As the leaders constitute a key asset of any business organisation,  substantial investments are made in leadership development processes. Awareness building is a competence to be enhanced and developed in the leadership coaching processes.

A goal of leadership coaching is to change attitudes and behavior among leaders through self-awareness, to enhance their success  – and that of their organisations – in the long term. The outcomes of leadership coaching include increased levels of self-awareness, career satisfaction and emotional commitment. Organisations apply leadership coaching as a worthy method of leaders’ and organisations development.

• There are three main competencies developed by the leadership coaching process:

• Self-awareness (emotional awareness, self-confidence, and accurate self-image),Self-regulation (self-control, trustworthiness, adaptability and personal responsibility) Self-motivation (commitment, initiative, and optimism).

When properly developed, these competencies make an authentic and efficient leader who can carry out the organisations’ goals. Let's take a closer look at each of them.

Self-awareness is the extent to which individuals are conscious of different aspects of their identities, and the extent to which their self-perceptions are congruent with the way others see them. Self-awareness is substantial component of emotional intelligence and  and ; it is the skill to recognise and understand your moods, emotions, and drives and their effects on everything and everyone around you. It is important for the leaders to evaluate themselves, so that they can recognise the impact on their thinking and decisions as well as on other individuals,

Self-regulation is based on a fundamental sequence where individuals (a) regulate their attention and effort around self-set goals or assigned goals, (b) take action to achieve those goals, (c)  maintain or enhance their progress toward their goals, (d) obtain their goals or their performance strategy, (e) recommence the cycle

Self-motivation refers to the ability to raise one's own levels of drive, identifying those deeper underlying motivations that to go beyond immediate business challenges in both personal development and performance.

Raising the combined capabilities of self-awareness, self-regulation and self-motivation enhances individual knowledge, trust, and personal power, which are fundamental in creating in an effective and efficient leader.

Leadership coaching is dedicated for organisations that emphasise constant retraining of their leaders to support them in becoming more versatile and pragmatic. Both practice and scientific findings show that leadership coaching has positive impact on the leaders’ skills and knowledge, social capital, transformational-leadership behaviour, and self-awareness.

Leadership development can be perceived as an awareness-based process, which can shift the focus of work from individual will-power to learning and growing in awareness about the experience of being leader. Fostering leader self-awareness constitutes the core work of leadership coaching processes as the increased self-awareness is strongly correlated to executive effectiveness.

Awareness and consciousness encompass responsibility, achievement orientation and deliberation. Leaders scoring high on consciousness work harder have a sense of direction and self-discipline. And they are highly structured in their way of working, which optimises the time they spend on a specific issue. Leaders continue to evolve throughout their lifetime, and there is a beauty in their constant growth.

Contact the author at phone: +48 602 441 909, email: lucyna.baca-lonn@graphologysolutions.eu