“Personal awareness is the absolute foundation of all leadership development. When you know yourself, you recognize yourself.” These words from executive coach Abby Foster reveal why the most effective leaders are not the smartest or most charismatic—they are the most self-aware.
The Problem with Personality Assessments
DISC, Myers-Briggs, Birkman, Enneagram—the options are endless. But as Foster explains on The Buck Stops Here podcast, most assessments fail to deliver value.
The issue is not the tools themselves. It is how people use them:
Different assessments are good and impactful in different situations, and none of them are worth the paper they’re written on unless you go into the so what.
— Abby Foster
Surface-level assessments create common language and serve as icebreakers. Real value emerges only through deeper application and self-discovery.
Recognizing Your Triggers
The most practical benefit of self-awareness is trigger recognition. When you understand your patterns, you can catch yourself before reacting destructively.
Foster describes the amygdala hijack—that moment when survival instincts override rational thought. Leaders who recognize this happening can pause and choose a deliberate response instead of a reactive one.
This matters because your words have weight. A casual comment from a CEO lands differently than the same words from an entry-level employee. Self-awareness helps leaders wield that power responsibly.
The Extrovert Who Needs Alone Time
Host David Maples shares his own discovery through the Birkman assessment: he is an extrovert who requires significant alone time for processing.
This contradicted what others assumed about him—and what he assumed about himself. Understanding this dynamic required working with an executive coach to fully comprehend and apply.
The insight: knowing your type is just the beginning. Understanding how your type operates in practice—especially under stress—is where growth happens.
Finding Organizational Gaps
Foster describes working with a University of Arkansas leadership team and discovering that none of them qualified as natural communicators. Every single leader had communication as a weakness.
This was not a criticism—it was a revelation. The organization could now build deliberate communication structures rather than assuming communication would happen organically.
Assessment value multiplies when applied to teams, not just individuals.
The Modern Leadership Shift
Foster emphasizes that leadership has fundamentally changed:
Leadership is not about power; it’s about collaboration. It’s really about leveraging everybody and taking each and every one of those unique contributions and pulling them all together.
— Abby Foster
Transparency and collaboration are “an absolute must” with younger generations. The 1990s command-and-control approach no longer works—and self-aware leaders recognized this shift early.
Three Takeaways for Leadership Development
1. Know Yourself and Own Yourself
This is not optional. You cannot lead others effectively if you do not understand your own patterns, triggers, and tendencies.
2. Be Intentional About Your Responses
Move from reactive to deliberate. When triggered, pause. Choose your response rather than letting your amygdala choose for you.
3. Fill In Your Gaps
Once you know who you are, you also know what you need. Surround yourself with people whose strengths complement your weaknesses.
The Warning: Do Not Weaponize It
Maples closes with a critical caution: do not use assessments to judge or label others. The purpose is personal awareness, not ammunition against colleagues.
When someone says “well, you’re just a high-D” as an excuse for bad behavior, or dismisses a colleague’s concerns because “that’s just their C showing”—the tool has been corrupted.
Self-awareness serves growth. Weaponized awareness serves ego.
This article is based on Episode 15 of The Buck Stops Here podcast: “The Quest – Unlocking Your Superpower” featuring Abby Foster.