When we think about leadership, we usually think about guiding or managing others or making decisions for a group.
Leadership is usually considered to be about what we’re doing externally.
But what about the internal skills of leadership? What has to happen inside for leaders to be exceptional leaders of others?
Self-leadership is a concept explored in Forbes by Kara Dennison, an organizational strategy consultant and executive leadership coach.
She defines self-leadership as being able to manage your thoughts, behaviours and actions so that you can own your leadership journey instead of letting external demands or complex situations shape how you lead.
In other words, self-leadership is about knowing yourself and being able to guide yourself with intention before you try to lead others.
This builds on our recent blog about managing yourself before leading others, which explores knowing your strengths, how you work, what your values are, where you belong and what you can contribute.
Self-leadership skills
There are ways to build your self-leadership capacity.
1. Get to know yourself
It’s important to really understand and see yourself clearly and honestly. Does how you see yourself match how others see you? What upsets you? What do you not see or miss? What are your strengths? At Padraig, we help folks find insights into strengths and growth areas by using assessment tools like the DiSC Profile or EQ-I (Emotional Intelligence Inventory).
2. Know your WHY
Create a personal vision statement to help anchor what truly matters to you. This is particularly helpful for leaders when demands intensify and life gets chaotic because if you know what really matters to you (and what isn’t worth your time), it’s easier to make decisions. Pro tip: Booking one-to-one or group sessions with a certified leadership coach can help you work through things.
3. Acknowledge your emotions
Have you heard therapists say to feel your feelings? Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away; often it makes us more impulsive. Naming emotions gives you power over them. There’s an expression common among the helping professions, which is, “name it to tame it.” Naming your emotion and identifying it immediately helps you manage it. This ability to be calm and steady in the midst of intense emotions is an important skill for self-leadership. (Good news: You can build your emotional intelligence.)
4. Have high standards
Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching. If you are consistently doing the right thing, you build trust internally and with those around you. If you don’t have respect for yourself, how can others respect you?
5. Build your resilience
As a leader, you will face challenges. How you handle them depends on how resilient you are. We can build resilience in ourselves (and others) by being aware of negative patterns to avoid and cultivating healthy habits. Padraig has recently launched an assessment tool to help you identify how to be more resilient. Ask about it if you’re interested!
6. Hold yourself accountable
Making mistakes is inevitable. It’s important to find the emotional courage to make mistakes and learn from them. Own mistakes, do what you can to fix them, learn from them and then move forward.
7. Protect yourself from overwhelm
Resilient leaders are able to set boundaries, delegate and take time for themselves to rest and recharge. It’s important to avoid leadership burnout. Self-leadership and leadership of others will both benefit from you protecting your energy and focus.
8. Keep building your skills
Ongoing professional development workshops can build the skills that bolster self-leadership. At Padraig, we offer self-paced leadership training on our leadership learning portal at MyLeadershipTools.com as well as bespoke leadership programs. There’s also a peer leadership group, which offers support through shared experiences and insights from others who are at similar stages professionally.
Why does self-leadership matter?
There are several benefits for leaders who can lead themselves well before they try to lead others.
- Self-leadership builds resilience, discipline and consistency, which is important to navigate challenges and setbacks.
- Leaders who can stay emotionally regulated can communicate better and make better decisions. This is vital when leading through complicated situations or uncertainty.
- When you model self-leadership by being grounded and steady, folks are much more likely to feel inspired by you and follow you. Self-leadership results in much better engagement and creates psychological safety.
If you’re able to demonstrate self-leadership, you’re actually leading by example. This fosters respect, loyalty and collaboration among team members who see consistency, empathy and trustworthiness.
When teams are led by someone with strong self-leadership, they tend to be more productive, cohesive and resilient.
Coach’s Questions
Where are you leading yourself well? Where might you let external pressures drive your decisions? What emotions, habits or patterns do you need to acknowledge so you can respond with steadiness? If your team members were to model their own behaviour on how you currently lead yourself, what would you like to see and what would you like to strengthen or change?
