The Self-Aware Leader

Grow Your Self-Awareness, Reinvent Your Value


Middle managers shape an organization's ability to scale the business based on how well they can operate cross-functionally as one team. Self-aware leaders accomplish this by slowing themselves down to speed themselves up. They use brief and intentional pauses to gather insights that inform new pathways for creating value as a leader. This value, called reinvention, is propelled by a deep focus on how to reinvent self, others, and the business, as well as the prioritization of outcomes that positively influence results and people.


Written by leadership expert and executive coach Dan Gallagher, The Self-Aware Leader increases leadership performance, business outcomes, and career growth. Middle managers are repeatedly tasked with navigating the competing needs of frontline employees and upper management. These mixed messages often result in practices that are not scalable and managers who are simply doers. Self-awareness teaches managers how to activate their leadership voice to create profitable, sustainable growth.


Gallagher presents a practical leadership model that any middle manager-or anyone responsible for growing middle manager performance-can implement. Based on empirical research involving more than 700 middle managers, this model highlights four pillars that drive leadership success: above average support system and network, proficiency in critical and systems thinking, savvy perspective of the political landscape, and courageous drive for magis (or more for the good of others). This book fully integrates the idea of reinvention, servant leadership, and business transformation into a proven framework with more than two decades of use.


New for this second edition is the inclusion of 24 validated behaviors from Gallagher's research, plus expanded exercises for applying the content. In addition, new topics include leadership health, artificial intelligence, inclusion, the digitization of work, the connection between employee and customer experiences, trust, and leading remote teams. A new final chapter highlights how self-awareness and reinvention have risen to the forefront of business skills and what this means for new models of work and new expectations for specific functions.