Plenty of experts — from Harvard University neuroscientists and Yale University psychologists to self-made millionaires and ex-Google executives — preach self-awareness as a crucial trait separating highly successful people from everyone else. At least one researcher is over it. It certainly can't hurt to understand what you're good at and where you need to improve, whether that's at work or anywhere else in your life. "When you are focused introspectively, you are going to favor what you have past experience doing," Ibarra says. "But a lot of the stuff that we are being challenged to do [in our careers], we have no past experience doing.

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Persons: Harvard University neuroscientists, Herminia Ibarra, that's, Ibarra Organizations: Harvard University, Yale University, London Business School, CNBC