Reflect on your leadership skills with guided self-assessment. Discover hidden strengths, identify blind spots, and bridge the gap between perception and reality.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Wed 31st December 2025
When asked "What leadership skills do you think you have?", most people offer quick responses based on intuition rather than evidence. Yet the word "think" in this question invites deeper reflection—it acknowledges that our self-perceptions may not match reality. Developing accurate self-awareness about your leadership capabilities represents one of the most valuable investments you can make in your professional development.
Research consistently reveals a troubling pattern: most leaders overestimate some capabilities whilst underestimating others. The skills we believe we possess often differ meaningfully from those others observe. This perception gap—the distance between what we think and what is—can either limit our effectiveness or, if addressed through honest reflection, become a catalyst for genuine growth.
Understanding the gap between perceived and actual skills requires confronting uncomfortable truths about human psychology.
| Cognitive Bias | How It Affects Skill Perception |
|---|---|
| Illusory superiority | We rate ourselves above average on most traits |
| Blind spots | We cannot see behaviours we don't recognise in ourselves |
| Confirmation bias | We notice evidence supporting our self-image, ignore contradicting data |
| Attribution errors | We credit ourselves for successes, blame circumstances for failures |
| Dunning-Kruger effect | Less skilled individuals often overestimate their abilities |
Here's the challenge: the people who most need to improve their self-awareness often have the least capacity to recognise this need. Those who overestimate their communication skills, for example, may lack the very self-perception necessary to notice the gap. This creates a paradox where confident self-assessment may actually indicate less accuracy.
Research suggests that only about 10-15% of people demonstrate the accurate self-awareness that characterises highly effective leaders.
Before gathering external perspectives, engage in structured self-reflection. Consider what you believe to be true about your leadership capabilities.
Reflect honestly on each category:
Communication Skills
Interpersonal Skills
Strategic Skills
Execution Skills
Development Skills
For each leadership skill area, rate your perceived capability:
| Skill Area | Your Perceived Rating (1-10) | Evidence Supporting This Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Communication | ||
| Emotional intelligence | ||
| Strategic thinking | ||
| Team development | ||
| Decision-making | ||
| Delegation | ||
| Conflict management | ||
| Building trust |
The evidence column matters most. If you cannot cite specific examples supporting your rating, the perception may rest on shakier ground than you realise.
Research identifies consistent patterns in how leaders misjudge their skills:
Communication Many leaders believe they communicate more clearly than they do. They assume their message landed as intended without checking for understanding. They confuse speaking frequently with communicating effectively.
Warning signs you may overestimate:
Emotional Intelligence Leaders often rate their emotional intelligence highly whilst those around them experience something different. Self-perception of empathy and emotional awareness frequently exceeds observed behaviour.
Warning signs you may overestimate:
Listening Almost everyone believes they're a good listener. Yet genuine listening—suspending judgment, seeking to understand, giving full attention—proves rarer than self-reports suggest.
Warning signs you may overestimate:
Resilience People who have weathered significant challenges often underestimate their resilience. They experienced the struggle and self-doubt, unaware that others would have struggled more or given up.
Technical Credibility Those with deep expertise sometimes underestimate how unusual their knowledge is. They assume everyone knows what they know, not recognising the leadership value of their technical foundation.
Calm Under Pressure Leaders who remain steady during crises may not recognise this as a distinctive capability. Their composure feels normal to them whilst appearing exceptional to observers.
Influence Without Authority Those who naturally build consensus and persuade colleagues may undervalue this skill, considering it "just getting along with people" rather than a sophisticated leadership capability.
Move beyond what you think to what you can verify:
Formal 360-Degree Feedback Structured assessments gathering input from supervisors, peers, and direct reports provide comprehensive data on how others experience your leadership. Compare their ratings against your self-assessment to identify perception gaps.
Informal Feedback Requests Ask trusted colleagues specific questions:
Observation of Responses Watch how people respond to your leadership:
Success Patterns
Challenge Patterns
Feedback Themes
Scenario Testing Imagine specific leadership situations and honestly assess how you'd likely respond:
Scenario: A team member comes to you upset about a conflict with a colleague.
Scenario: You discover a significant error in work you've already presented to senior leadership.
