Disentangling the Process and Content of Self-Awareness: A Review, Critical Assessment, and Synthesis

Are self-aware leaders more effective? Are self-aware workers more productive and satisfied? Studies of self-awareness, which have been undertaken in a range of fields, have implications for a wide variety of topics in organizational behavior. Yet, this research has been scattered, resulting in gaps, siloed insights, a lack of clear and consistent conceptualization, and the confounding of causes and effects with self-awareness itself. We review the organizational behavior and psychology literatures to distinguish, summarize, and assess research on self-awareness as both process and content. Our synthesis of past work on the content of self-awareness is organized around three distinct targets: internal, external, and social. Our paper concludes with an evaluation of the implications of our findings for future research.