Defining Self-Awareness in the Context of Adult Development: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Self-awareness is often seen as a critical component in leadership and career success, and has therefore become a feature in MBAs, leadership development, and management education. It has become a popular “buzzword” in management literature, yet when reviewing this literature, there appears to be no consistent definition of the construct. This article reports a systematic literature review, covering how the construct of self-awareness is defined and how it differs from self-consciousness and self-knowledge within the context of management education. After screening, 31 articles were included in the review, analysis of which identified there is an overlap with how self-awareness, self-consciousness, and self-knowledge are defined. Other themes from our analysis include the identification of the components of self-awareness, how to be self-aware, and the purpose of self-awareness. The contribution of our article is the provision of clarity on the construct of self-awareness and a working definition, which can be used in the fields of leadership and management development by practitioners in education and organizations, and for future research within the context of adult development and the workplace.

The Trend of Authentic Leadership Skills in Nursing Education: The Key Role of Perfectionism and Self-Efficacy

“…Self-awareness and positive perception of one’s own skills is important for the personal and professional development of nurses, and for the development of an effective nurse–patient relationship [ 19 ]. Furthermore, high self-awareness is claimed to lead to better decision making, and is linked to team performance and authentic leadership [ 20 ]. In this context, personality traits related to self-awareness, which directly influence the effectiveness of human activities, become more important.…”

Exploring the role of self‐awareness in coach development: A grounded theory study

“…In addition, experienced coaches were chosen because it was felt that newly practising and novice coaches would not be able to identify which training and development activities are most impactful in terms of developing self‐awareness. While it is acknowledged that coaching experience, in terms of hours, is not an indicator of coaching quality (Diller et al, 2020), we wanted to interview coaches who had been coaching for several years as we considered (based on our own experience) that they would have engaged in several forms of development, and as self‐awareness develops over time (Carden et al, 2021), they would consequently have already started to develop their capacity to be self‐aware. Therefore, the participants selected had undergone coach training and were experienced accredited coaches (EMCC Senior Practitioner or above, ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) or above, or an equivalent), or with over 500 h coaching experience if they had no accreditation from a professional coaching body.…”

“…The researchers acknowledge that the construct of self‐awareness is complex and multi‐layered, and has multiple definitions (Sutton, 2016; Williams, 2008). However, this has been explored at length in a recent systematic literature review exploring how self‐awareness is defined within the context of adult development (Carden et al, 2021) which highlights this complexity. Therefore, this informed how self‐awareness was conceptualized by the researchers for this research and the following definition was used:…”

“…'Self-awareness consists of a range of components, which can be developed through focus, evaluation and feedback, and provides an individual with an awareness of their internal state (emotions, cognitions, physiological responses), that drives their behaviours (beliefs, values and motivations) and an awareness of how this impacts and influences others' (Carden et al, 2021).…”

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“…It provides reasons for why each person has his/her own unique system of values and beliefs regarding how the world operates, what are considered morally right or wrong and to what degree, and where his/her being is positioned in the myriad of things in the world and in nature. Different from similar studies in social science (e.g., Carden et al, 2021;Churchland, 2019;Ekstrom, 2000;Gamsakhurdia, 2019), where data-or anecdote-based observations and conjectures are treated as confirmed conclusions, although only statistically for most cases (Forrest, 2018, p. 12-16), discussions in this section are based on the methodology and the holistic thinking of systems science (Forrest et al, 2013).…”