How To Lead Yourself Well
If you want to be successful in your career, you cannot afford not to lead yourself well. While it’s true that all leaders must become good at self-leadership in order to lead effectively, it’s also important to note the power self-leadership has with others. Nothing will make a better impression on your leader and those you work with than your ability to lead yourself well. This develops credibility, which reduces a lot of friction people experience, including with their bosses.
What does it mean to lead yourself well? It means managing yourself, learning to make better choices by thinking the way a leader does, and developing a better attitude.
Credibility Through Self-Management
Most people put too much emphasis on decision making and too little on decision managing. As a result, they lack focus, discipline, intentionality, and purpose. We often think that self-leadership is about making good decisions every day, when the reality is that we need to make a few critical decisions in major areas of life and then manage those decisions day to day.
Manage your emotions. Sometimes showing your emotions to people is good because it helps others know what you’re feeling. It can fire them up. Other times you need to hold your feelings in check. The bottom line in managing your emotions is that you should put others—not yourself— first in how you handle and process them. You should ask yourself, “What does the team need?” not, “What will make me feel better?”
Manage your time. Here are two ideas that may help you manage your time better. First, every day determine which tasks are most important, and do them first. Second, ask yourself how much time a given task is worth before you start it, and then try to complete it in that time frame. If you find yourself giving more time to a task than it’s worth, you know you need to make adjustments.
Manage your thinking. If you find that the pace of life is too demanding for you to stop and think during your workday, then get into the habit of jotting down the three or four things that need good mental processing or planning that you can’t stop to think about. Then, carve out some time later when you can give those items some good thinktime, which may have to be after work hours.
Making Better Decisions
Self-leadership also involves thinking the way a leader does and making decisions based on it. Here are some things you need to keep in mind as you develop these skills.
Think longer term. If you want to be a better employee and a better leader, you need to focus on more than just the task at hand and see more than just the current moment. Good self-leaders look ahead, whether it be a few hours, a few days, or a few years. This impacts whether the organization will thrive tomorrow as well as today.
See within the larger context. To lead yourself in a way that better serves the organization, you need to think within a broader context. Look at how something will impact those above, beside, and below you.
Push boundaries. While self-management is having the discipline to follow through with the rules you set for yourself, leadership is about taking things forward. Often that means learning to think outside the box. It means tactfully pushing boundaries. Try to gently push boundaries without being pushy.
Develop and Maintain a Great Attitude
People who work for bad bosses don’t get the credit or recognition they desire and deserve. It’s difficult to be a team player, remain positive, and keep contributing in those circumstances. How do you keep your chin up?
Appreciate the value of your position. Not everyone will understand or appreciate the work you do, so it’s important that you do. You make what you do important by valuing it yourself and doing your best. If you focus on being some other place because you think it’s better, then you will neither enjoy where you are nor do what you must to be successful. Stay in the present.
Embrace the compliments of others in similar situations. There is no higher compliment than acknowledgment and appreciation from someone whose circumstances, position, or experience is similar to yours. Everyone enjoys kind words from the boss, and many seek them out. But the praise of a colleague who’s walked in your shoes really does mean more.
