5 Building Blocks for Good Self-Leadership
Photo by David Ballew on Unsplash
Dave was a good leader from every conceivable outward expression. He represented the organization well to various stakeholders, making them feel valued as part of the mission. He was good in front of a crowd communicating vision and strategy. He could be very winsome one-on-one in moments of recruitment, sales, or simple hospitality. Dave had many friends, and people genuinely enjoyed his presence. His unique combination of charisma and intentionality caused the organization to grow. But that same level of intentionality did not consistently flow towards his team. He had a large, talented team who were passionate about the organization's mission. But upon closer inspection, the cracks were beginning to show. The team had drifted into personal projects and were not collaborating well. A certain level of infighting brought a coldness to team meetings and strained personal relationships. Factions were beginning to form downstream, and Dave was aware of these issues but unwilling to confront them and bring needed correction. Dave was great upfront, selling the benefits of the organization. But his ability and capacity to lead the team through all the routine ups and downs of team life were failing miserably.
Dave was keenly aware of his star power. He was not so aware of his lack of emotional connection. He attempted to lead his team the same way he led outwardly—through the power of charisma. Dave did not know where his talents began and ended. He could not manage the emotions of his team meetings and would often check out or defer to the loudest voice in the room. He had risen and always relied upon his extroverted nature to win people over. Even organizational results were beginning to crumble, and team members were refreshing their resumes. Dave also grew up in a home where conflict and loud accusations were common. Many such nights when he was growing up as a child kept him at arm's length from conflict as an adult. But the personal consequences now were much greater. He was losing his team. He was losing his grip on keeping everything together, and no amount of platform stardom would keep the desired results rolling in.
Every leadership failure ultimately has its root in poor self-leadership. Not every organizational failure is one leader's fault, but when a leader abdicates his role responsibility, it is almost always because of some known or unknown personal leadership gap. Business schools, seminaries, leadership conferences, and leadership development efforts rarely emphasize the interior life of the leader. The emphasis is almost always on the externals—strategy formulation, vision casting, alignment, change management, or platform communication. As a result, the priority and ability to lead self goes wanting. The premium today is on authentic and empathetic leadership over strategic leadership. It's not that strategy doesn't matter anymore—it certainly does. But the lead foot of 21st-century leaders is the ability to connect well with those they lead. As Edwin Friedman has stated in his book A Failure of Nerve, leadership today is about the ability to bring a non-anxious presence into every setting. That requires growing leader capacity and character. That requires good self-leadership.
3 Reasons Self-Leadership Matters
Communication is the currency of leadership, but that does not simply mean more words and with a louder voice. Effective leadership communication includes voice and presence. Voice has your literal words in all forms of communication and how you communicate them. Presence is about the space you fill and create for others. A leader always projects an outsized presence, and whether they are aware of it or not, there is a space you should fill. People are looking to you for direction and hope. There is also the space you should create by giving away some of your power to empower others to lead. And there is the space you should create so that your teams feel heard, connected, and energized to make their best contribution to the mission.
A third important element of leadership communication is soundness. This relates to your integrity. Are you the same person inside and out? Do people see and experience stability, dependability, reliability, and cohesion in and from you? People want to follow steady and reliable way more than they want to follow splashy and inconsistent. This posture, too, requires good self-leadership.
Three practical reasons self-leadership matters:
Your leadership voice over time creates culture.
Your leadership presence over time creates engagement and builds trust.
Your leadership integrity over time creates genuine "followership" through soundness.
You cannot divorce your self-leadership from your organizational leadership.
5 Building Blocks for Good Self-Leadership
The key to good self-leadership is self-awareness. It is almost impossible to lead yourself if you do not honestly know and understand yourself. Of course, self-awareness is a lifelong endeavor, but there are important building blocks for getting started and moving forward.
Discovering Your Design The first essential building block is discovering and understanding your innate design. I fully believe that every person is created in the image of God and therefore has inherent value and a unique design. To make your best contribution to the world, you must know who you are and are not. This design has four components: your core talents and abilities, your personality, your spiritual gifting, and your level of emotional intelligence. There are an array of assessments to aid you in all four of these aspects of design. These elements not only help to empower your best contribution, but they also define your limits and need for others.
