Self-Insight

Where it sits

Self-Insight is one of five facets, and it covers reading yourself. The five are arranged along two lines: reading versus handling, and yourself versus other people. The territory as a whole is mapped at what emotional intelligence is.

It is measured by 8 items in the questionnaire, five keyed positively and three reversed. The full method is here.

What a high score looks like

You catch your own feelings early and can say what they are, which means you get to decide what to do about them.

What a low score looks like

Your feelings tend to register late or vaguely, so they shape what you do before you have named them.

Low here is not a character verdict. It describes what tends to happen, and it is the part of the profile most worth working on, which is why the practical recommendations start from the two lowest facets rather than the highest.

The part nobody tells you

Watching yourself closely can tip into second-guessing. Noticing a feeling is not the same as having to solve it.

Every facet has a cost at the top end as well as the bottom. A report that only describes strengths as good is describing a person who does not exist.

What this facet cannot tell you

It is a self-report figure, so it measures how you see yourself on self-insight, which is useful and is not the same as how you come across. It carries a margin of about 9 points either way, so a small difference between two facets is not a difference at all. And it is not clinical: it cannot identify a condition and must not be used to decide anyone’s job, place or care.

The other four

• Composure: staying functional under emotional load, and how quickly you recover.
• Attunement: reading other people accurately from words, tone and behaviour.
• Repair: cooling a conflict down and putting a relationship back together after it.
• Drive: using emotion to get yourself moving, and keeping it out of decisions where it does not belong.