Self-leadership is the first step to coaching others…..
On planes, we’re always told, in the event of an emergency, to help ourselves before we help others….and I believe business leadership is the same.
Only when we have mastered self-leadership can we genuinely go on to help lead and coach others.
There are three main areas of self-leadership training you need to understand. This is the first step to becoming a successful leader; once you develop these skills through tactical and strategic leadership, coaching and mentoring others become more accessible and efficient.
I have a saying; “you cannot lead others until you first learn to lead yourself.”
We’d never ask someone to teach us accounting unless they’d learned it themselves, and self-leadership is the same……. To add, it’s just as important as accounting for your business, which most leaders don’t realise.
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” – Aristotle.
So what is self-leadership?
Self-leadership is the one fundamental skill that will significantly impact your career, your team and even your life’s happiness and one of the cornerstones of Motivational Intelligence.
It has been defined in many ways, including by Bryant and Kazan in 2012, who stated,
“Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling and actions towards your objective/s”.
Developing effective self-leadership helps you set goals, shift your mindset and find your purpose. Ultimately, self-leaders think bigger, become better and achieve more for themselves and others.
“Being a self-leader is to serve as chief, captain, president, or CEO of one’s own life” – Peter Drucker.
Areas of self-leadership
Different self-leadership skills are involved in creating an effective leader who can lead, inspire, motivate, manage, and develop a successful team of other self-leaders.
Directive (tactical) leadership
Under directive leadership, managers must guide employees’ work goals and establish the path by which they can achieve those goals. For example, directive leaders may provide guidance and coaching, clarify an employee’s roles and responsibilities, remove any obstacles that prevent task completion, and give awards when appropriate.
Indirect (strategic) leadership
Leading using indirect influence tactics can sometimes be as, or even more, effective than giving direct orders or instructions. For example, a leader can influence their organisation’s culture through their leadership and the example they set through their behaviour. Indirect leadership can be crucial in areas such as recruitment and promotion of employees in line with the company’s culture, mission and objectives if they have been communicated effectively through indirect influence.
Executive leadership
Executive leaders understand themselves and how to effectively deploy their strengths across their businesses. They adapt to situations quickly and identify the best course of action based on their self-knowledge. Executive leaders empower and inspire others in the organisation, knowing the right questions and how to ask them.
Self-leadership development
Developing our self-leadership skills involves self-reflection in recognising and improving our leadership so we can create a strong sense of who we are, what we do and where we’re headed.
Self-leadership development also involves improving our communication skills, our emotional skills and the choices we make, thus increasing our level of Leading With Motivational Intelligence (MQ)
Regardless of our leadership style, leadership skills require continuous learning, honing, nurturing and improvement if we want to build the most successful business we can, with the most successful team of employees.
Leading others will only work if we can learn to guide ourselves by challenging ourselves, maybe questioning why we do things a certain way. Still, we gain a better understanding and depth of knowledge about ourselves.
At The Power Within, we help business leaders achieve a level of self-development that means they’re significantly more likely to achieve their goals in business and life, enabling them to lead others effectively and successfully.
We’ll show you how to develop all the critical self-leadership skills you will need to lead yourself and others, including using our world-first Motivational Intelligence (MQ) framework, which is an integral part of achieving effective self-leadership.
If you’re ready to take your next giant leap forward in personal and business development, then there’s no better place to start than improving your self-leadership skills.
All our programmes – including our worlds-first Executive Diploma in Leading With Motivational Intelligence (MQ) and our Business Growth Academy – and our fully online Self-Leadership Development programme and multiple Executive, Team and Business Coaching have been created with passion and commitment to our mission.
If you’re a business leader looking for something a bit different, training & development that works…then we can help.
James Fleming
The Power Within Training,
The Motivational Intelligence Company
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