_{Margaret C. Andrews reveals why leaders who skip self-awareness plateau in their effectiveness. From her signature "Best Boss" exercise to the SBI feedback model, discover the practical frameworks that transform how thousands of executives lead.}

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The Moment Everything Changed

Have you ever received feedback that hit you like a gut punch? Margaret C. Andrews did. A new boss looked her straight in the eye during a meeting and said, "You're not self-aware. You're broken and can't be fixed." After years of climbing the corporate ladder, hitting targets, and building a reputation as a high-performing executive, those words shook her to her core. But here's what happened next: she didn't dismiss them. Instead, she did something that transformed not just her career, but her entire mission in life. She listened. She looked inward. She realized he was right.

That moment became the catalyst for her book, Managing Yourself to Lead Others, and it's the reason Margaret now teaches some of the most sought-after leadership programs at Harvard. Because here's the uncomfortable truth that most high-achieving leaders don't want to admit: you can absolutely get short-term results without self-awareness. But sustainable, authentic leadership? That requires something different.

In this conversation, Margaret shares the frameworks and practices that have helped thousands of executives transform their leadership, not through more certifications or business school degrees, but through the simple yet challenging work of understanding themselves.

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Understanding Yourself: The Foundation Before You Can Lead Anyone Else

When Margaret talks about self-awareness in leadership, she's not talking about therapy or endless self-help books. She's talking about something radically practical: knowing how you show up, understanding your impact on others, and recognizing the gap between how you see yourself and how people actually experience you.

Here's what makes this so hard: we judge ourselves by our intentions. You intend to be a great boss. You intend to inspire your team. You intend to be the leader who develops talent and builds loyalty. But, and this is critical, other people judge you by your behavior. And sometimes your behaviors send a completely different message than you intended.

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Margaret learned this the hard way. She was hard-charging, results-driven, and she got things done. But while she was focused on hitting targets, some people on her team were actually afraid of her. Not because she was deliberately mean or dismissive, but because her intensity and drive came across as anger or disapproval. The gap between her intention ("I want to push us to excellence") and her impact ("I feel belittled around you") was creating disconnection exactly where she wanted to connect.

This misalignment between intention and impact is one of the most common patterns in struggling leaders. A manager genuinely wants to help an employee but comes across as critical. A senior executive believes she's being passionate about strategy, but the room reads her energy as frustration. A project leader thinks he's being directive, but his team hears micromanagement.

The fascinating part? These leaders are operating in complete blindness. They have no idea their behavior isn't landing the way they intended. Which means they can't change it. You can't manage what you can't see.

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Why Most Leaders Skip This Step (And Why That's Costing You)

The human brain has a built-in defense mechanism. We're wired to protect our self-image. So when evidence suggests we're not the leader we think we are, we tend to rationalize it away. That person's just too sensitive. The company doesn't appreciate my leadership style. They're not ready for my level of accountability.

This is why Margaret emphasizes something that feels counterintuitive: if you're not getting the traction you used to have, if you've hit a ceiling in your career, if you've been passed over for promotion or, heaven forbid, demoted, that's actually your wake-up call. That's when you're finally ready to listen.

Because here's the paradox: the leaders who get promoted to senior roles are often the ones who've been rewarded most heavily for their hard-charging, results-at-all-costs approach. But the skills that got you to middle management won't get you to the executive suite. In fact, they'll hold you back.

The Best Boss Exercise: Why People Work for People, Not Credentials

Margaret has conducted this exercise with literally thousands of leaders across industries and geographies, from finance to healthcare to nonprofits. And it reveals something that most organizations have completely backward when it comes to developing leaders.

Here's how it works: Think about the best boss you've ever had. Just one person. Someone you actually worked with. Now, grab a piece of paper and list all the reasons why they were your best boss. What made them special? What did they do differently? Margaret usually asks people to come up with at least eight reasons.

Once you have that list, circle or star your top three.

Now here's what happens when Margaret aggregates this data across thousands of leaders: the reasons fall into three distinct buckets.

• The first bucket is intelligence. "They were the smartest person I've ever worked with." When she asks how many of those reasons land in the first bucket, the answer is almost always zero or one. Out of eight reasons. Out of your top three reasons. Barely anyone.
• The second bucket is technical and functional skills. "They were a wizard at sales. They understood data better than anyone. They were experts in their field." Again, most people will have zero, one, or maybe two reasons for landing here.
• And then there's the third bucket. The one that consistently accounts for about 85% of people's reasons. This bucket goes by many names: interpersonal skills. Relationship skills. Soft skills. Emotional intelligence. Human skills. Margaret calls it the ability to understand and care about people as individuals.

"They genuinely cared about me as a person." "They asked about my family." "They had my back when things got tough." "They made me feel like I mattered." "They believed in me even when I didn't believe in myself."