Core Talents and Abilities Clifton Strengths is an excellent assessment for discovering your core talents and abilities. Many have used this assessment personally, or it has been a part of their onboarding process within an organization. The biggest gap I see is not receiving coaching once you receive your results. Applying your strengths to relationships, career choices, and your purpose in life is imperative.
Personality The dictionary defines personality as the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character. In simpler terms, I think of personality as how you carry yourself. There are also several practical assessments for understanding your personality. Myers-Briggs and Enneagram are two that have shown to be very helpful. Once again, good coaching can make the difference between knowledge and application.
Spiritual Gifts Spiritual gifts are uniquely empowered abilities (empowered by the Holy Spirit) that a person receives at the moment of salvation. The primary New Testament passages that outline these unique expressions are 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4. While some assessments can aid you in discerning your spiritual gifting, I believe they are best discovered and validated through others as you serve within your church.
Emotional Intelligence This concept was popularized by Daniel Goleman, an American author, psychologist, and science journalist. The central premise is that we should ever be growing in our awareness of our own emotions, the emotions of others in the room, and the ability to manage both productively. There are helpful assessments to gauge your level of emotional intelligence and identify where you may need to grow. Again, good coaching can make a significant difference in seeing change and growth.
Looking Back You must look back before you can look ahead We all have lived a life of blessings and wounds. But we often spend little time digesting those experiences to understand how they affect our life and leadership. In my coaching and leader development efforts, I often refer to the "primary wound." Every leader has a primary would that tends to mark their leadership. Either that wound remains hidden and unaddressed by the leader, resulting in significant harm over time—or it is known and understood by the leader. They continually allow God to redeem that wound to make them a more humble, authentic, and vulnerable leader. This primary wound can be a particular event or a season over time where a leader receives a consistent message leading to guilt, shame, and a lack of confidence. Knowing your primary wound is a significant piece of self-awareness. Allowing that wound to be redeemed continually is a pathway to a more profound leadership expression.
Choosing Agency You have to choose to lead yourself. All of us possess some agency, the ability, and the capacity to act on our behalf. Certainly, others will be our leaders to whom we report—but that is not the same as self-leadership. Those leaders lead us primarily in utilitarian ways for what we can contribute and accomplish in light of the organizational objective. And rightly so. Self-leadership is about building our capacity to handle the demands of reality. Choosing agency and taking responsibility for our development is a good sign of maturity and will lead to greater self-awareness.
Leaning into Community While you must take primary responsibility for leading yourself, you can't do this alone. You need healthy forms of community and accountability. We all have blind spots that we will never fully see and understand without the help of others who know us and will be honest with us. While it is worthwhile to be on the receiving end of organizational 360 reviews, solicit regular feedback on your own. If you have recently led a meeting or a project, ask a few other trusted participants how they received you and your leadership. Determine to maintain a few trusted friends, mentors, or advisors who will shoot you straight as to how you are doing personally and professionally. This overall pursuit will aid you greatly in your journey of self-awareness and self-leadership.
Determining Your Focus Self-leadership cannot be solely about you as its primary aim. Self-leadership cannot be about making you look better. Self-leadership requires an outward focus and must transcend self as its ultimate aim. I am convinced that the best leadership model to emulate is servant leadership. At its core, servant leadership assumes that the leader exists to benefit others. It never ignores organizational mission, vision, or outcomes. But it sees those objectives through the lens of improving everyone in the organization. Leadership is never transactional to benefit the leader. Leadership in this framework is relational and focused on the other's well-being. Self-leadership to merely advance self will short circuit in the end. Self-leadership to benefit others on the way to organizational outcomes will not only be sustainable and more effective—it will also be more personally rewarding and joy-filled.
If you are interested in developing a greater sense of self-awareness that can lead to good self-leadership take a closer link at our Leadership Coaching page or our Leadership Development Intensives page.
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