Leading Yourself: Most of us reading the posts in the Leadership Blogathon will be very familiar with the idea of leading others, and perhaps even with the growing, somewhat counter-intuitive idea of followership (following others), but there seems to be less written directly addressing the issue that sits at the core of all issues around your ability to lead and that is the key tenet of leading yourself.
You may be technically excellent. You may be a great presenter. You may have incredibly high standards, but if you are unable to lead and develop yourself, it is unlikely that these important but somewhat peripheral strengths will be enough to become a sustainably great leader. Yourself, probably not even fully known to you, is what connects you to other people; what directs your actions and thus leads you to having great integrity or little, being trusted or not. Without these things established at such a “close to home” level, it is difficult to lead others effectively.
I’m no expert in Zen Buddhism, although I am interested in it, so if we can at this point agree to put aside the interesting idea of ‘emptiness’ and the advantages of not possessing a goal, it may be helpful for you to work alone or with someone else to really understand what sort of person you are now and want to become. Being honest about where you are now, and clear about the human being you wish to evolve to become, is time incredibly well invested. I would suggest taking a formal or informal 360 feedback report. Work with the evidence it provides to think about how others perceive you. You shouldn’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater” but work on areas you acknowledge as important and that may currently be holding you back. Further develop those strengths that remain important to your newly defined self.
You see the closer that your current self-image is to your ideal self, the higher your self-esteem will be. High self-esteem is based from this position of integration between what you are, as a self, and what you want your self to be. The confidence and calmness that emanates from high self-esteem will have great impacts on your own day-to-day effectiveness (Bachkirova, 2009).
Once you have decided what sort of person you want to be and you have committed to working towards that, you can begin to craft what sort of leader you want to become. The order is important here. You can’t achieve this effectively, the other way around. You can’t, for example, decide you are going to be a collaborative leader and start along that path, if you are unaware that others see you as self-centered or not a team player.
Knowing your personal development goals will allow you to align this to a leadership style or approach that is fully integrated. No more acting and being a different person at home to the person people see Monday to Friday.
