The Comfortable Myth of Self‑Awareness

We often tell leaders that everything starts with self-awareness—knowing their strengths and limits. It has become something of a mantra. The issue is that this idea is comfortable. It places leadership squarely in the realm of individual introspection and reassures the ego. In practice, however, it is not always what causes leaders to struggle.

In the field, I rarely encounter leaders who lack self-awareness. On the contrary, most can clearly articulate their strengths, their values, and even their blind spots. What tends to surprise them, however, is how partial their understanding of their team is—sometimes entirely misaligned with what team members experience day to day. They do not fully grasp how their team actually operates, nor what consistently hinders or strengthens it.

Leadership research is clear: leaders often overestimate their ability to understand how they are perceived and how their teams function. They interpret reality through their own mental models and implicit expectations, which they project onto others. This is precisely what Implicit Leadership Theories highlightⁱ. This bias even extends to emotions—we tend to see what we expect to seeⁱⁱ. The result: blind spots.

These blind spots have very real consequences. Despite strong talent and positive collegial relationships, only 35% of so-called “ideal” teams truly outperform average teams, and just 23% deliver work on timeⁱⁱⁱ. From a climate perspective, the picture is equally concerning: only 18% of employees feel fully safe expressing an unpopular opinion^iv. Disagreement—essential to collective performance—remains largely unspoken.

This gap is also reflected in how leaders define their priorities. Nearly one in two managers identify sustaining engagement as their primary challenge^v. Yet what hinders engagement is not always a lack of motivation or individual effort, but rather a partial—or even inaccurate—understanding of how the team truly functions on a daily basis.

In this context, it is not surprising that nearly half of employees perceive traditional team-building activities as artificial or disconnected from their reality^vi. When interventions focus on individuals or visible symptoms rather than real team dynamics, engagement does not follow.

Leaders read team behavior as alignment, when it is often just adaptation

What leaders interpret as “this is what my team prefers” is, in many cases, a form of adaptation rather than genuine alignment. Teams adjust their behaviors based on the implicit expectations they perceive from their leader^vii. They align with what feels safe, predictable, and socially less costly—not because they agree, but because it is the path of least friction.

Research on organizational silence clearly shows that team members withhold their opinions and adjust their behavior when expressing disagreement is seen as risky or pointless^viii. This is not a lack of courage; it is a strategy. Misalignment could, in theory, be corrected if teams openly shared what they think—but they often do not. And not because they lack opinions. It is a form of social survival^ix. We consistently underestimate the cost, for an individual, of telling a leader: “You’re wrong,” “That’s not what we actually prefer,” or “You think X, but the team really operates as Y.”

Leaders, in turn, interpret this adaptation as consensus. They read the absence of friction as a signal of alignment, without always verifying whether their intentions have truly been understood or shared. As a result, what they observe is not the team’s reality, but the consequence of their own expectations being projected outward. In other words, they are not seeing their team—they are seeing their own projections. This creates a false consensus^x.

The literature is consistent: individuals systematically overestimate how much others share their intentions, preferences, and ways of thinking—and this effect is particularly pronounced among leaders who frequently make decisions^xi. This illusion creates a sense of alignment that often never actually existed: leaders conflate what they meant with what was truly understood, and interpret silence or lack of opposition as implicit validation^xii.

Each time no one challenges them, the leader’s certainty grows. They become more confident in their interpretations, less inclined to question them, and even less likely to test their assumptions. The loop then becomes self-reinforcing: the leader assumes consensus, the team adapts to preserve relationships and stability, silence reinforces the illusion, and the leader’s confidence increases^xiii. As some might put it, a leader can be “often wrong, but rarely in doubt.”

What appears to be alignment is not a sign of cohesion, but the result of a dynamic organized around leadership projections—one that sustains acceptable performance, but rarely optimal outcomes.

