Leadership Starts with Self
During the safety briefing, flight attendants always remind passengers to place their oxygen mask on first before helping others in an emergency. This is a foundational insight into leadership.
But isn’t leadership about how I direct other people?
Yes, leadership does inherently involve others, but how you lead must start with you. There is an old saying that states “you cannot give what you do not have”. The idea here is that the best leaders are drawing from a personal well of self-awareness and experience that they are able to access when they lead others. So how can we grow in self-awareness to lead ourselves and others well?
Locate Yourself
The first thing a growing leader must do is take an honest look in the mirror. You must take stock of who you are and where your leadership capabilities are at the moment. Consider things like:
Leadership Voice: how do you communicate best and bring the most impact to others? Are you more relational, creative, strategic? Do you think in the here and now, or more in the future?
Drives and Drains: what things give you energy which you are naturally good at? What things drain you and feel like you struggle to complete?
Goals and Fears: what drives you to do what you do? Where is your motivation? What are you afraid of losing? What are you trying to hide? What are you trying to prove?
Strengths and Weaknesses: where have you seen/experienced your strengths and weaknesses? Where have they been affirmed or noted?
Once you have done this work, it functions like a map that guides the way forward. You are able to take what you have learned and begin to apply it.
Identify Patterns
Once you have done the hard work of looking into the mirror to see where you are as a leader, certain insights and patterns will emerge.
This is the connection between who you are as a leader and what you do as a leader. It is the movement between tendencies and actions.
When you look clearly you will realize that you, just like every other leader, have natural defaults and preferences that you operate in every day.
Some are good:
You often find yourself considering how your actions will affect others
You are able to see problems or opportunities before others
Some are not so good:
You do not like conflict so you shy away from giving needed feedback or correction
You run over people when they disagree with your opinions or perspective
Knowing all of these insights is great, but “knowing is half the battle” (G.I. Joe, 1983). American philosopher and educator John Dewey reminds us that “we don’t learn from experience, we learn by reflecting on experience” (Bolman and Deal, 2014). Reflecting on your tendencies and actions allows you to identify patterns in your leadership, but it also uncovers the “why” beneath. Here you discover different circumstances, stressors, and even personalities that bring about these patterns. In these discoveries you are prepped for change.
Take Action
Now the part we are all familiar with - taking action. These actions are not random leaps, they are informed by your own leadership insights. This is where you move from self-awareness to behavior and is key to your development. Often leaders stop at awareness, thinking that once we know we will automatically change.
Taking action means considering your leadership reality and making a plan to improve and move forward.
Some of this will be addressing your weaknesses:
I struggle at communicating my ideas. I need to ask others to help draw me out.
I get defensive when people offer critical feedback. I need to ask questions to see where they are coming from and also be humble.
I have a clear vision for most projects. I need to collaborate with other perspectives to make sure we make the best decisions.
Other actions will address your strengths:
I know how to collaborate well and connect people with their passions.
I have high character and understand how to build trust with others.
I naturally build systems and structures and can ask the hard questions to help our team succeed.
When you take action, you begin to create a broader plan of development for yourself as a leader. You can consider your own reality and where you want to improve. You can set a course of action to take on any challenge or scenario and identify problems with sustainable solutions. You can also recognize healthy and productive habits that you want to reinforce and multiply to others!
Leadership Starts with You
Effective leadership starts with self-leadership. By embracing self-awareness, identifying patterns, and taking action, you can equip yourself to lead others more effectively. Just like the oxygen mask on an airplane, taking care of yourself first ensures you are in the best position to serve and lead others.