Issue No. 9 | April 7, 2026 | Dr. Jacqueline Ashley, PCC
The Gap You Can't See
You know yourself well, but that doesn't mean you know how you land.
The inner work of emotional self-awareness
FEEL DEEPLY
Consider these scenarios. You don’t recognize the way your leadership style is described by a colleague. Feedback from your direct report on a 360 contradicts how you thought you were showing up, and your mentor gave you feedback that really stung. Another time, you felt the room read you differently than the impression you were trying to make.
You’ve been building an honest picture of who you are, then someone just told you something that blew that out of the water.
You react defensively and think to yourself, “That’s not me.”
Once you realize there’s a gap between your self-perception and others’ perception of you, it can be unsettling (that is, for those who care). What others experience feels like a challenge to the story of you.
In March, the internal dimension of emotional self-awareness (knowing yourself) was covered. This month, knowing how others perceive you is the external dimension. According to Dr. Tasha Eurich, internal and external self-awareness virtually have no correlation. Just because you know yourself well doesn’t necessarily mean that people will experience you the way you think they will.
As a leader, if you belong to a marginalized group, this is layered. Keeping safe meant reading the room and adjusting yourself accordingly. You’ve done this for years. Even though this seems like external self-awareness, hypervigilance and accuracy are different practices. A biased environment affects how your leadership is received and sends back a distorted signal.
Just about everyone has this gap. So, what can be done about it?
THINK CRITICALLY
What do you hear when you listen to your recorded voice? Does it sound like you? You probably don’t think so because you’ve always heard it through bone and tissue. Everyone else has heard it though just air.
Think of leadership working the same way. You experience it from the inside and your team from the outside. The picture you have of who you are as a leader is clear and made it easy to assume that the external would match. But it doesn’t work that way. Their perception is filtered by organizational culture, role expectations, and previous experiences with authority. For some leaders, bias shapes perception that precedes your leadership. The signal can be obscured by the noise, so separation is the work.
Reduce the gap by attending to both the internal and external to strengthen your self-awareness.
LEAD POWERFULLY
How you lead with your CliftonStrengths can shape how you manage this gap.
The preference to problem-solve is a hallmark of Restorative. Perceived flaws can become weaponized for some leaders, creating the added urgency to act. Treat the gap as data to bring understanding before action.
The gap feels like a physical misalignment for those with Harmony as a strength. Friction results from the distance between how you see yourself and how someone else does, especially if their perception is biased. Choose what’s right for you over what to accommodate and trust the discomfort as something to learn from.
Looking to the past to understand the present is how Context shapes your leadership. Think back to the origin of your self-concept and what makes the gap feel vulnerable. What experiences solidified it and what feedback shaped it? No doubt, the history of some leaders are heavier than others. Use it to see what aspects of your self-perception helped with survival and which helped with growth.
The Integration
Topics tied to identity are always hard. That’s what makes the gap feel uncomfortable once we know about it. Be patient working through the discomfort. Be aware that bias distorts how others perceive certain leaders, so naturally their self-perception is more accurate. The gap is as much of a reflection of the system as it is of the self. So, look at both with honesty.
Challenge that knowing yourself better would prevent the gap. Internal self-awareness requires being honest with yourself. External self-awareness requires honesty from others.
April is about learning how you land, which can only come from others’ honest feedback.
This Week's Momentum
📌 What’s one thing that you believe about how you come across that you’ll verify with someone you trust this week?
