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Listen to Kevin Ford, former CEO of Calian Group and Craig Dowden unpack self-awareness in leadership, part one of a three-part Do Good to Lead Well series on the Positive Leadership Framework.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is self-awareness in leadership? It's an ongoing practice of understanding how your behavior, tone, and decisions land with others, built through structured feedback, peer input, and real-time self-observation, not a fixed personality trait.
What is a 360 feedback process? It's a structured method for gathering anonymous, independent feedback on a leader from multiple sources, peers, direct reports, and managers, to surface blind spots that self-perception alone misses.
How do you get honest feedback from employees? Build trust over time so feedback surfaces naturally through everyday interactions, rather than only relying on formal requests. Combine that with structured processes like 360 reviews for balanced, periodic input.
Why Self-Awareness in Leadership Starts With a Hard Conversation
Every leader thinks they know how they're showing up. Kevin Ford, who spent a decade as President and CEO of Calian Group Limited, learned the hard way that knowing and actually knowing are two very different things. Early in his career, a VP named Tony Baldock pulled him aside for coffee after a meeting and told him plainly: that was the most immature I've ever seen you.
That single moment cracked open what became one of Ford's defining leadership habits, treating self-awareness in leadership not as a fixed trait but as an ongoing practice. As he put it on the podcast, "I think a fundamental ingredient of excellent leadership is the ability to be self-aware and be aware and look for these input signs and be willing to change." We start with this as the first movement in a three-part Positive Leadership Framework series: leading yourself, connecting with others, and anchoring the work.
The data backs up why this matters so much. Dowden references research spanning over half a million people showing self-awareness was the single strongest predictor of personal and professional success, ahead of personality, education, or demographics. That's a big claim, but Ford's own trajectory, a CEO of the Year award in 2017, EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019, and revenue growth from roughly $242 million to over $740 million during his tenure, makes it hard to dismiss.
What Is a 360 Feedback Process, and Why Ford Says Every Executive Needs One
If you're wondering what a 360 feedback process actually looks like in practice, Ford's answer is refreshingly unglamorous. It's structured, it's anonymous, and it's not optional if you're serious about growth. "If folks listening haven't had a 360 on, get one where you get some independent, anonymous feedback on a bunch of different things," he says. At Calian, he worked with his CHRO to build a consistent feedback process, though he admits in hindsight it should have run more often than it did.
A 360 feedback process works because it removes the guesswork. Instead of relying on your own read of a room, or worse, assuming silence means everything is fine, you get input from peers, direct reports, and managers who see angles of your leadership you simply can't see yourself. Ford describes three sources that fed his own self-awareness over the years:
- Formal process — structured 360 reviews and independent assessments built into company culture, not just treated as a "tick-box" exercise.
- Peer network — an executive team, assistants, board chair, and family who commented honestly on how he was showing up day to day.
- Self-observation — reading body language and tone in real time, especially in person, to catch cues about how a message is landing.
None of these replace the others. A 360 feedback process gives you structured, periodic data. Your peer network gives you real-time, informal signals. Self-observation gives you the ability to adjust mid-conversation. Together, they build a fuller picture than any single input could.
How to Get Honest Feedback From Employees Without Making It Weird
This is where most leaders get stuck. Asking directly for feedback can feel forced, and employees often hold back out of fear or politeness. Ford's approach wasn't to demand feedback but to build an environment where it surfaced naturally. "I don't think I ever said, okay, give me feedback," he explains. "I was very lucky to have a very strong leadership team... they would always kind of comment on how you're doing or how you are showing up."
That's a critical distinction for anyone trying to figure out how to get honest feedback from employees. The goal isn't to extract it through direct requests, it's to build enough trust that people volunteer it. Ford also pushes back on two common excuses leaders use to avoid this work.
"I don't have time." Ford's response is blunt: "You can't manufacture more time... but it's not a crazy amount of time. It could be two minutes a day." The investment is smaller than most executives assume, and the cost of skipping it, flying blind on your own impact, is far higher.
