Columnist Caroline Gourlay is an independent business psychologist based in Bath who writes about the application of psychology in the workplace, including its risks and limitations. She is interested in trends in psychological research as well as the nitty-gritty practicalities of using psychology at work. Caroline has worked with large corporations and in the public sector, but her real interest is in medium-sized, owner-managed businesses, including family business. She helps organisations to select the right people to fit their organisation and coaches executives to enable them to fulfil their potential.

How self-aware are you? Many personal and leadership development programmes have an explicit or implicit goal of raising people’s self-awareness. It is often the basis for experiential learning, in particular.

But what does it actually mean and is everyone talking about the same thing? I’ve noticed psychologists and L&D professionals talk about four subtly different concepts under the same umbrella term of ‘self-awareness’.

1. Self-knowledge

This involves knowing what you’re like or what your general tendencies are. You might know that you are most productive in the morning; that you get nervous before big presentations; that you have a bit of temper; that you are overly deferential to authority figures and so on. These are useful things to know and things you might want to either do something about or learn to work around. Recognising them is an important starting point.

2. Self-understanding

Self-understanding involves getting further under the surface to look at why you are like you are. This is the underpinning of a lot of personal development and coaching.

Self-understanding can be at the level of personality profiling – you might recognise that, as an introvert, you need time to reflect and don’t like thinking on your feet; or as an ENTP in Myers Briggs terms, you might know that you struggle to finish things unless there’s an external deadline to add a bit of pressure. 

Self-understanding can also occur at the more individual level – you might know, for example, that you have a problem with authority figures because of a particularly difficult time at school; or that you constantly try to prove yourself because you grew up in the shadow of your more successful older brother. Understanding the origins of some of your individual quirks can give you more choice in how you respond to situations.

3. Self-monitoring

This is about moment-by-moment awareness, paying attention to what is going on for you right now – what are you thinking, what are you feeling, what is going on in your body? It’s about recognising the tell-tale signs that you’re getting tense, anxious or angry. Some forms of coaching focus on ‘reorganising’ yourself to change your mental and emotional state and help you cope better with situations that trigger strong emotions for you.

4. Inter-personal awareness

This form of self-awareness is about recognising the impact you have on others, both in general and in the moment. You might know, for example, that you sometimes ramble and tend to lose your audience. This is useful insight to have in general, helping you plan out a presentation for example, but it’s even more helpful if you are able to spot it while it’s actually happening as that gives you a chance to do something about it.

An example for you to ponder…

Let’s put it all together and imagine a manager we’ll call John. John’s self-knowledge is that he loses his cool if he feels cornered in a meeting and can’t come up with an answer to a question. A bit of coaching deepens John’s self-understanding, revealing that a) he’s an introvert and needs reflection time and b) his father was a high-flying barrister who used to test out his children’s debating skills over the dinner table. Not having a ready answer brought both the weary disapproval of his father and the mockery of his older brother.

No wonder decades later poor old John feels stressed and cornered if he can’t answer a question. Re- framing the situation and reminding himself that he’s not 12 years old now is likely to help him put things in perspective.

Additionally, John’s challenge will be to develop some self-monitoring skills so he can tell when he’s starting to feel anxious, make a conscious effort to relax and come up with alternative ways of responding, rather than just reacting automatically.

John’s inter-personal awareness will be strongly coloured by his childhood experiences. When he can’t answer a question his major preoccupation will be to avoid looking stupid. He is likely to be much less concerned about appearing rude, aggressive or intimidating, so long as he doesn’t make a fool of himself in his eyes. Developing greater awareness of his impact on others, both in general terms and as he is interacting, is likely to help him to moderate his behaviour.

These four aspects of ‘self-awareness’ build on each other but are quite distinct from one another. Self-knowledge and self-understanding are more analytical and generic; self-monitoring and inter-personal awareness are more feeling-based and much more specific to particular incidents. Perhaps it’s time we got clearer about what we’re talking about here.