Seeing ourselves as other see us - pleasant surprise

Last week the results of how my peers and senior rate my leadership skills was a very pleasant surprise for me. The ratings were better than my own ratings of myself. I do not know how many of the others in class had a similar experience. My results really had me thinking and pondering a lot. Of all the years I ve been in the technical industry and every organization that I have been working with, I have gone through the process of self appraisal. These appraisals are to be submitted on a yearly basis and takes into consideration all the tasks I had worked on for the entire year. The appraisals need to include my analysis of how I rate my leadership skills, team skills, task scheduling capabilities etc. My self appraisal scares me because I do not rate myself very well and never get to complete it due to my lack of abilities to do it very well. Once my boss actually said that my self appraisal was one of the most modest ones he has seen. I have had a lot of feedback on my self appraisal and its always to improve my appraisal skills. What I observed is that this is very much in sync with the questionnaires and self appraisals we have done in the leadership class. I really would like to work my way towards understanding my skills the way others do. In today's competitive world, it is key to market oneself to grow in the industry and although it does not help to be over confident of one's own skills but underestimating is not going to help either. I really feel that the exercise of getting to know how others see my leadership skills helped me a lot.