When leaders project, and teams adjust in response

This cycle of adaptation leads to quiet failures: nothing breaks down, yet nothing truly aligns. The leader continues to believe they are understood. The team continues to adjust. And the gap persists.

Why current approaches fall short

Current leadership approaches are based on a misdiagnosis. They treat leadership as an individual issue, when it is fundamentally relational and systemic^xivxv. Individual assessments tend to act like mirrors—they help leaders see themselves more clearly.

In many organizations, I have seen leaders invest significant time and energy into profiles, assessments, and personal development workshops, with a genuine desire to grow. Yet a few months later, the same team tensions resurface, largely unchanged. Not because the tools are ineffective, but because they never helped uncover the team’s actual dynamics.

The issue is not that leaders lack self-awareness. The issue is that they treat this self-awareness as an endpoint, rather than a starting point.

Because leadership is relational, a leader becomes someone within their team. Leadership does not exist outside of context—it does not exist outside of a team.

When strengths become excuses

Strength-based approaches, while useful and widely adopted, carry an often underestimated risk: they can solidify behaviors rather than make them adaptive. In practice, strengths are frequently used as identity-based justifications—“that’s my style,” “that’s my strength,” “that’s just how I operate.” This type of language turns behavioral preferences into fixed traits that are difficult to question^xvi.

It is not uncommon to hear leaders explain persistent tensions with statements such as: “I’m a direct person” or “my strength is clarity.” In practice, these strengths are rarely the issue in themselves; it is their repeated activation, without adjusting to the team context, that ultimately creates problems.

Once a behavior is recognized as a strength, it becomes more difficult to challenge—even when its impact on the team is ambiguous or counterproductive. This is partly because leaders tend to evaluate their behavior based on their intentions rather than on its actual effects^xvii. As a result, leaders may focus on expressing themselves more clearly, being more assertive, or staying more aligned with their intentions—without necessarily questioning how these behaviors are interpreted and experienced by their team.

The blind spot does not lie in the leader’s identity, but in the effect they have on their team. This phenomenon is well documented in research on social perception and leadership^xviii.
It is within this context that our leadership excellence framework presents its five orientations as areas of attention rather than a normative model. These orientations are not meant to define an ideal style, but to support a more nuanced reading of context and team dynamics. An orientation may be relevant and energizing in one situation, then become limiting if applied without considering how the team evolves.

For example, a leader recognized for their clarity and ability to make decisions quickly may draw on these strengths to bring structure and efficiency. However, in a highly autonomous and expert team, that same clarity can be experienced as closing the door to dialogue. Research on psychological safety shows that when leaders signal that decisions are already made, team members intentionally reduce their voice and contribution^xix.

At that point, team members stop proposing alternatives—not because of genuine alignment, but because they perceive that the decision has already been made. Without a nuanced understanding of this reaction, the leader may double down on what they perceive as their strength—adding more structure, accelerating decisions—without realizing that the team is adapting by contributing less. What began as an individual strength becomes a silent driver of collective disengagement.

From self-awareness to team awareness

In this context, self-awareness needs to be rethought. In leadership, it cannot be limited to the ability to describe one’s preferences, values, or intentions. A leader is truly self-aware when they can accurately anticipate how their behaviors will be interpreted and experienced by their team. In other words, meaningful self-awareness is both introspective and outward-looking^xx.

This is where the notion of team awareness emerges. In coaching, this is often the moment when the shift happens: the leader stops asking, “Who am I as a leader?” and starts asking, “What does my team become when I do X?” This shift in perspective is rarely intuitive, but it is critical. It enables leaders to understand not only what they do, but what their team becomes in response to their behaviors.

It connects leadership orientations to the real context in which they are expressed—levels of autonomy, collective maturity, available capabilities, workload, and psychological safety^xxixxii. Without this lens, leadership orientations risk being activated out of habit or personal preference, rather than in response to the team’s actual needs.

