to day and we would be likely finish what we think is important to us rather than feeling guilty on not finishing it.

         Habits are the behaviours that are repeated routinely and automatically. Personal habit may affect our effectiveness. For instance if a person who is a manager doesn’t have a habit to consult staff in decision making process may affect his ability to build staff members commitment.

  Knowing the psychological needs like esteem, affection, possessive, achievement, self actualization, power, control etc will help to understand their effect on interpersonal relationships. Emotional self-awareness is one of the five facets of emotional intelligence. It’s about knowing ones feelings, what caused that feeling and how it impacts one thought and action. A person with high emotional self awareness can understand the internal processes of any emotional experience so can have a better control over it

How Self-Awareness Makes You More Effective 

        Self-awareness promotes skill development by the bridging the gap in management skills. It leads the managers to find effectivess and help in making effective decision, stress management and motivate oneself and others

        Self awareness makes a person aware of the gap between the current and future situation and helps enhancing the skills required for the future situation. Self awareness helps to utilise your strength and manage your weaknesses. For example someone gets tempered when conflict arises. If the person is aware of his weakness then the person should to not be in a situation when the conflict arises or practise to deal with the situation. That will help the person to handle its temper and not to affect others.

        Managers with emotional awareness are good decision makers. In these changing competitive environments intuitive decision makers can deal with situation with ‘gut feeling’ and ‘sixth sense’. Emotionally aware persons can read their gut feeling and have better sixth sense that help them in decision making process. Jobs that don’t suit a person’s personality will give more stress than more compatible jobs. This is not like if your qualities are not compatible you can’t go ahead with the job but you can put extra effort to develop the skills buy there are other alternative that will be less stressful. Self awareness is very powerful in revealing what is important for a person to improve performance.  Understanding psychological needs increase motivation and get closer to the rewards that a person deserves.

 Understanding what click a person, reason of behaviour, reason of excitement etc can make what triggers others as well. So knowing to motivate yourself can help in know what motivate others.

In Summary … To perfect ones management skills the best way to start is getting self aware. With a sense of yourself and vision of what kind a person you are or what you want to become a plan of personal and professional development can be created, its helps to motivate a person, Help to manage stress and help in decision making and helps to lead and motivate others, which makes an effective leader. Knowing yourself is a slow process so we should try hard.