Julia Carden 4-box model

Julia Carden’s self-awareness and leadership model

Julia Carden’s model plots Self-Awareness against Leadership Skills, creating four quadrants:

  • Top right – Leading with Wisdom (HIGH self-awareness, HIGH leadership skills): The ideal quadrant where leaders are authentic and effective. They’ve done the inner work AND developed practical leadership capabilities.

  • Top left – Leading with Empathy (HIGH self-awareness, LOW leadership skills): Leaders who’ve done deep personal work and have happy, loyal teams, but may be overwhelmed or approaching burnout. They haven’t learned how to delegate, manage performance, or give feedback effectively – so they carry everything on their shoulders.

  • Bottom right – (LOW self-awareness, HIGH leadership skills): Leaders with technical competence but lacking self-awareness.

  • Bottom left – (LOW self-awareness, LOW leadership skills): The starting point for many promoted employees who receive no leadership development.

Julia says you need to develop BOTH dimensions. Organizations often focus only on leadership skills training without the one-to-one coaching work needed to build self-awareness.

More details on self-awareness and links to Julia’s book can be found on her website – https://carden-consulting.co.uk/self-awareness/