However, this understanding alone is not sufficient. Leaders must also be able to adjust. This is precisely the role of behavioral agility. It serves as the bridge between the leader’s identity (their strengths, style, and dominant orientations) and the reality experienced by the team. It allows leaders to modify their behaviors when the observed impact differs from the intended one—and to do so in real time^xxiii.

For example, a leader may recognize that they are not naturally inclined toward structure, while also realizing that their team needs it to progress. This awareness enables them to adapt their behavior and introduce clearer guardrails—not to conform to a model, but to respond appropriately to the context. Similarly, a leader who excels at structure and clarity may choose to slow down or open more space for discussion when they notice their team beginning to self-censor.

Viewed this way, team awareness is not a standalone concept. It is the point of convergence between leadership orientations, team context, and behavioral agility. It allows leaders to go beyond personal consistency and toward an impact that is truly aligned with their team’s needs.

Key takeaways

As we have seen, leadership development almost always begins with self-awareness—and rightly so. Understanding one’s strengths, preferences, blind spots, and intentions is an essential first step. However, it is largely insufficient to sustainably improve collective performance.

Many leaders believe that improving their self-awareness will naturally improve team dynamics. Others assume that a team workshop focused on sharing strengths and blind spots will, on its own, generate meaningful impact. The team may temporarily feel “better understood”… yet a few weeks later, the same tensions, misunderstandings, and irritants reappear. Not because the approach was ineffective, but because it stopped too early.

Developing leadership therefore requires leaders to actively invest in understanding their team—a step that is often underestimated, if not avoided. This is the moment when leadership shifts from being individual-centered to truly systemic. And yet, this understanding is not primarily built through additional tools or diagnostics, but through the quality and nature of the conversations leaders are able to have with their teams.

In practical terms, this requires a shift in focus. Many leaders have a strong grasp of the what: goals, deliverables, timelines, performance metrics. Far fewer take the time to explore the how:

• how decisions are perceived and experienced within the team;
• how disagreements are expressed—or avoided;
• how pressure shapes behavior and collaboration;
• what enables or hinders voice, initiative, and shared accountability.

These dimensions are rarely addressed explicitly—not due to a lack of competence, but because they require a different stance from the leader: asking open questions, tolerating discomfort, and slowing down the pace of action to observe the dynamics at play.

When these conversations do not happen, the consequences are predictable:

• individual differences are perceived as irritants rather than complementary contributions;
• minor disagreements escalate disproportionately, due to a lack of space to address them early;
• collective potential remains partially untapped, despite the engagement and capability of team members.

Conversely, a deep understanding of the team enables leaders to see more clearly what the team amplifies in them—sometimes without their awareness—what it dampens, circumvents, or avoids, and what becomes a source of tension or withdrawal under pressure. This perspective does not rely on general impressions, but on repeated observation of patterns: who speaks and when, who remains silent, how decisions close, when energy drops or becomes rigid.

It allows leaders to draw a direct link between their behaviors—even well-intentioned ones—and their tangible effects on team dynamics.

In this sense, team awareness is not an optional extension of self-awareness—it is what makes it effective. It allows leaders to move beyond an identity-centered understanding toward a nuanced reading of their real impact. Without this second step, strengths can become rigid, blind spots deepen, and collective performance plateaus—even within capable and committed teams.

As Edgar Schein reminds us^xxiv, a team’s culture is shaped less by what the leader explicitly values than by what they implicitly tolerate without questioning. Developing team awareness therefore means paying attention to these subtle signals: silences, adjustments, what remains unsaid. It is under these conditions that leaders can translate their intentions into an impact that is truly aligned with their team’s needs.

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ⁱⁱⁱ Forbes (2025). Why Half Of Your Team Hates Team Building Activities. En ligne au : https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2025/10/17/why-half-of-your-team-hates-team-building-activities/

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^vi Forbes (2025). Why Half Of Your Team Hates Team Building Activities. En ligne au : https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2025/10/17/why-half-of-your-team-hates-team-building-activities/

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