Our recent debates engaged with scandals and negative outcomes of management behaviors and asked how we can improve management education to develop more responsible leaders. In this pointed essay, we reflect on the self-awareness concept that has gained importance in recent leadership debates and argue for a more comprehensive concept of Selbstbewusstsein. Knowing oneself has been a foundational topic in philosophy for centuries and German philosopher G.F.W. Hegel in the early 19th century demonstrated the pitfalls arising with the desire for recognition and respect in social relationships. We review and build on his work to show what role the human characteristic of self-awareness plays in psychology-driven concepts. We contrast this with a more comprehensive conception of human self-awareness, Selbstbewusstsein. We problematize self-aware leaders who can control themselves, situations, and others, and we argue that some negative leadership behaviors result from considering the use of power and control as a way to achieve Selbstbewusstsein. Adopting a broad view of Selbstbewusstsein allows building an understanding of leadership that avoids today’s negative outcomes. The contribution of this pointed conceptual essay is threefold. First, we make visible the human anthropology of current mainstream leadership theory. Second, we show that the polar human anthropology of recognizing and being recognized has a long tradition in philosophy. Third, we argue that embracing the friction between these two views of humanity might get us one step closer to the ‘better’ leadership theory and practice for which Sumantra Ghoshal called twenty years ago.
