An important mechanism underlying self-development is self-awareness, insightfully processing feedback about oneself to improve one’s effectiveness. Part of self-awareness is being able to understand how you are perceived by others. If others perceive the leader in the same way, the leader has good self-awareness. In contrast, if most subordinates perceive the leader as unexcited about attaining group goals, the leader’s self-awareness is low.

The terms single-loop learning and double-loop learning differentiate between levels of self-awareness. Single-loop learning occurs when learners seek minimum feedback that might substantially confront their basic ideas or actions. Double-loop learning is an in-depth type of learning that occurs when people use feed-back to confront the validity of the goal or the values implicit in the situation. An important contribution of double-loop learning is that it enables the leader to learn and profit from setbacks.

A fruitful area of self-awareness is for leaders to recognize their standing on two key dimensions of leadership: forceful versus enabling leadership, and strategy versus operational. A leader should not spend so much time strategizing that operations become neglected, or so much time focusing on operations that strategy is neglected. The process of self-awareness on these two dimensions is much like volume control—raise or lower the volume to get the best result. Self-awareness can also be helpful in understanding how close an individual is to his or her concept of an ideal leader.