Grow Your Self-Awareness, Become a Better Leader

Written by leadership expert and coach Dan Gallagher, The Self-Aware Leader is designed to sharpen the self-awareness of middle-managers to drive their career growth and roles as leaders. These leaders often find themselves in the unenviable role of buffering between employees and upper management. While being a middle manager takes patience and loyalty, most middle managers become overly entangled in just getting things done. Self-awareness is an enduring business skill that, when developed successfully, can free managers from the day-to-day weeds and allow them to master their own destiny, reinvent their teams, and achieve their business goals.

Gallagher presents a leadership model that new up-and-comers, journeymen veterans, and even senior leaders can use as a catalyst to propel their careers. Based on empirical research involving on 700+ middle managers and more than two decades of use, the model highlights two key principles of leadership self-awareness: reinvention to remain relevant and proactive (not reactive) action. It is the first to fully integrate the idea of reinvention, servant leadership, and business transformation into a single framework.

Topics addressed in this second edition include leadership health and well-being, artificial intelligence, the digitization of work, the connection between employee and customer experiences, trust, and leading remote teams. The final chapter highlights how self-awareness has risen to the forefront of business skills. The book includes thought exercises, role-specific insights for leaders in various functions, and real examples of how increased self-awareness grows a leader's value.