Welcome again to our leadership corner, where we examine signal traits, qualities and characteristics that make you stand out as a competent leader of self and others.

As new practitioners, you will hear various beliefs and conditions on which people expect you to build your career success. No matter what you are told, recognize that the key indicators for success and leadership in your chosen career begin with you.

The following synopsis includes what I call key self-ish traits that can give you a jump start. These are not your usual traits, because we are not necessarily born with them. But we can grow into them, and with that, an enhanced sense of self that can help us achieve goals with ease.

What are these traits?

1. Self-Worth: Having self-worth means you place value on yourself as a person worthy of respect and worthy of being treated well, whether in life or at work. This is what allows you to put in your ticket for the jobs that will afford you the learning you desire, so you can reach for loftier goals.

2. Self-Awareness: Or the conscious knowledge of one’s character. “Know thyself” and “to thy own self be true.” Knowing one’s self, and why we feel, think and act in certain ways. Self-awareness will help you read the room (and outside of it). Self-awareness is also what will make you know, or quickly realize, that certain jobs and careers are not a good fit. It’s better to know from the outset that the hole doesn’t fit, as opposed to going in and trying to force yourself into it.

3. Self-Confidence: Or the feeling of trust in your abilities. Self-confidence is what allows us to say or think that something may be difficult, but we can do it. This is the trait that allows us to step into stretch assignments or roles without falling apart. While we can talk about general self-confidence, realize that self-confidence can also be contextual. One can be confident about different tasks to different degrees, based on a known history of completing various tasks successfully. Self-confidence can also be situational. One can be a self-confident person overall but still be a bit nervous about public speaking or presenting.

4. Self-Appraisal: The self-evaluation of one’s performance during a specific period. This is the one that so many people find hard, because writing about one’s self is typically not the easiest thing to do. Due to cultural and societal nuances, one may be loath to use this trait lest we be seen as boasting or exaggerating our worth. Tying this to a supervisor evaluation can make people suppress even the good things they did, because their managers may turn around and deflate their ratings, simply because it can sometimes be a case of forced rankings. No matter what a manager says or doesn’t say, learning how to evaluate oneself honestly and without hubris, and documenting it in an easily accessible place, makes it easier to have those elevator-pitch conversations that sometimes arise serendipitously.

5. Self-Advocacy: The last of the five we’re focusing on in this edition is the fuel to the rocket. I always tell my mentees and clients, no one can advocate for you better than you can for yourself. This trait is even more critical for marginalized identities. This is not to say that one should hate spending time and effort practicing or exhibiting self-advocacy in an environment that is unyielding. It’s more about developing the trait of speaking or writing up about one’s needs and wants as it pertains to career development. The beautiful thing about self-advocacy is that it’s expansive. The more we get better at practicing self-advocacy, the more comfortable we get advocating for other people. And this, to me, is always a winning proposition.

Which of these self-ish traits would you like to develop more of as you progress in your career? And how do you plan to go about doing that?

In cultivating any of these traits, we should take care not to nurture one to the detriment of the others. Our aim should be to work on enhancing all of them, in order to bring us into balance — knowing ourselves and what we stand for, while valuing other people enough to take into consideration how our behaviors may impact them.

One of the ways you can grow any of these traits is by working with a mentor or a career coach.