A guide to self-awareness (With examples)
By Indeed Editorial Team
27 March 2025
Self-awareness is a valuable skill that enables you to be conscious of your own strengths and weaknesses. While this can be beneficial in your personal life, it can be extremely advantageous in the workplace, too. Understanding the importance of self-awareness and following some simple examples can boost your self-awareness and lead to positive results. In this article, we explain what it is, why it’s important and provide several self-awareness examples for you to follow.
Self-awareness examples and definition
Self-awareness is a valuable skill that involves being mindful of your presence, weaknesses, strengths and actions, and how a person displays these qualities. If you’re self-aware, you have a clear understanding of your emotional and mental state. What’s more, you’re able to recognise your attitudes, your relationship to others within the workplace and how you respond and react to different situations and topics. Self-awareness encourages a better understanding of yourself and your role within your work environment, whilst also significantly boosting your understanding of your colleagues and peers.
To gain a better understanding of what self-awareness is, it can be helpful to see real-life examples. Here are three examples of what self-awareness can look like in the workplace:
Take time to focus on the positive
Example: You’re stuck in bad traffic on the way home after an exhausting day at work. This situation is quite frustrating and annoying. If you apply self-awareness in this situation, you are likely to feel less irritated by the slow-moving traffic and can acknowledge that you aren’t the only one in this situation. This is a great example that demonstrates how self-awareness can modify your mood and prevent you from becoming easily irritated and frustrated. It demonstrates your control over your emotions and the practice of adopting a positive outlook wherever possible.
Understand and recognise emotional triggers
Example: You routinely cover up your emotions of confusion and disappointment at work regarding certain projects, which increases your negativity throughout the day. Once you realise this pattern, you immediately find ways to better communicate this with your peers. Since you recognise the importance of sharing your thoughts and feelings in this setting, you prevent yourself from building up negative emotions and aid your peers in understanding your ideas to achieve a satisfactory result for everyone. In this scenario, not only is utilising your self-awareness beneficial to you, but it’s also more pleasant for those you work with daily.
Recognise bad habits and actively work towards changing them
Example: While playing a game on a mobile device at work, you recognise that playing this game during work hours is unproductive and could lead you to fall behind on your project and become stressed over how much work you have to do. By applying self-awareness, you are able to recognise these potential disadvantages and consequences and actively work towards reducing the habit or stopping it altogether. Recognition and self-evaluation are key aspects of self-awareness. Being able to identify your strengths and your weaknesses can help you choose the best course of action and improve and develop your skills where necessary.
Why is self-awareness important?
There are many reasons why self-awareness is advantageous. Most importantly, it enables you to have greater control over your mindset. For example, you can better understand your emotions and thoughts in response to specific situations and topics, meaning that you can better prepare your responses.
Self-awareness is also important because it encourages you to search for the positive in a negative situation, which can have an extremely beneficial effect on the work environment, especially if a team is struggling to overcome a project hurdle or agree on something. Self-awareness skills are not just beneficial in the workplace. In fact, they are just as advantageous outside of the working environment, as they encourage you to understand your emotions more clearly and assess the emotions of those around you.
The advantages of self-awareness
There are a number of advantages to being self-aware. These include:
Improved communication
Self-awareness undoubtedly improves communication between yourself and others, whether that’s at work, in a public setting, with family or with friends. Having a clearer insight into your own thoughts and the feelings of those around you enables productive communication between all parties. This often leads to more successful discussions and better outcomes.
Increased productivity
A significant boost in production can result from self-aware employees in the workplace. By clearly stating your ideas and thoughts on a certain topic, you can reach resolutions more quickly and make insightful decisions more easily. This can significantly impact your workflow in a positive way, increasing productivity and satisfaction in the work environment for yourself and other employees.
Increased collaboration
Team collaboration on projects and ideas can be boosted by self-awareness. By having an increased awareness and respect for your own thoughts and feelings and of those around you, you can work productively on a project with fewer mistakes. Collaborating effectively can help mitigate disagreements or misunderstandings during projects.
Increased positive response to feedback
Receiving feedback is an important aspect of work life. It can significantly improve your performance in your role and encourage success. Receiving feedback with self-awareness increases your chances of effectively improving and showcasing that to your superiors and colleagues.
Increased positive impact on the work environment
Working with active self-awareness doesn’t just benefit you, it also benefits those who work around you. Self-awareness can have a far-reaching positive effect in the workplace by making people feel more comfortable and confident in expressing their ideas, which can benefit the team as a whole.
When to apply self-awareness in the work environment
Here are some more examples of how to apply and maximise your self-awareness in work-specific situations:
Starting a new job
Starting your new job off positively is hugely beneficial to yourself and to your employer. If you demonstrate self-awareness from the beginning, you can establish this amongst your superiors and your colleagues as a valuable strength and personal skill. This is likely to be appreciated by your peers and your superiors and may lead to certain issues and responsibilities getting assigned to you to work through, signifying your value to the company. You can demonstrate your self-awareness skills in your new role by doing the following:
. Be honest if you’re unfamiliar with software or a process you are being asked to use.
. Assert your personal strengths and offer your help in those areas.
. Ask for additional help or training when you require it.
Evaluate your role within a team and share your valuable insights to boost collaboration.
During job interviews
Self-awareness is a great skill to showcase to a potential employer during an interview. Most potential employers ask for a demonstration of your self-awareness skills. For example, they may ask you to share some of your weaknesses and how you overcome them. To maximise this opportunity, make use of these tips:
. Be honest about which tasks in which you require extra training or assistance.
. Share your weaknesses openly and clearly explain your plans for improvement.
. Balance information about your weaknesses and your strengths, and clearly define what you are able to bring to the role.
During evaluations
Work evaluations are a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate and improve your self-awareness. These evaluations can be valuable for providing you with areas of improvement and guidance for enhancing your behaviour at work. To demonstrate self-awareness during work evaluations:
. Evaluate your strengths and provide evidence to demonstrate them to your employers. Ensure they are aware of where you are succeeding within the role.
. Accept and admit to your weaknesses where identified. Try your best to be positive and level-headed when admitting these, and ask your manager or supervisor to provide you with additional help or training in these areas.
. Actively request training opportunities or submit a request for new tools that can help you do your job. You may also want to enquire about the opportunity to head projects or attend a conference as a way to facilitate professional growth.
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