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.
Hello Glen,
In my opinion you are making a very good point with your contribution. As a leader or a coach we risk too often to forget this. You pointed out what basicaly is one of the most important things before leading others and also difficult to reach because you are confronted with your worst ennemy: yourself. When i first realized this some time ago , i was touched by a quote of Nelson Mandela about what to do with your worst ennemy: “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner”. it helped a lot to start working on myself.
And as David already said ‘it’s a lifelong task’.
Thanks for bringing as a leader or coach the importance of self reflection and learning more about your inner road blocks in the spotlight.
Kind regards,
Joan
Hi Glen
A period of deep reflection is needed to understand your ‘self’, and that might need to be guided. Finding or creating the right environment (organisation) that values and supports your leadership approach is important, and sometimes that can take time. If you are one fish swimming upstream and all the others are downstream it can be hard and dispiriting…..but perhaps you can learn as much from that as anything else!
BW
Juliette
Thanks – Juliette
Excellent post. I just finished reading the Shibumi strategy for the 2nd time. What you’ve presented here is similar in approach.
Strangely, I am working on a post that features the book. A link to your post is also in order.
Thank you!
Hi
I’m not familiar with the approach you mention but I will go and read up on it as it sounds very interesting. Thank you.
I appreciate your kind words.
All the best – Glenn
Samad, I think the point you make regarding mindfulness is a really good one. Without it, self-awareness is, I would suggest, almost impossible. Thank you.
Knowing ourselves is so hard to do. Take so much training in mindfulness as everything around us conspire to make us lead with mindlessness. Training our attention to catch our experiences as they happen and observe almost from a third person perspective is tremendously valuable. But it is extremely hard to do. Yet, it is the path to learning about who we are. Once we achieve that state of mindfulness, we may discover that we have all we need to be great leaders. Maybe all we need is just showing up as who we really are free of the need to please, to be approved of, to be accepted. Maybe then we can excercise true leadership.
Samad Aidane
GuerrillaProjectManagement.com
Thanks Glen. Knowing yourself – a lifelong task. I’m a Nichiren Buddhist and ! commend the practice to you. We chant every day into a ‘polished mirror’ to bring the best out in ourself and to elevate our life state. In that life state we can develop authentic “heart to heart’ relationships that often bring the best out in others.
Feeling humbly good about yourself is such a cool way to go through life – I’m still working on it though despite my regular practice! The inspiration I get from Twitter and various blogs including this one is a great help.
Thanks again for your post.
Love that idea – feeling “humbly good about yourself” I think this is a really important state and something that coaches like myself really need to achieve in order to be able to park our ego and be confident in doing so for the good of those we are working with. Same may be true in many leadership situations. Thank you for that contribution – great stuff.
Hi Glenn. You hit on many key aspects of coaching here. Determining your own self, your core values if you will, is absolutely very important not only for leading others, but leading yourself as well. It would be a nice tie in to link the core values of oneself into the values of others so that employees become not just motivated by their role, but by a genuine connection to their leader. Cheers for the post
Good point Craig and one that links to the points made by John around emotional intelligence, of which empathy and social awareness is key.
Hi Glenn
I found your article gave me great pause for self-reflection so thanks. I believe myself to be the same in my private life as my professional life. I have always thought that my leadership style evolved from a symbiosis of observing and engaging with good, bad and indifferent leaders; reading, reflection and practice … often through making mistakes.
As an example, I didn’t truly realise I was emotionally intelligent until I read Daniel Goleman’s HBR article ‘Primal Leadership’some years ago. I needed a theorem to place alongside my practice to help me properly understand what I was doing as a leader.
This is how I see this process as evolutionary or iterative. I will now ponder some more in the light of your writing. Have a great weekend!
John
Hi John thanks for your kind comments and taking the time to join in the discussion. I have pretty clear views about most assessment tools and personality-descriptive theories but the only one I really subscribe to is EQ. Like you, it just really made a lot of sense to me.
Best wishes for your ongoing leadership reflections.