"Some people don't like me, so their feedback is biased." Ford reframes this instead of dismissing it. Balanced feedback from multiple sources smooths out individual bias, and even feedback from someone who doesn't particularly like you often contains something worth harvesting. "There'll probably be some tidbit in there that's worthwhile," he says, "because there may be something that's driving them not necessarily liking you."
The Internal vs. External Split That Changes How You Hear Feedback
One of the most useful reframes in this conversation comes from how Ford talks about being "perceived" a certain way. Dowden picks up on this immediately, referencing Tasha Eurich's research distinguishing internal self-awareness (how you see yourself) from external self-awareness (how you land with others). Ford's own language, "I had no idea I was perceived that way," reflects a leader who can hold both truths simultaneously. His intent and his impact aren't always the same thing, and that gap is exactly what feedback exists to close.
This matters because it reframes feedback as data rather than judgment. You don't have to fully agree with someone's perception to find it useful. You just have to be curious enough to ask what's driving it. Ford ties this directly to humility. "I think curiosity is the operationalization of humility," Dowden observes, and Ford agrees without hesitation.
Positive Energy: The One Leadership Variable You Fully Control
Ford closes the conversation on a theme that ties self-awareness in leadership back to something deeply practical, energy. "There's one thing that you 100% control," he says. "How I show up every day." In a world with wars, cost-of-living pressure, and constant technological disruption, Ford argues that positive energy is a leader's most controllable input, and one of the most underrated.
He also connects self-awareness to physical health, sharing that surviving a heart attack forced him to treat his own well-being as a leadership metric, not a personal afterthought. He used to run a simple three-question check-in with his executive team, rating physical health, mental health, and energy, and found the results consistently revealing.
- To get practical tools and actionable tips that will jumpstart your journey, download the Kick Starter Booklet here.
- Join the newsletter to be notified when a new episode is ready for you to listen and get every Kick Starter Booklet for all future episodes.
- And if you’re looking to elevate your entire C-Suite leadership team, learn how Craig Dowden can help your leaders perform at their highest-level visit https://www.craigdowden.com/executive-mastermind
- For a deeper dive, listen to the full-length episode of the Do Good to Lead Well podcast featuring Kevin Ford:
Check out these articles to help hone your skills even further:
- Sabbatical Leave: The Benefits of Sabbatical Leave: What DJ DiDonna's Research Actually Shows
- Difficult Conversations: How to Have a Difficult Conversation Without Repeating It Next Month
- Getting Honest Feedback: Why Senior Leaders Stop Getting Honest Feedback (And What to Do About It) with Craig Dowden
- Actually Get Results: How to Be Yourself at Work and Actually Get Results: Lessons from Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at VaynerX
- Stop Being Overlooked: How to Build Unforgettable Presence: Proven Strategies for Introverts, Leaders, and Anyone Who Wants to Stop Being Overlooked with Lorraine K. Lee
- Stop Playing It Safe: How to Stop Playing It Safe and Lead at Your Full Potential: Insights from Dianna Fioravanti
- Lead with Authentic Integrity: How to Lead with Authentic Integrity: Lessons from a Financial Markets CEO with Laura Paglia
- Ethical Leadership: The Integrity Gap: How Good People Make Bad Decisions (And How to Prevent It) with Tom Hardin
- Creating Inclusive Workplaces: Beyond DEI: The Practical Fairness Framework for Creating Inclusive Workplaces That Actually Work with Lily Zheng
- Psychological Safety and Belonging: Building Emotionally Intelligent Teams: The Science-Backed Framework for Psychological Safety and Belonging with Vanessa Druskat
- Make Better Decisions: How to Make Better Decisions When Everything Feels Uncertain
- Anxiety: Mastering Social Anxiety: Evidence-Based Strategies for Leaders and Professionals
- Build Resilient Organizations: Culture Design: How to Build Resilient Organizations with Intentional Values
Craig Dowden
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