The Gap Between How Your Team Sees You and How You See Yourself

Engineering leaders often have a significant gap between how they see themselves and how their teams perceive them. Using a personal story about a Belbin team roles assessment, the author illustrates how self-perception can diverge from reality — in this case, seeing oneself as a Specialist while the team saw an Implementer. Practical tools to close this gap include asking specific feedback questions, requesting 360-degree reviews, and using personality assessments like DiSC or Big Five. The post also addresses why self-awareness is hard to develop: our self-image resists contradictory feedback. The recommended approach is to lean into discomfort, double down on strengths, and delegate weaknesses to others on the team.