The hardest work you will ever do in leadership is to lead yourself. It is so difficult. You know all of your weak points, you can rationalize every point, and you don’t have to be accountable to anyone else. It is hard to overcome that. One minute you’re committing to staying fully hydrated to keep your mind fresh and focused, and the next you’re deciding you should grab a great coffee because you work hard and deserve it. Literally all in the same instance.
It is difficult to see that as leading yourself in the moment and walk yourself back to what you were originally working toward. Keeping those little promises you make to yourself makes a big difference. And if you don’t, you’re making leading other people so much more difficult than it needs to be. Regardless of your water to caffeine intake, don’t let following your own lead deter you from leadership. Once you do the work and lead yourself, everything else gets a whole lot easier.
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Let’s look at a lead yourself case study
One example of a great leader is Jess. Jess is a high school math teacher which, I know, isn’t the typical leader we all think of and point to. A teacher is one of the most pivotal leaders in a person’s life though. I’d bet that even now, several years if not decades later, you can picture the exact teacher who was that great leader for you too. What makes Jess a great teacher goes far beyond her knowledge of the subject. It is more than her ability to break down complex information. It is even more than her ability to use humor and energy in classroom management. Jess is exceptional at leading herself toward her own values and priorities which enables her to lead her class well. Let me show you.
The two most important values in Jess’ life are relationships and health. Those two pillars create the lenses that she sees every situation through. When she wakes up the first thing she does is get in a few miles out in nature with her husband. She is trained in barre and yoga and cooks from scratch foods from all over the world. Jess is conscious of her mental and emotional health too. Once she had developed herself (and her ability to pick the water over the coffee) Jess transferred that leadership into her organization.
And what does that look like when she leads others?
Jess has developed her talents of woo and learning into true strengths that she can leverage with others she’s leading. Now, in the school they are incorporating yoga with the sports teams. She is a known safe space for students struggling with things that go far beyond math. Because she leads herself, and has taken the time to go deep into her values, strengths, and attributes she can enjoy the process of leading those students.
Let’s take a closer look at how leading others is impacted by how you lead yourself. I encourage you to take a closer look at these in your own life. The truth is, leading yourself well equips you to lead others by giving you the sandbox to play in before you apply it to others. Let me show you.
Empowerment
When you don’t feel empowered you’re consistently trying to pull power back. You want to keep control which leads you down the path of stealing credit and micro management. When you recognize your own talents and strengths, start here with Strengths Based Leadership, you’re better equipped to see strengths in others. This allows you to empower and encourage them individually and collaboratively by leveraging everyone’s strengths.
One client started off reworking every single data point that the team entered to ensure it was accurate. Then she scrambled to share it with senior management. Her rechecks found an error one month. Every month she did that she micromanaged the team and made them less confident in their abilities. They started taking the work less seriously because they knew she would rework it all anyway. She started to learn to use her strength of communication and leaned into her action attribute. She realized her time was much better used sharing the report in a more digestible way. Focusing her efforts where she was great allowed her to empower her team and rebuild that trust creating empowerment throughout the team.
Adaptability
If you’re not confident you can come back from a set back you become more ridged in your stance. If you’ve ever worked for a first time supervisor, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The same is true when a change is brought to a tenured leader who never learned to lead themselves. As you put in the work to lead yourself you start to incidentally learn resilience. You find the answers to, How do I come back from this? Will one step back ruin my momentum? How can I figure this out?! You learn not only that you can be flexible but also how to plan for it.
One client saw she wasn’t being invited to the room where the decisions were being made. She remembered that the old her would have had a glass of wine and a good vent session about it. The new her was resourceful. She had put in the time learning to craft a compelling, influencing communication for her boss. All she needed now was to adapt it to the leader of another department. Because she had worked on herself, her values and goals she knew just how to align them with the organization and this executive. That client got in the room and used that same communication skill to influence the whole group to her way of thinking.
Decision-Making Skills
When you’re focused on leading everyone else but are untethered yourself you make decisions based solely on circumstances. As we saw in adaptability, the circumstances are important and need to be considered but only so that your evaluation can be adapted. That means, you have to have a strong sense of how you evaluate situations first. You are only able to make decisions based on fact and that pass your standards of success and ethics when you know how to lead yourself.
A common concern I hear from clients and prospects is that they want to be inclusive in their decision making. They worry if they have too strong a sense of their own lens they will exclude people who don’t think like them. This fear goes back to empowerment. If you are secure in your beliefs and how you make decisions, you’re less emotional in the face of tough choices and more objective. You can listen more openly to different views when your decision making process is sound.
How do you start to lead yourself?
There are so many ways to get started leading yourself that there is no reason you don’t start right now! The first and easiest is to better understand your dominant leadership attribute. Click here and take the quiz to find yours and get personalized tips on how you can lean into that attribute and balance it to be the best leader you can be. Then, start reading. Check out the my Transitional Leadership Library here for books to jump start your leadership journey whether you’re already in a formal leadership role, or focusing solely on leading yourself. If you’re ready to get transformations like the clients I mentioned above, click here. Set up some time to talk about what you can achieve with coaching. You still have time to have a solid sense of personal leadership before the new year. There is no better way to close out this year than with a concrete ability to empower, adapt, and make decisions by leading yourself.