Once you've identified discrepancies between perceived and actual skills, take action:
Self-awareness isn't achieved once—it requires ongoing cultivation:
Why invest in understanding the gap between perceived and actual skills?
Accurate self-awareness enables you to prioritise development efforts effectively. Without it, you might invest in strengthening capabilities that are already strong whilst neglecting genuine gaps.
When your self-perception aligns with how others experience you, relationships become more authentic. You stop inadvertently undermining trust through behaviours you don't recognise in yourself.
Leaders who demonstrate genuine self-awareness—including acknowledgment of limitations—build greater credibility than those who project false confidence. Others trust leaders who know themselves.
Self-aware leaders build complementary teams. They recognise what they lack and ensure their teams include people who provide those capabilities.
The fastest path to leadership development runs through honest self-assessment. You cannot improve what you cannot see.
Use these questions to probe your self-perceptions more deeply:
You can test your self-perception by comparing it against external data. Seek 360-degree feedback from multiple sources, ask trusted colleagues for honest input, and examine patterns in your track record. Where your self-assessment diverges significantly from others' observations, your perception likely needs adjustment. The most accurate self-perceivers actively seek disconfirming evidence rather than confirmation of their self-image.
Several psychological factors contribute to overestimation: illusory superiority (the tendency to rate ourselves above average), confirmation bias (noticing evidence that supports our self-image), attribution errors (crediting ourselves for successes), and lack of external feedback. Additionally, leadership skills are often ambiguous and difficult to measure objectively, making accurate self-assessment challenging even with good intentions.
Accept the feedback without defensiveness—this discovery represents valuable information, not an attack on your worth. Get specific about which behaviours need to change by asking for examples. Create deliberate practice opportunities in real situations. Establish ongoing feedback mechanisms to track improvement. Approach this as an opportunity for growth rather than evidence of failure.
Ask colleagues what they see as your strengths—you may be surprised by capabilities they value that you take for granted. Notice which tasks feel effortless to you but challenging for others. Pay attention to what people consistently seek your help with. Reflect on challenges you've navigated that seemed difficult for others. Skills developed early or naturally often become invisible to us.
Research generally supports focusing primarily on strengths whilst addressing weaknesses that could derail your effectiveness. Develop capabilities that are already strong—you'll likely achieve greater returns. Address weaknesses only when they're significant enough to undermine your leadership or block advancement. For other limitations, consider building teams that complement your skill profile rather than forcing personal development in areas of persistent difficulty.
Conduct formal reassessment annually through 360-degree feedback or structured self-evaluation. Between formal assessments, maintain ongoing reflection through journalling, regular feedback conversations, and attention to how others respond to your leadership. Major transitions—new roles, significant projects, team changes—warrant additional reflection on which skills are serving you and which may need development.
Take contradictory feedback seriously rather than dismissing it. Multiple perspectives suggesting you've misjudged a capability probably indicate a genuine perception gap. Explore the feedback by asking for specific examples and behavioural descriptions. Consider that your internal experience may differ from your external impact. Adjust your self-perception based on evidence whilst maintaining confidence in genuinely verified strengths.
The question "What leadership skills do you think you have?" contains wisdom in its wording. The word "think" acknowledges uncertainty—an invitation to move beyond assumption toward verified understanding.
The journey from thinking you have a skill to knowing you have it requires courage: the courage to seek feedback that might contradict your self-image, to acknowledge gaps you'd prefer to deny, and to accept that your self-perception—however confident—may need adjustment.
Yet this journey rewards the investment richly. Leaders who cultivate accurate self-awareness make better development decisions, build stronger relationships, and earn greater trust. They know their genuine strengths and leverage them intentionally. They acknowledge their limitations and compensate intelligently.
Begin by honestly answering what skills you think you have. Then gather evidence—from feedback, from track record, from others' observations—that tests these perceptions. Where gaps appear between what you think and what the evidence suggests, adjust your understanding.
The goal isn't harsh self-criticism or false modesty. It's accuracy—the alignment of self-perception with reality that enables genuine growth. What leadership skills do you think you have? More importantly, what does the evidence reveal? The distance between these answers defines your development opportunity.