Let that sink in: 85% of why people would work for someone again has nothing to do with how smart they are or how many degrees they hold. It has to do with whether they felt seen, valued, and genuinely cared for.

Yet walk into most organizations and ask where they're investing in leadership development. Spoiler alert: it's not in soft skills. It's in strategy. In process improvement. In the hard skills. Which means we're developing the exact opposite of what actually matters.

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The Follow-Up Question That Changes Everything

After people identify their top three reasons, Margaret asks them one more thing: "Do you think this person understood and managed themselves pretty well?"

Heads nod.

"Do you think they understood you and cared about you as an individual?"

More nods.

"Would you work for them again?"

Almost everyone says yes.

And that's when it clicks. That's what leadership actually is. It's creating an environment where people feel valued enough to give you their discretionary effort. It's building the kind of connection that makes someone choose to work hard not because they're forced to, but because they're inspired to.

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The Gap Between Your Intentions and Your Impact: Why Feedback Matters

Here's where it gets practical. How do you figure out if there's a gap between how you see yourself and how people actually experience you?

Margaret recommends a few approaches. The first is a 360-degree feedback assessment, one of those multirater tools where people give you anonymous feedback on your leadership. But here's the thing most leaders don't know: don't just do one. Do one that specifically measures emotional intelligence and relational skills. These assessments aren't about getting hurt; they're about getting data.

The second approach is simply asking for direct feedback. Not "How am I doing?" because that's too vague and people won't give you honest answers. Instead, ask specific questions like "To what extent do you think I listen well?" or "When you're working with me, do you feel supported or criticized?" These direct questions create space for more honest conversations.

The third approach Margaret suggests is almost nerdy in its simplicity: go back to your old performance reviews. Print them out if you've kept them. Lay them out. Take a highlighter and look for patterns. What themes appear across multiple years? Often you'll find that people are saying the same thing in different ways, just trying to soften it depending on the relationship. "You're hard-driving" might actually mean "You steamroll people." "You're ambitious" might mean "You don't listen." Look for the patterns beneath the patterns.

Because here's the thing: hard-charging by itself isn't the problem. The problem is hard-charging without awareness of how it's landing on other people.

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From Awareness to Action: The SBI Model That Changes How You Give and Receive Feedback

Once you start getting honest feedback about your impact, you need a framework for understanding it and acting on it. This is where the SBI model becomes your best friend.

SBI stands for Situation, Behavior, Impact. And it's transformative because it moves feedback from vague generalizations into specific, actionable data.

Here's how it works. Instead of someone saying "You're not a good listener" (which triggers defensiveness and gives you nothing to work with), they might say: "Yesterday in the client meeting, when Sarah asked you a question, you interrupted her before she finished speaking. Her face showed frustration, and she didn't contribute for the rest of the meeting."

That's Situation-Behavior-Impact. It's not an opinion about who you are. It's observable data about what happened and what it caused. And suddenly you can do something with that. You can't change "not being a good listener." But you can change "interrupt less and pause longer before responding."

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Ready to take self-awareness in leadership to the next level?‍

• To get practical tools and actionable tips that will jumpstart your journey, download the Self-Awareness in Leadership 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 Wes Adams & Tamara Myles:
  
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Did you like this article on self-awareness in leadership? Does it help you become a better leader? Then check out these articles to help hone those skills even further:

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• Empathy Fatigue: How to Protect Against Empathy Fatigue: Essential Strategies for Leaders Facing Emotional Burnout with Craig Dowden
• Build Learning Organizations with Andrew Lo: How to Build Learning Organizations That Drive Innovation: Andrew Lo's Leadership Framework for Empowerment and Accountability
• Employee Wellbeing Drives Better Business Results with Mark C. Crowley: Why Employee Wellbeing Drives Better Business Results Than Engagement Ever Could with Mark Crowley
• ‍Feedback That Drives Growth with Dr. Michael Nevarez: How to Give Feedback That Drives Growth Without Triggering Defensiveness: A Psychiatrist's Evidence-Based Approach with Dr. Michael Nevarez
• Learning to Love Midlife with Chip Conley: Learning to Love Midlife: Why Life Gets Better with Age and How to Navigate Transformation
• ‍Unlock Your Creative Potential with Zorana Pringle: How to Unlock Your Creative Potential: Science-Based Strategies to Make Better Decisions and Turn Ideas into Action with Zorana Pringle
• Purpose-Driven Leadership with Lindsay Dodd: How Purpose-Driven Leadership Builds Award-Winning Cultures: Lindsay Dodd's Values-First Approach
• Sharing at Work with Craig Dowden: The Science of Sharing at Work: Leadership Lessons for Better Connection, Trust, and Wellbeing
• “Having it All” with Corinne Low: Achieving “Having It All” as a Working Mom: Evidence-Based Insights from Corinne Low
• Curious Leadership: The Power of Curious Leadership: Todd Kashdan's Revolutionary Approach to Self-Leadership and Principled Dissent

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